OK, so maybe beauty inducing a spontaneous inhalation, isn’t the best analogy I’ve ever come up with. Let’s try another path to understanding enabling beauty, and shift media as well, from music to literature. And this is where my students would roll their eyes as gen Xers (Yers? Zers?) were wont to do; “Oh, god. Here he goes again!”
This path to Enabling Beauty is laid out, in part, courtesy of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle a TV show circa 1959 in which we are introduced to Peabody’s Improbable History where canine Professor Peabody and his human sidekick Sherman time travel around history via the Wayback Machine:
“We need to hop into the Wayback Machine. Sherman, set the date to the mid-1400s, say 1450. Florence, Italy. The workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio!” More eye rolling. Those that weren’t drooping. “See the youngster over in the corner? Unknown now, but not for long! That is Leonardo de Vinci.” And then Mr. Peabody would go on to explain that much of Leonardo's early work is collaborative in nature.“During the Renaissance, Sherman, paintings were usually done by groups of artists, directed by a master. Leonardo's first known contribution to one his master's works was in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ. Almost all critics agree that Leonardo painted the leftmost angel. Its face and hair have a light, graceful quality unlike the other figures in the painting. Leonardo was probably also responsible for the background.”
According to Vasari, Leonardo's first biographer, Verrocchio was so impressed with his pupil's work on the angel’s face that he grew ashamed of his own talents, and swore never to paint again. We really have no way of ascertaining Vasari’s veracity of this version of artistic history, but it does imply that often an early snippet of work points the way to later, more encompassing, excellence.
I have been thinking about that notion of a “little bit,” a “lagniappe” in Cajun, as an indication of later excellence applied to the literature in song lyrics. The previous post dealt with the spontaneous impact of sound, the quality of the voices, their tone and purity, as an integral element of beauty. It addresses the music/beauty duality as an auditory construct. Neither Amazing Grace nor Somewhere Over the Rainbow really qualify are timeless literature. The one is a religious work, the other a great show tune. Their claim to unusual beauty lies in the auditory tracks.
However it strikes me that if we pay close attention we can find among some snippets of writing in some song lyrics that might warn us, like Leonardo’s painting of the little angel, that some future excellent writing lurks here. Remember, song lyrics are poetry, or literature set to music; a notion backed up by the, for me initially surprising, announcement that the Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 was awarded to Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
For me that notion presents a recurring clue that, hidden in the lyrics of a song, might be some pieces of exceptional literature. That clue, the equivalent of the “spontaneous inhalation” I propose on the music side, is manifested on the literature side by a kind of “chuckle”: “Oh, yes. I like that! Wish I had written that!” If the author is living and has a website, I will occasionally drop them a note of thanks. More often, I jot the phrase or sentence down in my “Wish I’d Written That” file. A little bit of which I’m cracking open for you here.
So, just for fun, I’d like to encourage you to send me some of your favorites. Somewhere down the line I’ll share your nominations here on The Wall. Let me know if, when I do a follow up of this post, you’d like to share your identity as an exceptional lyric sleuth. Otherwise I’ll just use the normal anonymous footnote style.
First, a couple of rules. Let’s rule out Dylan. I mean he already has a Nobel Prize, for crying out loud. Second, let’s stipulate works published after the first radio broadcast of music, Reginald Fessenden’s “Christmas Concert” Christmas Eve, 1906. I know that’s rather arbitrary, but I am a media guy, and that’s still a pretty wide net. And, of course, if you make a good case for an exception, I’ll add it to the list.
To clarify then, I am not looking for a whole poem or lyric. We’ll let Dylan claim that space. Instead we are looking for a parallel to Leonardo’s “Angel’s face.” A single sentence, perhaps couplet or phrase that from our lips draws the Hallelujah, to steal a possible example. Something that leads us to suspect that beautiful literature may lie this way.
Here are a few of my current favorites:
“A phone that rings at midnight ain’t got nothing good to say.
- Trouble on the Line. - Marley’s Ghost
“Those Williams boys still mean a lot to me - Hank and Tennessee.“
- Good Old Boys Like Me. - Bob McDill
“Try to remember when life was so tender that dreams were kept beside your pillow.” - Try to Remember. Tom Jones “Fantastics”
“Some day, you'll know, I was the one. But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun.”
I’ll Follow the Sun. - Lennon and McCartney
“But here in this graveyard that's still no man's land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.” The Green Fields of France. - Bogle Eric
And of course;
“The first time ever I saw your face, I thought the sun rose in your eyes.” The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. - Ewan MacColl
