File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0306, message 73


From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 22:02:19 -0500
Subject: Oscar Wilde and The Smiths


Eric hums, 

> I'm sure it is merely coincidental but the Smiths also remind of that
> long gone rock group the Smiths. I think particularly of their great
> song:
> 
> "I was looking for a job 
> and then I found a job 
> And heavens knows I miserable now
> 
> In my life 
> why do I give valuable time 
> to people who don't care if 
> I live or die"


Its been years since I've listened to the Smiths (Derek Bailey currently, 
um, "playing" the heavy-handed quotation marks that Cage brackets, and un-
brackets in interviews like this:  Daniel Charles: "Yesterday Pierre Belfond 
asked you if you would ever agree to conduct one of Beethoven's symphonies--the 
Ninth for example.  Could you repeat your answer?"  Cage:  "I told him that I 
would agree if I could use enough musicians to conduct, in one single concert, 
all nine symphonies superimposed!")  (A Worthwhile note--like the grand pianos 
in one of the Beatles songs--if for nothing else, than to hear Cage quote 
himself in one memorable chord.)

But as to the Smiths, if I'm not mistaken, they have a song entitled Cemetry 
Gates.  The lyric goes something like "Keats and Yeats are on your side / While 
the Love of Wilde is On Mine."

I had no idea who any of these figures were, but it didn't take me long to 
track down obscure references (like Oscar Wilde) and hit upon such works as the 
Ballad of the Reading Gaol or De Profundis.

I open the latter at random:

"Still, in the very fact that people will recognize me wherever I go, and know 
all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can discern something good for 
me.  It will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself as an artist, 
and as soon as I possibly can.  If I can produce even on more beautiful work of 
art I shall be able to rob malic of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and 
to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots.  And if life be, as it surely 
is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to Life.  People must adopt some 
attitude towards me, and so pass judgement on both themselves and me.  I need 
not say I am talking of particular individuals.  The only people I care to be 
with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what Beauty 
is, and those who know what Sorrow is: nobody else interests me" (125).  

yaf,

geof

  



   

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