imomus | Song personae

Song personae

"Who is Chuck and Dave from When I'm 64?" muses Paul McCartney on the BBC News site, "Who is Eleanor Rigby? Who is Desmond and Molly from Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da? I don't know, I just make them up." He's trying to disperse -- or possibly craftily encourage -- rumours that the song Mister Bellamy on his last album is about Heather Mills (the title is an anagram of "Mills betray me", apparently, if not "Paul is dead broke").

I'm not so much into songs-as-anagrams, as chanson-a-clef score-settling, or as personal therapy. But I like the focus on dramatis personae in Sir Paul's denial, no matter how disingenuous it is. "I like giving characters names and just making them up and trying to make them fit," says the old Beatle.

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The video above (higher-quality Quicktime version here) is a new interpretation by Joseph Knowles of my song Sempreverde. I actually went in some depth into the composition of this song when I wrote it. Here are the finished lyrics, and here's the cast list:

The man from the north
The man from the south
Some insect-sized birds
A panda in a zip-up pigskin
Jilly
Debbie
Giants
Fairies
Dragons
Serpents
Otto the Rich
Otto the Poor
Me
Her

Joseph Knowles says his film "is composed entirely of clips from about a dozen different industrial films from the 1940s to the '60s (all now in the public domain). These reused materials from our industrial past form the basis for a film about spooky manufactured pharmaceuticals in a fractured, probably doomed quest for love and happiness". He's also populated the songscape with a whole cast of new, generic men and women, propaganda paradigms from public information films. He's added to the crowd of characters already loose in the song.

"If records had cast lists," wrote Stuart Maconie in a review of one of my old records, "if they wore their dramatis personae on their sleeves, most of them wouldn't make it past opening night. All those tired, 40 minute farces full of bloated rockers, feebly bleating nightclub divas and bad Lou Reed impressions. Who'd bother? But only a fool could ignore this record, featuring as it does Martin Amis, Henry Kissinger, Sigmund Freud and key members of the board of directors of Lohnro..."

Actually, there is an anagram on that record: on the lyric sheet it's not Henry Kissinger but "Henrik Issinger" who buys my sister. Is that an anagram? Probably not, but it kept the lawyers off our backs. Now there's a bunch of characters you don't want running rampage through your song.

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I would bloody well bother, as would all of glam_lolz. We love bad Lou Reed impressions! The worse the better!

PS: lol Stuart Maconie. *listens to his radio show guiltily*

I think Sempreverde is a very good example of how you don't get to own the meaning of a song once it's released. Mind you I prefer the pre album version, so what would I know.

But why do dragons and serpents count as cast members, and not fish and birds?

Weird, the pre-album version and the album version are exactly the same mix, except that John Talaga added some spooky noises at the end of the album version!

You have a point about my saurian prejudices, though. Apologies to fish and birds everywhere!

Apology accepted! glug, glug, glug...

Apology accepted! tweet, tweet, tweet...

I think it's more likely ol' Paul was watching some Upstairs Downstairs re-runs.

I found this story odd, given the fact that "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" was chock full of songs about his wife.

Yes, but that's before she was taking him for every penny he had, right? I think the next album will certainly be full of "How Do You Sleep"-type songs, but they'll be litigation-proofed.

I imagine you're right... but he may just want to forget the whole thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Public_domain_films&u
ntil=Manster

I'm surprised by how many feature films are now free for anyone to use (see above). We need Momus narration/scores for 'Princess Iron Fan' and 'M'.

Funnily, if not interestingly, enough, I'm sure I remember hearing Ringo describing his only contribution to the writing of Sgt. Pepper this way: "I mean,'Vera, Chuck and Dave' - it just came to me, like."

He also came up with "Hard Day's Night" and "Eight Days a Week".
Not the songs just the tittles.

Oh noes! Does this mean Sir Paul can now expect a lawsuit from Ringo too?

Can we all sue Ringo for Liverpool 8?

Whenever my friends create characters from scratch I nearly always find the characters are facets of themselves. Is that an art cliche? I think most artists are aware of this. People could argue "How do you prove the relation between the creator and the created?" which is a perfectly reasonable qualm. It always seemed logical to me that you cannot create that which is outside your own understanding. The created will always reflect the creator in some way, but I'm not sure of this.

I guess that's why I've always been interested in the idea of creating a character so detached from myself I couldn't possibly relate to or understand it. Really developing this character, carrying it around in my art until it becomes like a companion at a distance. Have I developed something apart from myself or something I'm not completely aware of?

But then I've always been like you in one important sense - I would never use art for settling scores or personal therapy, which is why I try to stay away from characters. I would instinctively want to know more about them, or rather, more about myself.

I've just started "Nixon in China" which features your character Mr. Issinger quite prominently. While Nixon was in awe of Kissinger's intellect, he apparently made his sex life the butt of many jokes with his staff. I hope your sister wasn't one of them.

The Independent says neil Aspinall took the Beatles secrets to the grave and signed no gagging order because none was needed.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/neil-aspinall-beatles-friend-and-road-manager-who-became-the-boss-of-apple-800235.html

When you wrote Stuart Maconie I thought you had written Stuart Cosgrove which I found rather bizarre.

Well, I vaguely knew Cosgrove when he was on the NME, he'd be hanging out in the basement drinking den on Greek Street where my press officer threw parties under the title "Kev Episode's Big Portions". Not sure if he ever reviewed me, though. I think he was the NME's TV critic at the time.

Whose art is the cubed sand-garden/corn-field?

'Tis mine, though put together from various web-purloined sources.

yay!

Ok, I'm all better now. The home-made electro-shock machine (with the Jonzun Crew sticker from the 80's plastered on the side) that I keep in my closet worked wonders. The trick is to still turn the hand-crank while recieving the current and at the same time trying not to bite my tongue off. But years of trial and error have produced in me a certain mastery of the device.

the April 29th, 2004 I somehow missed. But it is now, and for the next few weeks, my personal Aleph. I even went so far as to print it and place a copy on my refrigerator door. And at the top, in bold red ink I wrote... A+++.

(my virgil, my tin tin, my momus, my fear)

If this is July, why does it look like August?
Sadly growing up into the real world
I don't even ask these questions myself.
Why are the shutters drawn
over that restaraunt?
The moon's backwash is like a deeply incised
hairnet against the stadium.
Bats drool in the gutter.

If everybody is so intent on illustrating what they know,
why is the ant syllabus closed?

-ash bery

Baltimore

Two were alive. One came round the corner
clipclopping. Three were the saddest snow ever seen in Prairie City.

Take this, metamorphosis. And this. And this. And this.
If I'd needed your company,
I'd have curled up long before in the clock of weeds,
with only a skywriter to read by.
I'd have laved the preface
to the World's Collected Anthologies,
licked the henbane-flavored lozenge
and more. I'm presuming,
I know. And there are wide floodplains spotted with children,
investing everything in everything.
And I'm too shy to throw away.

god bless the prelinger archive. i liked the lip synching especially at the beginning and the shots of blossom sifting!

also good to get a link to that verdestorm from a few years ago--i think about that sometimes when i'm trying to start something.

hello imomus, this is the first time i comment yr blog though ive been reading it for years now - anyway Sempreverde is a song i liked so much that i translated the lyrics into hungarian (er im writing from budapest) so ive got some alternate personae for that one and i'd like to send u the translation is possible.
well cheers from the end of an odd enough day
Dani
poetsnews.blogspot.com

Hello Dani,

you can send me the translation to: momasu@gmail.com

Thanks!

Nick

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Song personae

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Riding off to Vanity Fair, anyone?

Domaine Publique films

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Dramatis Personae

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my brain lights up like a pachinko parlour

Deeply Incised

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Sempreverde

Re: Sempreverde