Well, not really. But here on this lazy Saturday let’s set aside the Boobz for a while and watch this video for the Bush Tetras’ 1982 punk-funk classic “Too Many Creeps.”
And if that’s too dour for you, well, have some Bananarama, offering a somewhat more cheerful take on life in Manhattan. It kind of feels like summer already.
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FWIW, in “The Book of J”, Harold Bloom asserts that an aristocratic woman wrote one of the three major documents that eventually became the Old Testament. It’s been a while, so I can’t remember the specifics, but his case is convincing.
Being a yankee, the first place I encountered those feet in ancient times was when it was used as a kind of shorthand for “stuffy High Church Anglican foofurrah” by the lads of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I used to think it was about early Christians or even some lost tribe of Israel.
I didn’t realize until I went looking just now for the poem’s lyrics how apocalyptic and revolutionary it is (“apocalyptic” in this sense meaning sweeping away all the pain and sorrow and replacing it with something better, in this instance something quite idyllic).
I’m surprised I never studied Blake in college. I got everyone else, even Cormac McCarthy, but not Wm. Blake.
Huh.
Falconer:
The first verse is about a myth that at some point in his childhood Jesus visited Britain with his (I believe) uncle, Joseph of Aramathea and what he would have thought and how he would have reacted to the “dark satanic mills” of the industrial revolution and the “Enclosure Act” that drove the poor from the land and made them grist for those mills.
Blake watched this happening and was outraged by it, because people died in those mills by the thousands and the owners didn’t give a damn because the poor had no choice but to work there or starve. This included children as young as ten years old.
To do them justice, some of the mill owners did listen, or agreed with Blake in the first place and treated their workers very well, providing medical care, fair wages and model villages for them to live in, for example Cadbury, Fry and Quaker. I’m sure there were others with sharing Blake’s concern but I can’t remember them off the top of my head. Most, however, did not and exploited the poor shamelessly.
I hope that last post made sense. I had Chemo yesterday and I has a really bad case of the dumb. Going back to bed and trying to sleep off the worst of it.
I’m an atheist, and not fond of doing things in big groups in general, but even I have to admit that singing Jerusalem with a huge crowd of people can be a moving experience. It’s the only hymn that brings a tear to my eye (and my grandmother’s favorite).
Cassandra:
I was raised a Christian and both my parents still are. They were very liberal and I still agree with some of their agenda. I remember standing next to Dad in church and holding his hand as we refused to sing some of the really daft hymns.( there were hundreds of the damned things, nobody really believed them but they kept on singing them because it was expected of them. Stuff that for a joke!). Jerusalem, though, was a different matter. My father has a wonderful singing voice and I really loved singing that particular one with him because he never held back and I knew he agreed with it. What’s more both my parents tried really hard to live by it.
It’s odd but I’m not a Christian these days but I really respect my parents for their beliefs and the way they effect their views on politics and life in general. I can’t imagine what they’d be like without them.
Sorry: to;dr
In addition to the lyrics, it’s also a lovely piece of music, perfectly designed to be sung by a big crowd. I felt conflicted about that as a teenager, actually – I was brought up Episcopalian, and there are hymns that I love as pieces of music, but then I would listen to the words and feel horrified. Jerusalem never made me feel that way – it’s basically Christianity as a mystical version of socialism.
Cassandra:
Yes, I understand what you mean. Some church music is glorious but the theology was horrible, racist, classist, sexist, ugh. I still have some affection for some of it though as well as the music of other religions. I find religious belief in all of it’s forms fascinating and music is an important part of that.
I was raised as an English Baptist of the very liberal branch and we were constantly arguing with our more conservative brethren. The American Baptists seemed to think we should have agreed with them and been part of their movement but their worldview was so different to ours that we had nothing in common and resented the way they tried to appropriate us.
Christianity is by no means monolithic and non-Christians don’t seem to realize how different even individual churches can be.
I was in Notre Dame this week. They were having a Mass (two, actually) as I walked the perimeter chapels. It was uplifting. It’s not bright inside, but neither is it dark. And the acoustics… oh my. Aethereal.
RE: Seranvali
My husband’s a Christian, and self-proclaimed Worst Southern Baptist Ever. He used to joke that the smaller the differences between two denominations, the bigger the fuss they’d make over them.
Pretty sure the Quakers, the Calvinists, and the East Orthodox folks would throw fits if compared to each other.