Balls

Some songs tackle human problems through shifts in perspective, placing local conditions against a backdrop of something far larger.

   Beautiful Star:
   Odetta

One such song is "Beautiful Star," from a 1963 album of Christmas spirituals by Odetta.  The song mentions the Star of the East, presumably the star the magi followed in the Nativity story –– the one referred to in Matthew 2:2 when the wise men were in Jerusalem asking for whereabouts of baby Jesus.

The song is not Christian in any doctrinal sense, being instead a non-ecclesiastic contrasting of conditions here on Earth with a comforting beyond out there.  The initial reference to a Star in the East soon gives way to stars in general, stars returning to run their nightly rounds, stars transporting the singer away from her troubles.

Here is its last verse:

     Although you see me goin' on
     Yes, watch the stars, see how they run
     I have my trials here below
     The stars run down at the setting of the sun
     (Oh) watch the stars, see how they run.

Odetta's singing and intonation breathes life into these lines, making the contrast between my-world-down-here and the Big Picture an affecting one.

Just why it is that nighttime skies and heavenly regularities are soothing is itself a thing to ponder.  Something about vast, timeless spaces brings relief from demands of daily life –– maybe the jumping from earth-bound stresses into the autopilot of heaven, where we're no longer behind the wheel but carried off on a stream of light and star-stuff, losing ourselves in a twinkling surround.

   Defying Gravity:
   Jesse Winchester

Now an alternative to being carried away in heavenly absorption is to be carried away by Earth itself. Here, for instance, is "Defying Gravity," by Jesse Winchester.  It first appeared on Learn To Love It (1974) and was later covered by Jimmy Buffett (1976), Emmylou Harris (1978), and Jimmie Dale Gilmore (2000).

This version is from Live At The Bijou Cafe, Philadelphia, May 26, 1977, and its first two verses are:

     I'm riding a big blue ball 

     And I never do dream I may fall

     But even the day that I do

     Well, I'll jump off and smile back at you

     I don't even know where we are

     But they'll us we're circling a star

     Well, I'll take their word I don't know

     But I am dizzy so maybe it's so

And here is the vehicle in question:

NASA image of Earth

Well ... a big blue ball it is, and there is a quizzical tone to living on it, as if Earth itself were a giant bemusement park.  Winchester seems to be along for the ride, a passenger, and when it's time to get off, that'll be OK.  His is an easy no-worries adaptation with the promise of a sprightly finish: he'll "jump off and smile back at you."  The soft timbre and unhurried drift of his voice is central to this tone, you can almost float in it.  The heavens don't lift him out of earthly concerns, he lifts himself out by a relaxed acceptance of the journey.

   One More Trip Around The Sun:
   Jonathan Edwards

A similar, if darker, adaptation can be heard in Jonathan Edwards' song, "One More Trip Around The Sun," from Live In Massachusetts (2006).  It is an atypical birthday-party song, being narrowly about time cycles and the futility of birthday resolutions, more broadly about the complexity of trying to control anything.  

Here are its second verse, refrain, and last verse:

     You know you never see it comin'
     Always wind up wonderin' where it went
     And only time will tell if it was time well spent.
     Just another revelation,
     Celebrating what I should have done
     With these souvenirs from my trip around the sun

     And I'm just hangin' on while this old world keeps spinnin'
     And it's good to know it's out of my control
     'Cause if there's one thing that I learned from all this livin'
     Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go

     I think I'll make a resolution, that I'll never make another one
     And just enjoy my ride on this trip around the sun
     And just enjoy my ride
     Just enjoy my ride
     Just enjoy my ride
     Until its done
     Until it's done
     Until it's done
     Just enjoy my ride
     'Til it's done

Desired outcomes may not resolve as we would will them; we are always playing catch-up with ourselves, flying somewhat blindly, and only in the fullness of time seeing what we've done or might have done. Edwards' world seems close to Jesse Winchester's merry-go-round Earth, but sung in a more sober key.  You don't imagine Jimmy Buffett covering it.  And I like that the repetitions in the last verse parallel its content, the over-and-over phrasing rolling in our ears, lulling us into the motion of the ride.

Finally, a poem by Wislawa Szymborska which zooms in to show us how we can enjoyably ride the big blue ball.  It is "The Ball," from Monologue Of A Dog, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak (2005):

                              THE BALL
                                                            
     As long as nothing can be known for sure
     (no signals have been picked up yet)

     as long as Earth is still unlike
     the nearer and more distant planets,

     as long as there's neither hide nor hair
     of other grasses graced by other winds,
     of other treetops bearing other crowns,
     other animals as well-grounded as our own,

     as long as the only echo
     has been known to speak in syllables,

     as long as we still haven't heard word
     of better or worse mozarts,
     platos, edisons somewhere,

     as long as our inhuman crimes
     are still committed only between humans,

     as long as our kindness
     is still incomparable,
     peerless even in its imperfection,

     as long as our heads packed with illusions
     still pass for the only heads so packed,

     as long as the roofs of our mouths alone
     still raise voices to high heavens––

     let's act like very special guests of honor
     at the district-firemen's ball,
     dance to the beat of the local oompah band,
     and pretend that it's the ball
     to end all balls.

     I can't speak for others––
     for me this is
     misery and happiness enough:

     just this sleepy backwater
     where even the stars have time to burn
     while winking at us
     unintentionally.

There is really quite enough on our blue ball to occupy us and bring enjoyment to the ride.  It is the element of illusion that makes this possible, for we can "act like very special guests of honor at the district-firemen's ball," and we can "pretend that's it's the ball to end all balls” –– whether that ball be the district-firemen's ball or Earth itself.  So here we are on Earth, with its teeming life, creation, humanity, inhumanity; and here we are also with "our heads packed with illusions," illusions which can lead to folly and disaster, but also transport and delight.

Szymborska won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature.  Her compelling Nobel Lecture, The Poet and the World, dealt with inspiration and its precondition: a default sense of not-knowing, an abiding openness to novelty and surprise.  It contains a passage relevant to "The Ball": 

     The world –– whatever we might think when terrified by its
     vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its
     indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals,
     and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants
     feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses
     pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've
     just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead?
     we just don't know; whatever we might think of this
     measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets,
     but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as
     it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think
     of this world –– it is astonishing.

This passage is itself astonishing.  In a single fertile sentence, it conjures the sense of our brief moment in a massive "measureless theater."  A moment that may be puzzling, dizzying, beyond our control, yet dazzling for all that.  We have our trials here below, but also the oompah band, which is certainly the best party band ever.  And even those starry skies, the ones that bring relief in Odetta's "Beautiful Star," they too are witnessed from seats down here in Earth's theater.

And, say, that ball up in the night sky ... isn't that the Man in the Moon looking down upon us?  “Winking at us, unintentionally," maybe bemused at our common situation?  All of us in our courses, going around in circles.

NASA image of Moon 

Winchester Cathedral

   Winchester Cathedral:
   The New Vaudeville Band

In December, 1966, the #1 song in the country was "Winchester Cathedral," by The New Vaudeville Band.  A novelty song, it succeeded "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by the Supremes and was followed in turn by the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations."

The song accuses Winchester Cathedral with having stood idly by while the singer's girlfriend left town, even asserting that the beloved "wouldn't have gone far away if only you'd started ringing your bell."

Strong words, but the song has a point.  There is in fact something stolid and sedentary about the cathedral:

Nor does its interior change our impression that Winchester is something of a slow-responder:

To emphasize this point, here is a close-up of the vaulted ceiling of its nave:

Crikey!  This place is tightly knit and pulled together –– and that's just the ceiling.  Its ancient transept, the "arms" of its cross-shape, adds to its mass and balance, and its nave is the longest of any medieval church in Europe.  Then there is its ascending verticality.  The structure as a whole is massive, deliberative.  We don't expect it to easily break ranks in order to chime to an outbound girlfriend.  So while we sympathize with The New Vaudeville Band, we empathize with the cathedral.  It simply lacks the suppleness of, say, the local fire department. 

Winchester Cathedral:

Norman Semicircular 

Arches

And there is its age, it is hardly spry; for besides being tightly and expansively wrought, it is very old.   Founded in 1079 and formally consecrated in 1093, it was built adjoining sites of two older Saxon churches, the oldest of which, the Old Minster, dates to 648.  Following the Norman conquest of 1066, the prevailing politics dictated demolition of the old to make way for a new cathedral to be built on a Romanesque (Norman) design.  And thus Winchester was born.  (See Romanesque Architecture In England, and Winchester Cathedral.)

Within centuries, though, the cathedral's Romanesque design would transition to Gothic, so much so that Norman emphasis now remains only in its oldest sections, its crypt and transept.  The new Gothic aesthetic led to modifications lasting into the 16th century, these being most pronounced in the 14th century refurbishments of Winchester's commanding nave and Western entrance.  (See English Gothic Architecture; also, Sacred Choral Music by The Boy Choristers of Canterbury Cathedral, an hour-long collection of images and choral pieces, with supplementary playlist, from Neurotic Films.)

Winchester Cathedral:
Flying Buttresses

What does a shift from Romanesque to Gothic mean?  Briefly, this change involved the advent of ribbed ceiling vaults, pointed arches, and flying buttresses.  Meaning: ribbed ceiling vaults were lighter, stronger alternatives to barrel and groin vaulting, causing less outward thrust on walls and allowing higher, thinner walls; pointed arches were stronger than Romanesque semicircular ones in that they offered less "crown" to potentially buckle, thus better distributing downward pressure; and flying buttresses provided lateral supports for the walls, in a manner analogous to the function of outriggers on a canoe.

Detail: Flying Buttresses
showing Pointed Arches

In combination, these three features resulted in increased verticality.  Walls did not have to be so massive, did not have to carry the whole weight on their backs.  Freed up from serving a purely load-bearing function, walls could now serve a soaring, light-bringing function; and higher, thinner walls allowed for more and greater windows.  Whereas the Romanesque atmosphere had been that of a dimly-lit, hunkered-down refuge, the Gothic atmosphere was a light-filled portal to beyond.  Heavy lifting gave way to art and aesthetics.  (See: Romanesque versus Gothic [1], a clean, no-frills video description; Romanesque versus Gothic [2], an architectural summary with a sociocultural slant; Romanesque Versus Gothic [3], a quiz.)

Returning to our starting point with the New Vaudeville Band's complaint about Winchester, we think we have justified that while Winchester did stand idly by when the girlfriend left town, it surely had no choice.  It's just too massive. 

   Cathedral:
   Crosby, Stills & Nash

Now it turns out that "Winchester Cathedral" isn't the only song composed about that church, nor the only complaint.  In 1977, Crosby, Stills & Nash recorded "Cathedral," a song of religious disillusionment set in Winchester Cathedral.  Written by Graham Nash, and with Nash on piano and singing lead, the song is reflective, angry, and political, and hardly a novelty piece.

 Its middle verses are:

     I'm flying in Winchester Cathedral

     Sunlight pouring through the break of day

     Stumbled through the door and into the chamber

     There's a lady setting flowers on the table (covered lace)

     And a cleaner in the distance finds a cobweb on a face

     And a feeling deep inside of me tells me

     This can't be the place

     I'm flying in Winchester Cathedral

     All religion has to have its day

     Expressions on the face of the Saviour

     Made me say

     I can't stay

     Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here!

     Too many people have lied in the name of Christ

     For anyone to heed the call

     So many people have died in the name of Christ

     That I can't believe it all

For the most part we couldn't agree more.  Plus, we like Nash's writing. The secular details of flower-selling and church-cleaning undercut the vaulting majesty of the cathedral, and the charge of bloodletting carried out in Christ's name similarly deflates Belief.

That said, we want to pause and say, "Wait a minute, what about the music? the art?"  Can something valuable lie amidst the ideological? even if that something has historically conveyed that ideology?  We think, yes, and here we refer to the total aesthetic of the cathedral and the
way that aesthetic transports us out
of the mundane.  Listen, for instance, to the singing of the renowned Winchester Cathedral Choir.  (The blue playlist contains compositions by Thomas Tallis, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, William Byrd, Gregorio Allegri, George Frideric Handel, Gabriel Fauré, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Francis Poulenc, Samuel Barber, Paul Manz.)

The choir dates to at least 1402, and you needn't be a Believer to be drawn into its music or hooked by the art and architecture in cathedral space: the columns, arches, stained glass, altar statuary, vaulted ceiling.  The music is but part of a larger otherworldly atmosphere –– one composed of light, space, sculpture, sound, and color.

Moreover, there is something about very old places* that evokes a mood, a sense that past ages commingle with this age, that we are partially merging with the parade of those who preceded us.  This mood is pleasurable, if hard to articulate; it feels something like déjà vu merging with an ancestral group-identification.

Winchester

*Speaking of very old places, the city of Winchester has quite a history itself. Located in Hampshire, England, it was known to the Romans as Venta Belgarum.  The meaning of Venta is disputed, but often Venta Belgarum is translated as "Market town of the Belgae."  The Belgae were Celtic tribes with Germanic influences that had been living in Northern Gaul.  Modern Belgium is named after them.  Julius Caesar, while Governor of Gaul, defeated them in 57 BC, calling them the bravest warriors from among the three principal Gallic tribes (the other two being the Aquitani, related to the Basque culture, and the Gauls, who were also Celtic).  And in Caesar's time, some of the Belgae had already migrated to England.

Their main town, Venta Belgarum, is listed in Ptolemy's 2nd century Geography, its Saxon rendering being Ouenta.  By c. 730, Ouenta had acquired the place-ending ceaster (Saxon for "Roman town," itself derived from castra, Latin for "walled town").  Spelled variously as Ouentanceaster, Uintanceaster, Wyntonceaster, Wintanceaster, it eventually settled down as Winchester.  (See Belgae and Winchester ; also Venta Belgarum, for an interesting subsection, Life In Venta Belgarum.)

Anyway, the charges against Winchester Cathedral –– its alleged indifference as seen in the New Vaudeville Band's song, or its hijacking "in the name of Christ" as per Graham Nash –– these should be weighed against its evocative possibilities.  Because there are spaces that embody transformational magic: singular spaces that open us up, foster contemplation, release us from ordinary tensions and strictures of living.  Such spaces are sacred, not because of dogma, bones, relics, saints, but because through these spaces we rise above the mundane.  It's not resurrection but it's what's available to us down here. We're betting that Winchester Cathedral is one of these spaces, despite the fact that we've been there only in mind.

Its sturdy external physicality sets a tone also.  Massively, reliably there, apart from yet part of a human community, it designates a nearby world of available reverie.  Were it in our neighborhood, we'd go visit.  We're pretty sure that once inside we'd feel unlocked from the mundane and more permeable somehow, freed up like Winchester's gothic walls to let light in and imagination out –– freed up and also catalyzed via art, architecture, music, the light-paintings of stained glass windows.

Now viewed from the the outside, and despite its Gothic makeovers, Winchester's visage retains a certain stodginess.  A Norman-ness, blockish and fortress-like.  Interestingly, while its exterior signifies an alternative spirit-world, that same exterior belies its interior world of space, light, music, art, heavenward ambition.  Its frumpy look contrasts with its inner delights.  The nave seems to say (or sing) "I'll take you higher," while its exterior stands its ground heavily, mutely.

British Bulldog
(possibly named Norman) 

But that's OK.  Its real job isn't to sing but to materially house an inner transformational space.  And if it doesn't speak in ethereal tones of heaven, perhaps it bespeaks –– in its earth-bound stolid permanence –– another kind of timeless reassurance.  Maybe Winchester is the British Bulldog of cathedrals, reliably there through centuries and on the ground.  There are flights of heaven and there are material constancies of earth (chicken pot pie, a true friend, a loving dog), and all have their place.

Posted By Blogger to  One Hand On The Radio at 5/04/2011 07:01:00 PM