On Tue, 3 Feb 1998, Honey wrote:
John Johnston CT (uh?) mentioned ee cummings. Uh oh, that's four of us now on Sinister who love little eec - let's try a few more cultural grenades - Dylan Thomas anyone? Stanley Spencer? Jorge Luis Borges? Oh
Hands up here on Dylan Thomas. Does that make me uncool now? I have no idea these days...it's funny how his name pops up like this as I've recently been rediscovering his work due to a project I'm engaged in at work that's tangentially related. I hadn't really read any of his stuff since high school, though it's probably good to take a break for awhile since my own responses to life have changed. And now, (this being my first post to Sinister after months of mimicking my real life personality by sitting in the corner and listening rather than participating), the B&S connection, with Dylan Thomas that is, at least in terms of how the things you absorb influence your reactions to them. In one of the things I was reading there was a reference to the difficulty of successfully realizing "Under Milk Wood" lying in the need to create a "web of sound" with the voices, so that the rhythms and tones of the speech culminate in an overall effect that envelopes the audience. It seems to me that this could be an interesting distinction to make in terms of, er, "rock" and "pop" music. Much has been said and done regarding the "wall of sound", to the point where it's taken for granted in many instances. One of the things that I find refreshing about B&S is the way the arrangements of what are essentially quite simple songs create a (and I don't think this is really that great a term) "web of sound" - the instruments compliment and enhance each other in a way that is *subtle* and fluid...in fact, I've seen references to the way B&S songs build into these great big orchestrations throughout a song, but I don't really think that's always the case. Take "A Century of Elvis", for example. That song has such a wonderful momentum throughout it, right from the start, that twists and spirals behind the irregular pattern of natural speech, always moving forward but not in a way that manipulates you into the big ending, the payoff - instead, there's a point towards the end where the separate violin and guitar lines converge onto the same note right before the lines about how "me and wee pam came to live there", and suddenly there's this moment like an intake of breath, where the story moves from the description of an eccentric character to a more personal story about two people and their life, and the music keeps the pace and doesn't overwhelm the occassion, it's intimate and fleeting, but captured in a way that makes it resonate... Somehow this *does* relate to the starting point of Dylan Thomas, but probably in a way that doesn't come across well here...oh well, I tried. Speaking of cultural grenades, someone recently mentioned Sylvia Plath's name on this list...anyone have a reaction to Ted Hughes' new book? Over here in the States it's not quite the "event" it seems to be in the UK, or am I mistaken? Has there been much reaction at all? take care, Greg ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------