Futile Horn

05.25.2004 - 7:13 pm (I wish I could have worked in Abishag)

I’ve been practicing a lot of guitar lately, and I think I am on the road to getting a lot better, but I confess I am kinda bored. I learned the guitar to have an instrument to sing to, and now I am rediscovering that I like words a lot more than music. I haven’t really written lately because I am backed up about four or five songs already, and even though I never use most of what I scratch down (I tried to guess a percentage when I realized I truly have no idea), I’ve accumulated too many things I really want to work on.

So I’ve been thinking about writing stories again. Ah, the thankless tormenting task of writing stories. I also keep thinking about my grand Faustian adventure novel. Like anyone needs another of those. Seriously, do you know of any I might not have read yet?

Sigh. I miss the classical languages too. Especially Greek.

The woman on the train undid her pants in front of me. At first I thought she was wearing an unflattering midriff baring shirt, but then I realized she was rather well on and just hadn’t bought any maternity clothes. And at that exact moment she became so pregnant that she had to unbutton the button and unzip the zipper on her shorts. She pulled the shirt down over the fly, but as we’ve already discussed her top didn’t fit, and she got off the train in her underwear at 59th Street.

I keep unconsciously singing different words to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. The word “kitchen” in “She tied you to the kitchen chair” makes no particular sense to me in a verse about King David and Bathsheba (other than perhaps it was a particular experience of Cohen’s) so in my version it has become “sitting”, “wooden” and most curiously “wicker”.

The story of David and Bathsheba is fabulous because it’s about adultery and murder and the sin is nearly entirely swept away without consequence. The child the affair produces dies and David mourns, but this is almost a convenience because it effectively removes the reminder of the nefarious deeds of the virtuous ruler of Israel. Nathan tries to make it appear that the calamities involving Ammon and Absalom also result from this affair, but that connection is flimsy at best. Afterward, David keeps Bathsheba as his wife after he murders her husband, and with all of David’s wives, it is Solomon, the product of this union, who succeeds him as king. God, who abandoned Saul forever and without the chance of repentance for a relatively minor offence, essentially smiles at David’s bad behavior. Adultery and murder.

The painting of Bathsheba by Rembrandt is ridiculous. She is staring off into space with the same goofy melancholy as Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. Why is she granted that sort of depth, as if perhaps by enticing her way into the king’s bed she would redeem the souls of men? As if she were a subject for a tragic poet and not for Days of Our Lives. I wouldn’t be so moralistic as to condemn her, even if (let’s assume) she was actively pursuing a marital upgrade, but to heap that sort of praise on her is just absurd. This is really just puritanism. If the painter cannot make her a whore, he’ll make her a martyr. The drama must come from somewhere.

The artistic defense for this madness is that she is holding a missive in her hand from the king summoning her to him. (It must be a missive because there’s not enough post office for a letter and a note would be sooooo fourth grade.) This attempts to circumvent an obstacle for the scene, namely it requires that she know what is going to happen, but if she is to know what is going to happen, it could only be because she had deliberately seduced the king. The solution is preposterous. It is as if the king had said, “Summon that woman hither forthwith. Hmm. Better yet, just slip her this note, would you?” The only reason one could imagine for sending her a note instead of having her physically carried off is if he had left the affair up to her discretion. If you believe that, you must still be convinced that she had a fatalistic view of her herself and adultery – that the grim mechanics of the universe had set her up to stain her virtue and the sanctity of her marriage in the face of the best intentions of her willingly impotent will. I mean, who the hell does she think she is, Leonard Cohen?

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn