Words and Music–William Thaumatrope
Produced by David Barratt at the Abattoir of Good Taste
Vocal and Guitar–William Thaumatrope
Ukulele and everything else–David Barratt
LYRIC
If I reached out in my dreams would you touch my hand?
If I talked to you when asleep would you understand?
To think of your bright eyes looking at me
If I fell asleep and dreamed would it come to be?
I carry pictures of you with me in my mind
Your voice echoes through my ears ever sweet and kind
To see you standing there when I turn around
To feel your breath over me when I go to ground
If this is life when you’re gone far away from here?
How would it be when you are forever near?
I shall bathe in the smile of your beautiful eyes
And I shall lie with you where the earth meets sky
And I shall lie with you where the earth meets sky
And I shall lie with you where the earth meets sky
Words and Music–William Thaumatrope
Produced by David Barratt at the Abattoir of Good Taste
Vocal and Guitar–William Thaumatrope
Ukulele and everything else–David Barratt
LYRICS
I woke, I smoke, I think of the joke that is you and I
I yearn to find some peace of mind and forget this lie
You sleeping there
Who’d have thought that you’d dare to pretend
That love is like money to spend
On whomever you choose
Never to lose control
Never expose your soul
You are staying here it is I fear convenient
I wish you’d leave and then I’d breathe a little easier
You sleeping there
Who’d have thought that you’d dare to pretend
That love is like money to spend
On whomever you choose
Never to lose control
Never expose your soul
I woke, I smoke, I think of the joke that is you and I
Words and Music–William Thaumatrope
Produced by David Barratt at the Abattoir of Good Taste
Vocal and Guitar–William Thaumatrope
Ukulele and everything else–David Barratt
NARRATIVE
This song about hope (albeit hedged with a Thaumatropian get out clause) seems right for the Christmas season. But what does it mean to be hopeful? Hope is a human disposition to believe that the future will be better than the past, that the future will bring happiness. Is it irrational to be optimistic or hopeful? One is inclined to respond: it depends on the circumstances. Rational hope needs reasons to believe, it measures future prospects against past experience. For those who live in the middle class in the west it is reasonable to hope today, given current levels of nutrition and medical knowledge, to reach the age of three score years and ten, indeed four score years, whereas it would not have been reasonable for anyone one hundred years ago. But it seems unreasonable to hope that the current economic recession is going to end any time soon and this will impinge on the life expectancy of those who have nothing in the first place.
Since it is a disposition, hope is not simply something one can decide to have, it is not something that is parceled out by a calculus of reason. It is, rather, a frame of mind that human beings by and large are predisposed to be in for it is the will to live itself: “hope springs eternal in the human breast.” Since hope is a disposition it tends to feed upon itself. The hopeful person is more likely to find her hypothesis of a brighter future confirmed simply by virtue of the fact that she is hopeful. Our experience of happiness partly depends on our capacity to experience happiness. Nothing will make scrooge happy. A hope that doesn’t take account of reasons not to be hopeful is false hope. But while the person who insists on being hopeful is undoubtedly naïve, I don’t think he is necessarily foolish; after all, the eternal optimist is a happy person.
Yet what does our will to live amount to in the face of old age and death? For the hard-nosed realist it is little comfort to be told by the religious person that there is a form of life beyond death far more glorious than this one in the Kingdom of God or in a perpetual cycle of reincarnation. The whole infrastructure of religious belief appears constructed to give false hope to an essentially bad situation. There are two ways of answering this. While it is true that one cannot be optimistic about conquering death, unless in the possession of religious belief, to hope to conquer death is itself an essentially irrational hope; there is no reason to hope for something that cannot occur. The atheist can remain an optimist. The other answer is that religious hope is not irrational hope, but a distinctive kind of hope; it is a hope that is absolute and cannot be measured by reason.
LYRIC
You tell me love is easy
You tell me to let go
But there are things about me
I don’t want to know
Just because I kiss you
And get some satisfaction
Doesn’t mean I have become
A slave to love’s attraction
Don’t give up believing
Don’t give up on me
I can’t quit self-deceiving
Yet need you loving me
You think the power of your smile
Will set my poor heart free
But I have locked it in a cage
And I can’t find the key
You use your words like magic
And cast your spells with glee
But I am hard of hearing
I can’t be tricked you see
Tell me you don’t love me
Tell me you don’t care
Tell me that my time is up
And I’ll be out of here
I know you think I’m distant
But it’s not being unkind
If I prefer the silence
To speaking out of line
But please don’t stop believing
‘Cause I am giving ground
You might discover so much more
If you just hang around
Don’t give up believing
Don’t give up on me
I can’t quit self-deceiving
Yet need you loving me
Try and set me free
I need our love to be
Words and Music–William Thaumatrope
Produced by David Barratt at the Abattoir of Good Taste
Vocal and Guitar–William Thaumatrope
Ukulele and everything else–David Barratt
NARRATIVE
This song is dedicated to the memory of Tom Keavy and to all those who have “slipped away” into the long night at an age when life has just begun to open in all its vitality and richness. I am not sure it is possible to write a song about something so tragic and deeply felt–the death of a child in a moment of self-delusion–that other people might actually want to listen to. But it is what it is: a very personal song. It is my way of sharing the burden of guilt and suffering that all of us who knew Tom feel, and to register the sheer fact of his presence and his spirit. It is a tribute and a memorial.
LYRIC
What is it for that you’re taken from me?
I can no longer think, I can no longer breathe
You slipped away in that foolish knot
And I’m left alone to finish the plot
My soul is broken, I’m splintered apart
Are birds of paradise bearing your heart?
I’ll merge with you in your wish to be free
I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be, anarchy
Life shouldn’t end it should just fade away
In our right time when we’ve had our day
Your looks, your smile, your way with the words
The slope of your walk, the wave of your curl
My soul is broken, I’m splintered apart
Are birds of paradise bearing your heart?
I’ll merge with you in your wish to be free
I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be, anarchy
What is it for?
Words and Music Thaumatrope/Barratt
Produced by David Barratt at the Abattoir of Good Taste
Vocal and Guitar–William Thaumatrope
Ukulele and everything else–David Barratt
NARRATIVE
Anthropology is, in a way, stacked in favor of relationships between an older man and a younger woman: men tend to favor good-looking women as sexual partners; women tend to favor wealth status and power in a potential mate. Furthermore, as a man gets older and the realization of mortality kicks in sometime in the late 30s or early 40s, the thought of possessing the beauty of a young woman (a beauty that is celebrated in countless works of art) seems to carry with it the elixir of immortality. Indeed a young woman has a deeply poignant value to an older man that she perhaps did not possess in his youth, such that the woman herself might feel at her most desirable and loved. For these reasons, these are also relationships that countless works of literature and especially nineteenth-century opera valorize above all others.
So how can relationships that seem to provide a societal ideal of romantic love appear so tawdry? I have discussed Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo already in this blog, and the tawdriness that lurks just the other side of the romantic ideal when that ideal is merely an idealization and nothing more. So many operas require the young heroine to die (say of consumption) to guarantee immortality to idealization, lest it appear only skin deep. It is as if the very precariousness of this desire, the sense in which it is founded on an impossibility that defies questions of age and compatibility, renders it so romantic: the sense of wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too. But what is masked most of all in this romantic ideal is its fundamentally patriarchal character. It is constituted from the position of male authority and power even as the woman may seem an equal partner in the illusion.
Reality seems so prosaically far from the myth. We are treated these days to a seemingly unending spectacle of public men getting their rocks off with women young enough to be their daughters in varying stages of depravity from Woody Allen, to Morgan Freeman, to Bill Clinton, to Eliot Spitzer, to Silvio Berlusconi, to Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Of course not all these cases are the same. Nonetheless, it is extraordinary how in the 21st century machismo is alive and well, and it seems, in Continental Europe at least, still believed in by large swathes of the population including women. There still exists a class of women for whom a certain kind of behavior in powerful males seems to be accepted, even indulged: boys will be boys. It reminds me of a line early on in A Touch of Mink (1962), where a woman who runs a charity for orphan children observes of Cary Grant who has just donated $200,000 to their cause that a man of such generous wealth is entitled to fill one of their vacant slots with the unwanted offspring of his own philandering.
Aside from the question of infidelity, which invariably helps to stage and fuel these relationships, what is wrong with them is that even where the woman wants it and/or the older man pays for it (and let’s be honest, the older man is nearly always paying for it one way or another), there is still, in most cases, a radical asymmetry in power and authority between the man and the woman. The young woman in such a situation may indeed be self-servingly manipulative, but such manipulation is a strategy of the weak and not the powerful, and issues from her subordinate status, as the case of DSK painfully attests. In other cases, she may indeed be deeply in love and this may be a wonderful thing, but the responsibility for that love is still not an equal one and, one suspects, neither is the love itself.
LYRIC
Can’t think can’t breathe
She’s got me down on my knees
It just ain’t right
But I want her loving tonight
My brain says no
This ain’t a good way to go
My gut says so
Why don’t you love her real slow?
Love her real slow
Gimme all your love and I’ll take more
I’m crazy girl for what you have in store
I’m ready to do what you want me to do
So why can’t I make love to you
I’m old she’s hot
She’s everything that I’m not
Live the dream, live the lie
I won’t be that kinda guy
My gut says so
Why don’t you love her real slow?
My brain says no
That ain’t a good way to go
Way to go
In my mind when we’re together
Time stands still in her embrace
And when it seems that it’s all over
She takes me to another place
If you give me all your love I’ll take more
I might be crazy girl but I’m out of the door
I ain’t ready to do what you want me to do
Why can’t I make love to you?
If you give me all your love it will end in tears
Like DSK and Britney Spears
I’m free to do what I want to do
That’s why I won’t make love to you
Words and Music–William Thaumatrope
Produced by David Barratt at the Abattoir of Good Taste
Vocal and Guitar–William Thaumatrope
Ukulele and everything else–David Barratt
NARRATIVE
The idea that the children’s playground is like a single’s bar might seem a far-fetched notion to those who either don’t have children or who live in a less narcissistic habitat than New York City. However, several factors conspire to generate attraction between adults with children in such an environment.
It is well documented that young children, especially more than one, put an immense stress on relationships that may have previously flourished when children were not around. First, sex is obviously a problem. The woman who has recently given birth does not feel attractive to herself, with her newly distended waistline, and for a whole variety of reasons is unlikely to respond to the sexual interest of her husband; nor is he likely to manifest such interest, though perhaps she might wish that he did. When ‘mother’ goes back to work, acute stress is generated for both from trying to create manageable routines amidst continual ad hoc adjustments. When ‘mother’ is looking after the kids, longer term resentments may emerge from this radical differentiation of roles in an environment of peers where it is not the norm. So, why is she making sacrifices in her own career to look after the kids? When ‘father’ becomes care-taker, the problems for him are the nagging questions posed to his manhood by changing diapers and carrying infants on his belly, and the simmering resentment towards his working partner, in spite of his apparent manifestation of a liberated gender role. And the problem for her is that while she may ostensibly be thankful for such a partner or husband, she may also harbor resentments against him for having time to spend with the kids while she has to work, in spite of the fact that she wants to.
Of course, love may conquer all, but not without severe tests. Let’s go to the playground where the children are playing in the sandpit or being pushed on the tire swing. Look how the parents are acting out their own little narcissistic dramas. The new man who looks after his kids during the day seems immensely attractive to the woman who is trying to recover her sense of femininity, in the wake of childbirth, and feels her contribution to the family is under appreciated by her career-obsessed partner, whom she hardly sees anyway save for weekends. Here is a guy who really appreciates what she does and can take a load off of her, even if, perhaps, he is not the kind of man she thought she would be inclined to marry. And for the man, here is a woman who really appreciates what he does; not to mention the simple fact that hanging out in the playground leaves plenty of time for chat, far more chat than is possible with one’s own partner or spouse. And let us not forget the protocols of care-giving, with constant transitions between playgrounds and apartments. Are the play-dates for the kids or for the adults?
This may all seem rather dark news for the couple with children, but in fact it can be a good thing. After all, if these supposed adults do not simply act out upon their narcissistic impulses, the strokes provided to the ego in the playground help in recovering adult autonomy from the sufferance of children, which is essential to the survival of any relationship.
LYRIC
Sue feels too hot her legs are like lead
The kids they are screaming inside her head
Take her outside she’ll get some air
The kids they will play there without a care
Maybe she’ll get to chat with Jack
He’s got time on his hands since he got the sack
He’s good with his kids they’re rarely alone
He plays with hers too as if they’re his own
A little __ in the park, a little __ in the park
A little __ in the park, a kiss, a kiss in the park
Dressing the kids, no easy matter
But Jack will be there easing the hassle
They talk of the city, going out at night
They talk of the Winter, the color of light
They were just getting close when Dan came to sit
When Dan went away Jack found her lips
The kiss was not gentle it was not discreet
And when it was over they parted ten feet
A little __ in the park, a little __ in the park
A little __ in the park, a kiss, a kiss in the park
This was a playground, there were those looks
Now Dan he had fallen and broken his foot
Just two grown ups trying to be lovers
But there’d be no rolling under the covers
So Sue she retreated to her home ground
And since Jack’s got a job he’s no longer around
Words and Music–William Thaumatrope
Produced by David Barratt at the Abattoir of Good Taste
Vocal and Guitar–William Thaumatrope
Ukulele and everything else–David Barratt
LYRIC
We started out as lovers do
Thrilled with everything that’s new
We started out as lovers do
Thrilled with everything that’s new
Thinking we were both so clever
That there’d never be a never
Because our love would last forever
Each held in the other’s thrall
We tried to love, we tried to live
We tried to trust and to forgive
We tried to love, we tried to live
We tried to trust and to forgive
When we hit the stuff that mattered
Saying things that left us shattered
Taking blame so we felt battered
Couldn’t be ourselves at all
You cannot see when you’re inside
You cannot see so much to hide
You cannot see when you’re inside
You cannot see so much to hide
Two people who don’t fit together
They stay on board in spite the weather
Believing things will soon get better
Love’s illusion I recall
CHORUS
You can’t have it all
You can’t have it all
You can’t have it all
But you can be free
