Lone Gunmen

Tonight I am listening to a sequence of songs that somehow, for no obvious reason, reminds me of the phrase 'Lone Gunmen'.

From Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles:

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

From Let It Be, The Beatles:

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.

From State of Grace, Billy Joel:

There you go, slipping away into a state of grace
I know the look that comes across your face
It's so familiar to me
Here I am, trying to keep you in my line of sight
I'm never certain that you read me right
Sometimes you don't want to see me...

From America, Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel:

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"
"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America...

This was followed by ABBA's Eagle and St Etienne's Milk Bottle Symphony. There is a certain colour of loneliness, somewhere in the long wavelengths beyond the microwaves, where the sea edges towards flatness and the frequency approaches never. Somewhere out there is the null, the opposite of singularity. And maybe, there is a lone gunman.

Guitars and Education

Yes, I know it dates me. But one of my favourite songs, which in its time used to be called a rock ballad, is George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It's a song that I've had running in my head sometimes during the time I was teaching in various classrooms. Here are the words:

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you.

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you.

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all...
Still my guitar gently weeps.

The song has to be heard to be believed. You can get it here. Just try to remember that I was there when the White Album was launched.

May The Fours Be With You

Every time this date in the year comes round, I think apocalyptic thoughts. It's 4/4, that mystical time or timing, whether you are oriental or occidental, or purely accidental. The world divides into four ages, the apocalypse has four horseman, and the four gospels and their four evangelists are signified by four different beasts. There are four archangels, and four corners of the world and four cardinal directions and four elements of the material world.

But most of all, there were four Beatles. And once in a while I dig up the old music and go on a magical mystery tour. It is with that in mind that I present to you the lyrics to one of the few songs that was ever written deliberately to both communicate and confuse. I also indulge in a little bit of Shakespearean taming; it was an intelligent and largely pleasing session I had this morning, with you-know-who-you-are. Enjoy.

I am He as You are He as You are Me
And We are all together
See how they run like pigs from a gun
See how they fly
I'm crying
Sitting on a cornflake
Waiting for the van to come
Corporation T-Shirt
Stupid Bloody Tuesday
Man, you been a naughty boy
You let your face grow long

Chorus:
I am the Eggman
They are the Eggmen
I am the Walrus
GOO GOO GA JOOB

Mr. City Policeman
Sitting pretty little policemen in a row
See how they fly
Like Lucy in the sky
See how they run
I'm Crying
I'm Crying
I'm Crying
I'm Crying
Yellow matter custard
Dripping from a dead dog's eye
Crabalocker fishwife
Pornographic Priestess
Boy, you've been a naughty girl
You let your knickers down

(Chorus)

Sitting in an English garden
Waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come
You'll get a tan from
Standing in the English Rain

(Chorus)

Expert Texpert
Choking smokers
Don't you think the Joker
Laughs at You?
Ho-Ho-Ho-Hee-Hee-Hee-Ha-Ha-HA!
See how they smile
Like pigs in a sty
See how they snide
I'm Crying
Semolina Pilchard
Climbing up the Eiffel Tower
Elementary Penguin
Singing Hare Krishna
Man you shoulda seen them
Kicking Edgar Allen Poe

(Chorus)

(Oompah, oompah stick in your jumper!
Everyone has one, everybody has one!)

If you listen carefully to the whole song, you'll hear a lot more random stuff and even a few lines from King Lear...

Ring Around The Sun

Today, the Tailor came running into the office. "Look! Up in the sky!" And he ran out again. Suddenly, infused with the spirit of the Beatles (as seen in A Hard Day's Night), I felt moved to get up and run out as well. Several others followed.

Behold, there was a ring of rainbow light, a halo around the sun. Of course the Tailor, as a physicist, knew what caused it. But although we knew why it appeared that way, we were all engulfed in the wonder, the splendour, the glorious beauty of it all. Yes, the upper air was filled with tiny ice crystals. Yes, refraction does occur and its effects are seen as a circular locus visually centred around the sun (which approximates a uniform source at that distance). But physics aside, this was pure poetry.

I've seen haloes around the moon before, but seldom in broad daylight and hardly ever at noonday. This was a particular, spectacular moment of meteorological grace.

The Greater Trumps: (26) The Sun

It is an open land, and ever a beautiful one. Nothing hides here; the roads are free and children play without fear - on horseback or afoot. It is always high summer here. And above all things glows the warm and welcoming Sun, triumphant.

Where the Moon is the subversive and deceptive side of creativity, the Sun is creativity brought into the open and made concrete. It is the presiding eminence that watches over a heady blend of fire, wine and song - the fruits of alchemy that come from substance, flux, and mind. Perhaps the only negative side to this image is the fact that it is always the same - it holds no surprises, and therein may lie the seeds of Stasis, rather than Triumph.

In some of the older images, there are other stories - of the Sun burning up the Earth in its enthusiasm, of Phaethon's chariot burning the lands of Africa, of Icarus and his melting wings - which serve as warnings to those who would worship the Sun alone. Perhaps, it is best to let the Sun be, to welcome it in all its guises and not attempt to be its master or come too close to it.

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Probably many of us who grew up in those messy decades of the 1960s and 1970s will remember where these two verses come from:

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

While, as always, my favourite poet of the Welsh Renaissance had his own cautionary note, embedded in that famed villanelle:

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The Sun, source as it is of all that keeps our world running, beacon as it is of the days and seasons, should not be worshipped. But it is always obvious why men might worship him - for the Sun is a power which simply cannot be ignored.