Remember the speakers I got recently? Here's how good they are: I have just gained a significant understanding of a song I've listened to maybe 200 times.
The song is Ode To Billy Joe. Many fine artists have done versions of it, including Danish avant-garde rock band Sort Sol. Their version is astounding, especially the last half.
But today I was listening to Sinead O'Connor's version. And suddenly, way in the background of the sound-picture, I heard the faint cry of a baby. I muted my Mac/speakers and listened for perhaps a visiting infant at the neighbors. Nothing. I replayed a bit of the song. There it was again! ... And the baby's wail came right after the line in the song: "... And she and Billy Joe was throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge..."
A chill ran down my back! I suddenly understood the story.
I do say though that the lyrics themselves, In Bobbie Gentry's original version and without this hint, really don't tell the story on their own. At least I don't see how I could have gotten it, and I guess most people don't. Rather on the subtle side.
But then Bobbie Gentry has stated that she did not know why the characters did what they did, so clearly this is just one interpretation. I very much respect her position on this. One of my most successful drawings is the Swan And The Swine, made for a poster for a concert. And people have asked me "is it a tree or a mushroom cloud". And I have to say "I don't know". I just know it has the shape that it has. (Oh, the original poster had no color.)
One of the cool and interesting things about art is that it goes beyond what we readily grasp with logic, often even in the creator's mind.
Update: Hm, the more I think about it, the more I lean towards the baby thing being just one interpretation. I mean, how would a country teenage girl hide a pregnancy from everybody? Maybe the story is more complex. Maybe it does not matter what they threw off the bridge.
7 comments:
Very cool... especially that you're now noticing new things in the music.
'Ode to Billie Joe' in the original (though the Irish way of rendering the title may be different). 'Ode to Billy Joe' was the movie based on the song-sort of 'Brokeback Mountain' meets Nashville's 'delta blues'.
Weird. I always thought "Billie" was the female spelling.
So many things are not quite what they seem. Tomorrow, June 3rd will be the 40th anniversary of Billie Joe McAllister's demise. Stream of consciousness novelist William Faulkner, who lived hereabouts, wrote, "The past is never dead. In fact it's not even past." (Gavin Stevens in 'Requiem for a Nun' Act I, Scene III). The 'other' Sonny Boy Williamson (Alex 'Rice' Miller) a blues 'harp' player who became famous in his own right while misrepresenting himself as the 'real' Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee Williamson) was born locally. Emmett Louis Till was murdered here, then his body thrown into the Tallahatchie River on August 28th 1955, an event that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement. Fifty years after Till's murder, enquiries are still ongoing. It seems that the past is as uncertain as it is alive. Let us hope that the Till investigation has a more certain outcome than the questions surrounding McAllister.
Um, I actually had not heard that Billie Joe was a real person?
It seems there was no real Billie Joe. This Wikipedia article discusses (near the end) how people came to believe the song was based on a true event.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe
The song is poetry and, like the best songs, open to individual interpretation. Personally, I visualized an illegitimate baby being thrown from the bridge by two lovers from a backwards town of close-minded religious folks the first time I heard it, which seemed the only explanation for Billy Joe's suicide.
As for hiding a pregnancy, it seems that many young girls have babies while living at home, under the noses of parents, who never had a clue their daughter was pregnant.
Many of these unwanted babies end up in dumpsters because the mothers think they've committed some unforgivable sin and can't bear the thought of disappointing their parents.
To me it's a sad testimonial to the destructiveness of a societal family value system which hides behind psuedo-morality and religious piety in condemning human sexuality as sinful, and instilling fear in the minds of the young.
Instead we should be educating our kids about the joy and beauty of their bodies and their sexuality, and how our emotional nature requires that we share these pleasures only with someone who can truly appreciate and return the very special gift of love we are offering them.
Only when our children feel free to talk with us about sex and their deeper feelings will we have the opportunity to share our experiences in hopes of guiding them, as to when they might be ready for this part of life, and how to avoid disease, unwanted pregnancies and sexual predation.
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