Sinister: Adam's Curse

[Youn J. Noh]

This is what Kevin Parker wrote a few days ago:
 
Anyway i gave her a call and she told me she had "Big
News" and she told me all about her first boyfriend
who is a Downs boy called Jamie and how happy she was
well her vocabulary is a little limited so my mother
helped her out. Anyway I have always wanted her to
have as normal, whatever the fuck that is, life as
possible and so i had this double realisation that she
may go through all the things that make the rest of us
who we are and that she is growing up etc. Anyway so
all this was pretty moving and i was on the train
going back to my apartment with rather moist eyes
because i was so happy for her, but also I was a
little bit upset because I am no longer the most
important male in her life, which is a good thing but
a little difficult to deal with at first, and i put my
walkman on and i had forgotten what i was listening to
before and it was " TIGERMILK" well to be specific " I
Dont love anyone " and there was that line about "
except maybe my sister...maybe my baby brother too"
and I thought what a self involved twat I am sometimes
thinking about the mess I make of relationships and
that love doesnt exist its a "finely tuned jealousy"
or whatever, sometimes a little naivity really does
help put things in perspective. 
 
Um, Kevin if you happen to read this, I hope I'm not embarrassing you by
writing this, but this is the sort of thing that makes people beautiful.
This makes me believe that love exists.  It's too bad that everything
isn't beautiful at once, or we can't see it that way, but that's where the
poem "Adam's Curse" fits in.
 
I'm glad that Nick Dastoor upholds romance, but when he says things like
this:
 
There was once a terrific song by a band called Airhead went 'Funny how the
girls you fall in love with never fancy you / funny how the ones you don't do'.
It predated the crap-breezy-indie-rock craze by several years.  Thinking about
it, Airhead are a perfect example of the artless product of a people who aren't
artists. And that's why we can all relate to it so well.  Cuz you know it *is*
funny how the girls you fall in love with never fancy you.  And you know what's
SO IRONIC - how the ones you don't DO.  Sheesh!
 
I'm not so sure I believe him because isn't this a milder version of what 
he questioned Owen about?  Doesn't it become a fiendish power struggle
because we think this way?  Isn't what Nick writes the precursor of
questions like "Who likes who more?" within relationships?  
 
Did sheep come up because we are blinded by our love for Belle &
Sebastian?  One thing that disturbs me a bit is the new tone that Stuart
Murdoch takes in his writing.  Disturbs is too strong.   But if he wrote
the sleeve notes for "Tigermilk", the way he writes, the person he is, has
changed.  Both sides still come up.  The end of his bit on the Belle &
Sebastian page was the older him, but why did he spend so much time
describing Mr. Funai?  Was it in recognition of the fact that he himself
had grown older and that his behavior had become more commonplace?  Or had
his view of the world grown larger to incorporate characters like Mr.
Funai as worth writing about in their own right?  And in his latest piece
for the Glasgow University Guardian, there was the part with cool
narration - Jack Daniels and Foxy, and then phrases like "the frisson of
pre-match joy".  But why go so far to the other extreme as "cunting"?  I
hope the excesses in that direction are just a phase, like having to
reject Nick Drake's work on account of all the comparisons.    
 
Yesterday morning I watched "Jules and Jim" again cos no one else was up
yet and one of my housemates had checked it out from the library.  It
would be dangerous for a girl or woman to imagine herself as Catherine.
The sort of thing recounted in "Minor Character", a Lloyd Cole & the
Commotions song on "Easy Pieces".  I used to be guilty of this, but my
aspirations only went so far as the be the woman in "Minor Character".
Jules actually upstages her.  He's noble.  There's a scene where Catherine
reaches over Jules when they are in bed to answer the phone.  There's a
scene in "Scenes from a Marriage" where the wife reaches over the husband
(I forget the characters' names) to turn off the alarm clock.  These are
the scenes of intimacy I love.   In the beginning of "L'amour
l'apres-midi" (a film by Rohmer), the husband is sitting on the sofa
cutting the pages of a book, and he remarks on the pleasure of reading in
the presence of his wife.  Each person being able to do their own thing
but secure in the presence of the other.  And the song "Kooks" by David
Bowie.  I love any song that mentions dropping out of school or throwing
homework on the fire.  Stuart David's songs may seem naive, but in a way
they are not.
 
I discovered this poem from a record that my high school English teacher
had of a college professor of his reading poetry.  He went to a Calvinist
college, so the professor read with the intonation of a minister.  The
poem is by Yeats.
  
"Adam's Curse"
 
We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones 
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet 
Be thought an idler by the noisy set 
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world."
 
                            And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, "To be born woman is to know -
Although they do not talk of it at school -
That we must labor to be beautiful."
 
I said, "It's certain there is no find thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough."
 
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
 
I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

 
 
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