Monday, 6 July 2009
Fear me.
Also, I ponder setting Browning's Porphyria's Lover to music after I found myself singing bits of it to the andalucian cadence* in the shower this morning and humming a possible instrumental lead-in. My mother, however, has discommended the idea on the grounds that the poem is about a creepy guy who kills his girlfriend for no apparent reason. She has a point; possible distastefulness aside, Nick Cave has that market cornered already. I kissed her goodbye, said all beauty must die. I leant down and planted a rose between her teeeeeeeeth....
* Simple form e.g.: Am // G // F // E, or swap Am for C or F for variation; more involved form: Am / D7 // G / C // F / Dm // E. Porphyria's Lover,, however, has a five-line rhyme pattern, so further modification would be necessary.
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2 comments:
Your mother's got it all wrong: chicks love murderers.
I know that; it's always the girls who love to hear Nick Cave songs at parties. "Sing the Curse of Millhaven! Pleeease! It's so funny!" (Well, some guys found it amusing when I did Kylie and Nick in different octaves.) And I've so far only encountered girls who like Subway to Sally: Nur wer feige ist, toetet liebe mit den Wort allein/Fuer das Messer braucht es Helden, und ich kann nicht feige sein ("only the timid kill love with words; the knife demands a real man, and I cannot be cowardly.") And there's been enough cases of murderers who, while in prison, married some girl who'd struck up a correspondence with them.
I think, though, my mother rates distaste at such things higher than whether girls like them. For my own part, I have found that worrying too much about what impresses girls is counterproductive. As a youth I tried learning Chopin on the piano, on the basis that his melodious charms would have women swooning into my arms; but... well, you remember my piano playing - subtlety and sensitivity were not my strong points. It's the things I learnt for my own pleasure - Cave and Cohen and flamenco guitar - that impress women the most. That and my pale blond eyebrows.
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