Reaching High for Heroes

Loosely-related anecdote: I was watching the Kennedy Center honors performances in honor of Sting on You Tube the other day and Lady Gaga performed one of my favorite tunes from the man: "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You." The only way I can sum up her performance is to say that it was embarrassing. Talk about a performance with absolutely no sense of restraint or style. This was all capped with her ridiculous idea to keep screaming, all through the chorus, "It stings..." (oh, that's clever) while reaching so hard with her eyes and upper body toward Sting in the upper balcony that I thought she was going to fall into the tuxedoed laps in the front row. Deperate and chaotically loud is no way to go through life.

Be that as it may, Sting has always been one of my musical, lyrical and artistic role models since my teenaged years. (I think, i ntime, his lyrics, at least, will survive.) It all got me to thinking about the role models we pick and it got me wondering why some people reach high and some reach low for their role models.

In my case, I have always picked "great" people to look up to. My father was my biggest role model, but it can also be argued that he was an exceptional person, not just from my point of view as a son, but from an objective point of view. But we can leave parents out of the discussion...

...because, beyond my dad, it was always people who were the best at what they did that I looked up to. It was never coaches or teachers; it was always artists, poets, musicians of the highest caliber. As a kid, I had posters of both Ted Williams and Shakespeare on my wall (I still have a framed poster of the first folio frontispiece in my living room). The impetus was never to show off or to be pretentious, but to remind myself of how great a person can become at what he does; maybe there was a hope that I could climb three rungs on Shakespeare's ten-thousand rung ladder... However it is read by those on the outside, the sentiment was sincere.

My heroes have always been the standouts in world history.

I am curious as to how that happens; whether it was an accident; how I can encourage my kids to reach toward the greats and not toward the flavor of the day.

One thing I know is that to watch that Lady Gaga's performance of one of the most delicately balanced, lyrically compelling pop songs of all time; watching her turn it into a literal, three minute vomiting of desperate pleas for acceptance sure give us a good scale for separating the wheat from the chaff.

I hope my sons reach as high as I always did. (Which means higher than they are likely to reach.) That's all.

The Poor Man's Sting Speaks

It occurs to me that my life is full of miniature representations of dreams that I have had. It is as if I have taken the things I have always wished for and placed them around me, like knickknacks.

Not me.

First, I am a poor man's Sting. (Well, maybe a destitute man's Sting.) I don't say this to compare talent levels, but to show that where he is a former English teacher who worked in clubs as a musician and went on to become one of the most famous popular musicians of all time, I, too, am a bookish fellow who became a teacher of literature and who remaines a very active musician (of whom few have heard). A result of his having been one of my musical and lyrical heroes? Partly.

As a teenager, I wanted to be John Williams (the film/orchestral composer) but that hasn't happened; though, I did score a full-length independent film. So, I, you know, have done it, at least.

No word on an Oscar yet.

The Last Ship Has Finally Come In

I finally got Sting's first collection of original songs in about ten years: The Last Ship. I love it. (Don't worry -- this is not going to be a record review. I hate those.)

I haven't "loved" one of his albums in a long time -- maybe ever since 1993's Ten Summoner's Tales. My enjoyment of his work declined with every album since that one...until this one. Yet...I never got bitter.

Sting, doing a character from The Last Ship --
which will be a broadway play in September.

You know what I mean? Did you ever witness people who get downright mad when musicians they like put out albums they don't agree with or enjoy? -- as if it is a personal affront?

It is hard, granted, when one makes a personal connection with an album, not to look for that same level of identification out of everything after. Those albums become dear to us. I wouldn't be who I am today without Rush's Moving Pictures; Genesis's Seconds Out; Sting's Soul Cages and U2's Achtung Baby, just to name a (very) few. In the case of each of those artists, there have been scores of records that I disliked deeply or that I thought just didn't stand up to the "gems."  (I use only rock albums here -- it is a particular thing, the "album of songs" that cannot be compared to the mountains of other types of music I love.) But, though I might have disliked the directions these artists took, I never, as I said, got bitter. And I went right on buying their stuff.

"At night, a candle's brighter than the sun"

I will not get into this too much -- it could turn into a lit. paper. In my opinion, though, Sting is one of the finest poet/lyricists Britain has ever produced. To me, he is not just a good lyricist -- he is a great writer in the traditional literary sense. I know -- that's a mouthful. It's a heck of a claim. But, instead of writing a lengthy defense of it, I'll maybe post little bits from time to time.

How about this set of lines from "An Englishman in New York," from ...Nothing Like the Sun? The tune is about an Englishman who holds onto his "British" demeanor, despite his surroundings:

Modesty, propriety can lead to notoriety --
You could end up as the only one.
Gentleness, sobriety are rare in this society.
At night a candle's brighter than the sun.

I know the first part is a bit prosaic, but that final line? Sweet Petunia that is good. In fact, I sense in that an intentional spring off of the prosaic leading lines that not only adds to the conceptual and poetic impact, but that creates a structure in which the final line is the Englishman against the unrefined backdrop of the city in which he lives. Brilliant. 

That's it -- I'll stop. Some day I will go on about his album The Soul Cages. To me, it is a lyrical masterpiece. I'll make that case later...

Here's the song in it's entirety. (Musically, notice how the great Branford Marsalis's deliciously-sophisticated soprano sax solo, followed by the savagely-thumping bass drum, adds another poetic layer to Sting's contrasting concoction):

"Christmas At Sea"

Sting set Robert Louis Stevenson's "Christmas at Sea" to music.

I think I know why. It becomes clearer to me each year.

A voyage on the cold sea is universal. So is the sight of the distant, lighted window of home that we always spy in blinks and squints through the wind and the fog, while we work the frozen ropes. It's the price you pay for leaving the place that made you. Home perches there up on the hill where memory has placed it, even if, in reality, it never stood there.