but still, couldn't take it off my mind. and somehow drifted me to this song, and the way Baricco reviewed it:
"After all, it's just a record. But still. You put it on and you feel an old man's voice coming from far away, one of those old men who stand and it's a miracle, kept upright by the long coat and the smell of mothballs. The old man's singing. With a tiny voice, quietly, but in tune, and sweet, somehow you sympathise with those trembling high pitch notes. In them you feel all the teeth he's got no more, shortness of breath, arthritis and everything else. There's nothing more: just his voice, singing without pause the same refrain, peaceful, melancholic here and there. No background music. Some noise, voices from far away. You don't understand a word. Not because it's English. With no teeth, at his age, words become ghosts. Sounds. What a damn record is this?
It's currently [note: 1995] in the British top hit. And it has a weird story. In 1971, a musician named Gavin Bryars starts recording the voices of the homeless living in Waterloo station, London, for the soundtrack of a documentary. He records every kind of stuff. Then, one day he meets this old man. Homeless as well. He hears him singing. He records his voice and takes it back home. Listens to it again. And he's like hypnotized. The refrain comes from a religious song (Jesus' blood never failed me yet) and he finds out it's like a ring: you can repeat it at infinity, it's a neverending lullaby. He works on it for years. A first record appears, a cult for very few people, then he starts working on it again, and after 10 years this cd comes out: 75 minutes where the homeless guy sings with no pause the 25 seconds of his reprise. You may think it's fool, but that's just because you haven't heard it yet.
After a couple of minutes you feel a string orchestra coming along, slowly, behind the old man's shoulders, and taking over on his voice, wrapping it into a blanket, so to speak, and carrying it around. The voice's always the same, but it starts sounding different. It's getting warmer, slightly, you don't even realise it and there's a harp and bells, and a choir, and drums, a flute, two clarinets, an oboe, and trumpets, trombones (but gently, in order not to smash anything), even an organ, some kind of gong and who knows what else. The voice of the homeless guy is still embroidering its lullaby, but it's now become a sacred relic to be carried in procession, a tiny little bone of the saint, watching right at you from the top of an opulent procession: it slowly oscillates, and goes, along the streets of your mind.
It would have already been enough now - you can feel it - that music has tricked you. But it's not over. At some point, during the big procession, another voice comes out, sounding like it's amplified by a megaphone, it's getting closer, and then you recognise it, it would be impossible otherwise: Tom Waits. Who else? Tom Waits - for those few who don't know it - is a guy who sings and in his voice there are all the drunken homeless voices of the world. It's not a voice, it's a public dumping ground, it's a years long cigarette, millions of beers and miles, hundreds of loves and motels. It's one of the most exciting voices you have ever heard. And now it's coming there, duetting with that old man who's dead by now, but it doesn't matter, because his voice never stopped, both of them swinging on that eternal refrain. Tom Waits. And the old drunken man. Sons of a drunken God. It looks like they haven't done anything else in life. Just sing along, all the time. And drink beers, of course.
All in all the procession goes away, as it arrived it's leaving, fading out inside the stereo, leaving behind itself a few violins hung on very high pitch notes, and pieces of Tom Waits, shooting notes as if they're teasing the world. The drunken guy has already disappeared. And you're wondering about his name, and when he died, and where and how. And whether he knew other songs like this one."
A.Baricco, Figli di un Dio ubriaco, Barnum
No comments:
Post a Comment