MACBETH

Welcome home Macbeth
It's been a long long time
And everyone knows you're here
It's easy to see they care 

Banquo's been and gone
He's seen it all before
He took it and then he did walk it
He shook it and then he did rock it

And you know it's true
You never saw things quite that way
She knew it all
And made you see things all her way
Somebody knows for sure
It's gotta be me or it's gotta be you
Come on along and tell me it's alright
It's alright by me   

Alas for poor Macbeth
He found a shallow grave
But better than a painful death
And quicker than his dying breath

NOTE:  Seeing John Cale perform "Macbeth" in New York in January fulfilled a longtime desire of mine.  I've seen Cale perform numerous times -- always terrific concerts -- but he never played this one, the concluding song on side 1 of "Paris, 1919."  What a neat song; what a recording.   

It's "Macbeth" week in our house.  But it's not as gory and tragic as that may sound.  Jane's studying the play in school.  Until Thursday when it's on to Myrtle Beach, SC for softball and, I hope, no witches or warlocks for a sunny hitting, fielding, baserunning week.

John Cale:  Macbeth (Link)

Illustrations (from top):  (1:) Ellen and Charles Kean as Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, wearing historically accurate costumes; (2)  Henry Fuseli, Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches, 1793-94; (3)  Macbeth and Banquo Enountering The Witches, from Hollinshed's Chronicles, 1577; (4)  William Rimmer, Scene from Macbeth, depicting the witches' conjuring of an apparition in Act IV, Scene I, 1850.

 

IT'S A POOR HEART THAT NEVER REJOICES (LEAVING IT UP TO YOU)

 Tony Luton was just a merry-eyed dancing faun, whom Fate had surrounded with streets instead of woods, and it would have been in the highest degree inartistic to have sounded him for a heart or a heartache.

The dancing of the faun took one day a livelier and more assured turn, the joyousness became more real, and the worst of the vicissitudes seemed suddenly over.  A musical friend, gifted with mediocre but marketable abilities, supplied Tony with a song, for which he obtained a trial performance at an East End hall.  Dressed as a jockey, for no particular reason except that the costume suited him, he sang, “They quaff the gay bubbly in Eccleston Square” to an appreciative audience, which included the manager of a famous West End theatre of varieties.  Tony and his song won the managerial favour, and were immediately transplanted to the West End house, where they scored a success of which the drooping music-hall industry was at the moment badly in need.

It was just after the great catastrophe, and men of the London world were in no humour to think; they had witnessed the inconceivable befall them, they had nothing but political ruin to stare at, and they were anxious to look the other way.  The words of Tony’s song were more or less meaningless, though he sang them remarkably well, but the tune, with its air of slyness and furtive joyousness, appealed in some unaccountable manner to people who were furtively unhappy, and who were trying to appear stoically cheerful.

“What must be, must be,” and “It’s a poor heart that never rejoices,” were the popular expressions of the London public at that moment, and the men who had to cater for that public were thankful when they were able to stumble across anything that fitted in with the prevailing mood.
 

NOTE:  This third excerpt from Saki’s 1913 novel When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns is the last I’ll post here for a while.  


The weakened pulse/diminished spirit/fait accompli London and Britain Saki subtly, surgically and affectingly depicts in the book so closely resembles our own current social and political environment that it is almost too tempting to rely on it as a daily diary substitute. 


When William Came is apparently disfavored by Saki enthusiasts, but since it’s the first example of his work I’ve read, I can’t be concerned with that.  


Engaging in the inevitable search for relevant artistic comparisons, When William Came reminds me of the autumn decay mood John Cale sound-and-word-painted so well on his Paris, 1919 album, but especially of his summer destruction masterpiece, Leaving It Up To You, which laid bare passivity’s evil harvest.

John Cale: The Endless Plain Of Fortune (Link)

John Cale: Leaving It Up To You (Link)