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R2: Walk the Moon: William Blake as an Inspiration for Music

Nov 29th, 2011 by

The Cincinnati indie rock band, Walk the Moon, released their debut album, “i want! i want!”, in November of 2010. An engraving William Blake included in his 18-piece compilation called For the Children: The Gates of Paradise inspired the title of the album. For the Children: The Gates of Paradise is a series of tiny engravings that chronicle the life of man—from birth to death—including events such as interactions with the fire and earth and the natural human feelings of fear and desire. The album’s namesake, “I Want! I Want!” is a 6cm by 5cm engraving in which a figure wearing a wide hat stands at the foot of a slender ladder that is propped against a crescent moon. The man wearing the hat is not looking up at, the moon smiling its Cheshire cat smile, but at the starry background and/or a couple who stands behind him, embracing one another, seemingly oblivious to his astounding yet dangerously disastrous ambition.

On the “i want! i want!” album there is a song entitled “I Want! I Want!” and a song entitled “William Blake”. The two songs share the same lyrics, which describes the adolescent desires of a 17-year-old boy and alludes to sexual encounters and the shedding of innocence, however “William Blake” is more upbeat with a faster tempo and a strange, chipmunk distortion. While the distortion of the instruments and vocals adds emphasis to the lines outlining how strange “feigning innocence” is or the sounds of his love are, one could argue there isn’t a point to the distortion at all. I would assume the band was trying to fill space on their album, and wanted to try out song editing, granted that this was their first album and it was self-produced. However, the story woven in the lyrics of “William Blake” add commentary to the “I Want! I Want!” engraving in the form of Walk the Moon’s interpretation of the image.

The song is about love and the desire of every aspect of love, regardless of how “strange” or risky. In the very first verse, vocalist Nicholas Petriccia sings about a young man sneaking a visit to a girl he’s interested in and how troublesome young love is due to restriction by parental rules and how boys have to not only woo their girl, but also gain the trust of the girl’s parents:

“I walk through the fog
And kiss her through the fence
Oh, how strange and difficult
Feigning innocence”

It was the close scrutinizing of the song lyrics that brought out an essential detail of the engraving that is easily missed amongst the backdrop of mystical space and the absurd, impossible idea of climbing a flimsy ladder to the moon. The man at the base of the ladder is looking at what he desires, or wants, the most, and it’s not the moon. His head is turned, and you can’t see his face, but it is clear to see that he is either looking at the starry sky or toward the embracing couple standing behind him. At the observation of this essential component of the piece, one can see now that Blake was juxtaposing the desire of romantic relationships (and often times the feeling of how unattainable that is and how lonely someone can be when single) to the impossible idea of climbing to the moon—which is obviously a disaster waiting to happen, but a symbol of dreaming big and wanting all of what the vast universe can offer. This idea is repeated in the chorus of the song multiple times as the vocalist requests, “Show me/ I’m 17 and you don’t know me,” which can only be seen as a boy’s ambitious attempt at having romantic or sexual relations with the girl of his fancy.

The song itself is a creative representation of the trials of young love and, in a way, a progression or story similar to that of Blake’s For the Children: The Gates of Paradise; while “William Blake” is not the story of an entire lifetime, it’s the story of a moment in life much like the engraving from which the original song and album (both “i want! i want!”) gets their name. In the Walk the Moon song, William Blake is not only a symbol of ambition and the zest of human desires, but an inspiration and also a model of how to present common, everyday experiences and feelings through a creative medium.

i want! i want! alternative album artwork

Reflection on R2:

I decided to take Professor Harris’s advice given in a comment on the original post and include some of the key lyrics that I thought would support the claim that the song was about desire, in hopes of tying the song and album more to the engraving instead of just stating the claim with little to no support. Despite the fact that, when I listen to the song I can easily know that it’s about the sexual desires of a young man, I found it exceedingly difficult to choose specific lyrics. As a whole, the song speaks volumes about young love and how sneaky boys must be to get to the girls they fancy, but obviously I can’t just transcribe the entire song here for reference. Key quotes were needed to show that yes, sneaking into a girl’s house to engage in sexual acts with her while her parents are in is just about as ambitious and dangerous as climbing a flimsy, toothpick-esque ladder all the way to the moon. During my rewriting I began to see how the song not only brought attention to the fact that the man at the bottom of the ladder was looking not up at the moon, but possibly back at the embracing lovers, but also to the main focus of the engraving–the ladder itself.

I wanted to investigate further the possibility of the woman in the embrace reaching out to the man at the bottom of the ladder in a beckoning way, but I don’t really trust my eyes well enough to be sure that that’s what’s being shown in the engraving. The Walk the Moon song also don’t have much input from the young woman, because the song is in the young man’s perspective, so I wouldn’t have had much to tie that in with besides the “when she hollers” lyric, and I don’t feel that supports the claim strongly enough, so I left that detail out; omissions are just as important as what has been included.

Regardless, it was enjoyable to return to this work–the beautiful and creative engraving by William Blake, and the “groovy” music by Walk the Moon are definitely not images or songs that I will forget easily.

Somewhat incorrect lyrics can be found on the “William Blake” youtube video linked above.

 

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R2: William Blake and Jim Morrison

Nov 27th, 2011 by

To supplement our R2 pieces, Kevin Ceballos and I (Abby DelBianco) are adding this blog post as a discussion and debate over our two posts on William Blake and Jim Morrison: “Romantic Rebellion” and “The Dark Night of the Soul.”  While we both saw the dark and romantic aspects of Blake’s piece “Auguries of Innocence,” we made very different points on Morrison’s use of Blake (Kevin argues that Morrison did not reinterpret Blake’s work and instead was drawing a parallel between the two artists, while I argue that Morrison emphasizes the darker side of Blake and the insight that that state of mind provided) and gleaned different themes from Blake’s original work (Kevin notes the animal and nature themes as well as the Christ imagery, while I focused on the antithesis between the darkness and light).  The rest of the class is welcome to join in on the discussion as well.

 

 

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From Hell: The Ghost of a Flea

Oct 27th, 2011 by

The graphic novel From Hell, by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, is a speculative story about the murders, identity, and motives of Jack the Ripper. It takes as its premise Stephen Knight’s theory that the murders were part of a conspiracy to hide the birth of an illegitimate child of the royal family, with a few minor changes. This posits William Gull, royal physician at the time, as the culprit, following his journey from a tool of the crown to Freemason protector of the crown against Illuminati threat, and finally to a psychologically unhinged killer who experiences a psychic vision during one of his murders.

It is in this psychic vision that the one cameo of William Blake appears in the novel. This psychic vision is in fact Gull’s spirit traveling through time instigating or inspiring some other killers, and serving as the inspiration for both Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as Blake’s painting “The Ghost of a Flea.”

“The Ghost of a Flea” is a miniature painting on a hardwood panel, painted during a time in which spiritual art was popular, and commissioned by watercolorist and astrologist John Varley. The painting itself is one of Blake’s smallest works, depicting what is said to be the likeness of a spirit that Varley summoned one night. In this painting, the figure is humanoid in shape rather than insectoid as one might expect from the title. However, a connection can be drawn in that, according to ‘the Flea,’ whom Blake claims to have spoken with, souls that inhabited fleas were the souls of men that were by nature bloodthirsty to excess. In this painting, Blake sought to magnify a flea into “a monsterous creature whose bloodthirsty instinct was imprinted on every detail of its appearance, with ‘burning eyes which long for moisture’, and a ‘face worthy of a murderer’.”1 Needless to say, there is a fairly strong connection drawn between Gull’s murderous nature and the image of the creature in the painting, most likely the reason behind Moore’s choosing this particular piece of art.

Apart from the fitting relationship the painting has with the novel, in terms of depicting the nature of Gull’s spirit, we see here that Moore is using the figure of Blake to call forth overtones of mysticism and occultism, ones that are not terribly evident in other portions of the novel. This occurs very near the end of the tale, in fact right before Gull’s death. It gives a very different feel to the chapter, compared to the rest of the novel, much more otherworldly. Considering the various ways in which Gull’s spirit is shown to affect many different individuals, one might see this as the infamy of Jack the Ripper and how it has spread through time and touched upon many minds.

1. “William Blake’s Inner Vision and His Influence on the Little Group to Which William James and John La Farge Belonged“. New York Times, September 25, 1910.

 

Works Cited

Moore, Alan, Pete Mullins, and Eddie Campbell. From Hell: Being a Melodrama in Sixteen Parts. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions, 2006. PDF Format.

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M. Ward on “Blake’s View”

Oct 27th, 2011 by

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his song “Blake’s View,” singer-songwriter M. Ward boldly states, “Blake said it first.” Implicit in both that line and the title is that Ward has some grasp over exactly what Blake attempts to say, that Ward not only understand Blake, but can use that understanding to further his own art. Three of Blake’s pieces are directly referenced, and at least one piece indirectly. So how does M. Ward interpret Blake’s view, and how does he use that interpretation to enrich his own work?

Blake’s View: Song || Lyrics

Viewed in a vacuum, the song describes Ward’s view of the afterlife and immortality. He says, “Birth is just a chorus // And Death is just a verse,” implying that life flows in cycles, and that men are reborn infinitely. Furthermore, due to a soul’s eternity, he comforts the listener, arguing “‘Death is just a door’ // You’ll be reunited on the other side.”  When placed in context of Blake’s work, almost nothing changes – Blake’s work does little to actively transform Ward’s original meaning. Rather, it enriches the rather sparse lyrics with additional imagery, deepening the experience of an astute listener, though not warping it in any way.

Ward begins the song crooning “Death is just a door // Blake said it first,” a reference to an engraving etched by Blake called “Death’s Door.” Part of a larger series, the etching was first commissioned in 1805, and depicts a wizened man entering a portal attached to a stone outcrop. Surmounting the outcrop sits a youth lithe and vital, facing opposite the man who bumbles into Death’s door. Initially, this single engraving seems only to have peripheral connection to the cycle of life referenced in Ward’s song. In fact, the etching itself appears somber, contrasting the vitality of youth with the slow decay of old-age. However, taking a step back, one realizes that the engraving was only one in a series, and that it leads to another: “The meeting of a Family in Heaven.” This piece depicts three pairs in embrace, flanked by angels. Only with the two etchings taken together can one glean the influence Blake exerted on Ward: Passing through Death’s Door allows the moribund to reunite with relatives already dead.

Furthermore, Ward goes on to argue that the end of one life does not signify the end of life itself. He depicts Birth as a chorus, as a refrain sung multiple times, pointing to his belief in an eternal soul and reincarnation. He also depicts Death as a verse, as a stanza numerous as the chorus, but also more varied in nature. These lines are immediately followed by an evocation of “the great song of spring // That the mockingbirds sing.” Both the season and bird motifs are drawn from Blake’s poem “Spring,” found in Songs of Innocence. The poem “Spring” is about rebirth, both physical and spiritual. Birds act as heralds of both a new day, and a new year. They chirp at dawn, and return at Spring’s commencement. Furthermore, they also act as metaphors for angels, a detail corroborated by the original artwork surrounding the poem, in which angels, resting on vines, litter the page. So in this case, by linking the relevant lines in M. Ward’s song to the poem “Spring,” and then linking that poem to its original artwork, the listener understand that the mockingbirds may also reference angels.

Likewise, when M. Ward croons “We come and we go // A-weeping and a-wailing // Our heads in the hands of the nurse…” one can trace those lines back to the poem(s), “Nurse’s Song.” Clearly, M. Ward references a nurse that looks over the children found in both versions of the poem. However, more opaque is whether that nurse is the one found in Songs of Innocence or Songs of experience. The fact that she is caring for the narrator would point to the kindly nurse found in Songs of Innocence rather than the nurse jaded and jealous in Songs of Experience. However, that the narrator is older and close to spiritual night when “the sun is gone down” (Nurse’s Song), would point to the version found in Songs of Experience. It is possible that M. Ward wants the listener to think of both, because both may appear in a single lifetime, tying into his idea of life’s uninterrupted cyclicality.

Together, the works of William Blake that M. Ward references in “Blake’s View” evoke the philosophy underlying Blake’s work, and thus support M. Ward’s own spiritual views. Laced into the song are ideas of rebirth, life-after-death, and reunion found in the afterlife, ideas both echoed and an echo of Blake’s work.

 

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Dead Man: commemorating a life in death

Oct 27th, 2011 by

William Blake was a man and a poet. The two archetypes he represented are not one in the same. He was an individual with a life and a journey yet to others he existed solely as a literary icon, an organic machine churning our creative produce to satiate the appetites of fans and critics worldwide and throughout history. His poems reflect his struggles as a man, most clearly elucidated by the transition from The Songs of Innocence to The Songs of Experience—Blake himself grew ever more jaded with the world as he experienced more of it. His poetic prowess and this fervent struggle through maturity and experience have led to verses that resonate so deeply with so many that they are alluded to in popular culture today.

The Dead Man movie poster

The film The Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch inserts Blake’s poems into the script to extrapolates off the dichotomy or dualism in this one personality. The main character of the film is a man who has lost both his parents and his meager financial estates traveling to a town in the West called Machine. This young man’s name is William Blake and an illiterate man on his train informed him that he was traveling to the end of the line, headed to the end—and so he was. This young William Blake is not one of the most sublime minds of his time but rather an accountant who has gone through life none the wiser of his name-relation’s global accolade. However, his odyssey narrowly avoiding the long arm of the Western law symbolizes Blake, the man. Jarmusch’s Blake’s path to cruel cognizance embodies the depth of the life of the poet as a man who struggled with the cruder caresses of the reality around him and his own role in it.

The story sets off with young Blake, an accountant, being derided out of a job he naively thought he was guaranteed and in this experience, comes to learn that individuals are not trustworthy and life abides by no obligation to be fair, a lesson outlined by many poems in Blake’s Songs of Experience such as “My Pretty Rose Tree.” Directly following this valuable life lesson, accountant Blake meets the white paper rose maker Thel. He proceeds to sleep with her, witness her reject her ex-fiance’s re-declaration of his love for her, and her murder. He sits idly by, watching, until this moment when the bullet makes it clean through Thel and punctures his chest. He lifts Thel’s handgun and kills Charlie, the ex-fiance. The entire scene is set against the backdrop of a pool of white roses resting on the floor. The visual imagery alludes to Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose” as Thel, an innocent rose, is defiled and destroyed by a worm swept in by a chaotic storm. The accountant Blake escapes from the scene, a murderer now, steals a horse and runs off to nurse his own mortal wound while attempting to grasp the unsuspecting shift in reality he now faces.

At this junction in the story he meets Nobody, a native American Indian with a standard American accent and ridiculous face point who informs Blake that the bullet is lodged too far into his chest to be retrieved and the fact that he is still alive is an anomaly. With this man, Blake escapes bounty hunters on his trail and a vindictive vengeful father of the murdered ex-fiance. Along the way he confronts the juxtaposition of nature and mankind in the beauty his journey with Nobody shows him exists in nature and the nefarious tendencies of the other men the pair come across in their travels.

Nobody quotes many poems from Blake including lines from “Auguries of Innocence” and “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” two Blake poems pitting innocence against inevitable corruption as a paradox of life. The irony lies in the fact that Blake, a character who shares the same name as the poet Nobody so reverently quotes, does not recognize the poems let alone understand the lines. This twist furthers the notion that William Blake was not simply a poet, he was also a man as confused by the issues he wrote about as anyone and so, by not understanding the esoteric metaphoric value of the Blake poems, the accountant shows that the man William Blake also had flaws and shortcomings too—he was growing and learning like the rest of us.

At the story’s surmise, the film’s protagonist William Blake has transitioned from a timid accountant to a ruthless hell-bent killer who writes poetry with every shot he fires. The metamorphoses was brought on and nurtured by Nobody, the same man who saved him, but eventually this difficult journey through purgatory on Earth comes to end. Shot again, Blake finally deteriorates to the brink of death and Nobody appeals to a familiar tribe for a canoe to conduct a proper send-off rite for the dead so that he may cross to the other side. This crossing confirms the notion that the pair’s trip was one of purgatory, the necessary requisite to progress to the next stage of life and after-life.

The poet Blake largely considered his time on earth to be purgatory in that childhood purity is lost at such a young age and the defilement of innocence is an inevitability of growing up that all must suffer. Therefore, the poet Blake’s mental journey through this conceptual jungle mirrors the character Blake’s actual adventure through the Western jungle. They both come out with the realization that they are able to survive in this cruel world for a period of time but their deaths are largely out of their control. Furthermore, the world, while they were in it, proved itself to be merciless and fickle—fate was a function of whim and justice a misleading siren. The Native American named Nobody saved the movie-Blake, however, in Blake’s mind, nobody was there to save him.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Dead Man. Dir. Jim Jarmusch. Perf. Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer. Pandora Filmproduktion, 1995. Netflix.

 

“Works in the William Blake Archive.” Welcome to the William Blake Archive. Web. 27 Oct. 2011. <http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/indexworks.htm>.

 

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William Blake: The Bridge between Heaven and Hell

Oct 27th, 2011 by

When C.S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce he set out to contradict a notion that had been present for centuries. He wanted to “divorce” good and evil once and for all and illustrate that one simply cannot be made into the other, no matter what resources are available (The Great Divorce). He created his title in direct opposition of William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and stated explicitly in the preface that his goal was to contradict the idea of the synonymity of good and evil, an idea which he claimed Blake puts forth.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake’s influence is clear in Lewis’s preface, in fact, his name is the first word. He is described as a “great genius” that symbolizes a “disastrous error” in belief (The Great Divorce). Lewis praises Blake’s writing in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and freely admits that he cannot fully understand the meaning behind the piece. However, he then moves on almost instantly to say that Blake’s work puts forth the old idea that some agreement can be made between such opposites. Lewis’s goal in writing his response, The Great Divorce, is to illustrate how thoroughly impossible such a marriage would be.

In using Blake as a foil for the separation of good and evil, Lewis is, in fact, defining him. By illustrating what he wishes to prove in the coming piece he is highlighting Blake’s beliefs and doing so simply by including two sentences at the start of the preface that are set up as a contrast to the rest of the work. After those starting sentences the rest of the preface, and then the book, is crafted illustrate the error and impossibility of Blake’s train of thought. Blake is therefore defined as the opposite of what Lewis defends. He is the antagonist, the opponent whose argument will be defeated.

It is clear that Lewis is enlarging Blake in a sense, that he is setting him as the head of every school of thought which somehow states that good and evil can be reconciled. The Blake present in the preface, the Blake according to Lewis, is not simply a poet who rejects the church and finds divinity in following basic human desires. Blake according to Lewis is instead a theologian, or more than that, a symbol. He represents any attempt to hold onto any vestige of evil while claiming to be good, any attempt to rationalize evil acts by assuming that they will eventually be twisted into good. He is still recognized as a poetic genius, but that aspect of his identity is given far less importance. His main role in The Great Divorce is to represent an opposing theological view and to be a type of scapegoat for anyone who ever has or ever will try to superimpose good and evil.

This interpretation is not far from the truth. Blake explicitly states in his piece that the notion of what good is and what evil is have been terribly confused. He provides ample evidence of his view throughout the work, writing that what has been labeled as ‘of the body’ and therefore corrupt is actually just “Energy” which “is the only life and….is Eternal Delight” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). Blake is promoting the ideas that Lewis attributes to him, but on a smaller scale. In fact, it seems that Lewis does not really ‘create’ his own version of Blake but rather brings out an already-existing facet and favors it over his traditional identity as a poet.

 

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X4 – The Chariot of Fire: Taking England to Heaven or to War?

Oct 27th, 2011 by

Jerusalem on YouTube – Parry, Elgar, Blake

The hymn Jerusalem was written by British composer Hubert H. Parry in 1916. The song uses the poem And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time by poet William Blake. Written by Blake as a preface to his work Milton a Poem in 1804 it was included in a patriotic anthology of verse titled The Spirit of Man and edited by Robert Bridges in 1916. The collection was supposed to boost morale among the British army in World War I who had been struck by a vast amount of casualties by that time. Bridges asked Parry to set „suitable, simple music to Blake’s stanzas – music that an audience could take up and join in“1, because he believed the text to have the ability to „brace the spirit of the nation to accept with cheerfulness all the sacrifices necessary to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion“2. Another well-known British composer, Sir Edward Elgar, arranged the orchestration of Parry’s music which famously led King George V to state that he preferred Jerusalem over the de facto national anthem God Save the King upon hearing it for the first time. Today it is used by many English sports teams such as Cricket, Women’s Lacrosse and Football as national anthem at their international matches. It is also sung as an office or recessional hymn in church on St. George’s Day and Jerusalem Sunday.

This exuberant use of Blake’s poetry for nationalistic or religious purposes seems out of place with the meaning Blake is believed to have intended for Milton a Poem. Milton describes the journey of John Milton descending from Heaven to erase his spiritual errors. It is a thought-provoking text about imagination and perception and the role church should play in the formation of ethics.

Especially the preface to Milton that includes And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time is inquisitive if not questioning the Book of Revelation which mentions a Second Coming of Jesus to (what is now) England and building a new city of Jerusalem. “Jerusalem” is used by the Anglican Church as a metaphor for Heaven or a peaceful, sacred place. The first two verses of Blake’s poem clearly contain four questions that not only examine and question the actual event of Jesus’ visit to England but also its meaning if it was to have occurred. This is best exemplified by Blake’s use of “these dark Satanic Mills” which can be interpreted as a symbol for the industrial revolution of England and the repressive ideology of both the state and the church at that time. Ultimately Blake is asking how it is possible for people to believe that a country with an overbearing government, an enslaving economy and a repressive church could harbor Heaven on Earth. In support of the British war effort however the song was meant to be understood by the public as a reminder of the achievements or the “Jerusalem” of British society and the Church that had to be protected in this war.

While during William Blake’s lifetime the church and the state were essentially the same institution this was certainly not the case anymore in the 20th century. So while Blake originally is believed to have written about changing England itself into a better place, not avoiding intellectual challenges and finally rising to become a “green and pleasant land” with the help and guidance of God (the “Chariot of fire” is a symbol from 2 Kings 2:11 that allows prophet Elijah to ascend into Heaven), the text could also very well be understood as a call to the arms in order to defend the “Jerusalem” Jesus had built in England. This is probably the reason this poem was selected to appear in the war anthology to rebuilt soldiers’ confidence and trust in the English leadership. Oxford University Theology expert Christopher Rowland says: “Blake wanted to stir people from their intellectual slumbers, and the daily grind of their toil, to see that they were captivated in the grip of a culture which kept them thinking in ways which served the interests of the powerful.”3 In that sense Blake was utilized by Bridges for a cause that Blake himself would probably not have supported: War. In fact, also Hubert H. Parry formally withdrew his support of the organization Fight For Right, to which Robert Bridges belonged, and also of their use of his song in 1917.

Another third significant meaning was given to Blake when the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) asked Parry’s permission to perform Jerusalem at a Suffrage Demonstration Concert in 1918 and make it the Women Voters’ Hymn. Parry was happy to arrange the piece for that purpose and in light of the interpretations of William Blake’s poem, I feel that this would also have been a cause that Blake himself had supported fighting for a less repressive culture and a greener and more pleasant England.

 

 

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

 

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

 

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

 

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In Englands green & pleasant Land

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William Blake goes Punk

Oct 27th, 2011 by

"Five Iron Frenzy should be known as the thinking person's Ska outfit" -Bruce Brown

 

In November 1997, the Christian Ska band, Five Iron Frenzy, released their second studio album titled, “Our Newest Album Ever!” Christian Ska…Ironic, huh? Ska, a fusion of R&B, Punk, and Reggae with a souped-up tempo, featuring a wide variety of instruments, traditionally includes a lot of profanity and non-Christian ideas. This makes Five Iron Frenzy a unique group. What is most interesting about this group though, is how they strike an uncanny resemblance to William Blake. The group, like Blake, uses their artistic medium, music, to make comments about Religion. To do this, they incorporate pop-culture into their music. Also like Blake, they incorporate biblical references into their music. The track titled “Fistful of Sand” draws from the book of Ecclesiastes, making the point that life is futile without the Lord. The track “Suckerpunch” explains that even misfits and outcasts are loved by God. They even have a track on the album, “Blue Comb ‘78” about losing a prized possession, that makes a comment on the loss of innocence. The resemblance to Blake and his works is uncanny. These references have led to Five Iron Frenzy to be known as “the thinking person’s Ska outfit.” –Bruce Brown

Every New Day Lyrics

The most well-known track on the album “Every New Day” actually draws from William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger.” The song is about a person who is struggling with their faith. “When I was young, the smallest trick of light, / Could catch my eye, / Then life was new and every new day, / I thought that I could fly.” The song opens with these lyrics. What the speaker is saying is that as a child, things always seem new and exciting as you continue to learn new things. “I just don’t feel like flying anymore. / When the stars threw down their spears, / Watered Heaven with their tears.” The speaker then moves to the present, showing the struggle with keeping their faith, and then quoting William Blake directly. The lines “When the stars threw down their spears,/ Watered Heaven with their tears” come directly from Blake’s poem, “The Tyger.” This song, just like the Blake in “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” contrasts the gentle, innocence of life as well as the experiences one has in this life. “The Tyger,” specifically, is about having one’s reason overwhelmed by the natural world, which is what the speaker is struggling with in the song. “The struggles go on, / The wisdom I lack, / The burdens keep pilling / Up on my back. / So hard to breathe, / To take the next step. / The mountain is high, / I wait in the depths. / Yearning for grace, / And hoping for peace.” The band captures the essence of Blake perfectly. Throughout the rest of the song, the speaker begins each verse with a comment on innocence, and then comments on their struggle with faith caused by the natural world, with each chorus, and finally the ending, proclaiming their need for a relationship with the Lord and that this relationship will let “Every New Day feel so new.”

 

The use of Blake by the band did not change what Blake meant in “The Tyger.” Blake, in this song, was incorporated to draw a parallel to the song that they performed. They took Blake’s parallel of innocence and experience and used it in the same way Blake did in “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” commenting on Christianity using parallels innocence and experience in their lyrics. It is clear that William Blake was an inspiration for the band because of the beliefs of the band and how they comment on and convey these beliefs. In incorporating the few lines from “The Tyger,” the band used its meaning to help support their Blake-like song, for it is this incorporation that allows us to see this parallel resemblance to Blake and his work.

Every New Day – Five Iron Frenzy

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The Dark Night of the Soul

Oct 26th, 2011 by

William Blake had a way with the antithesis of innocence and experience.  For Blake, the lightness was not the stereotypical representation of the pure good, and darkness is much deeper than fear and evil.  His flashes of insight on the more thorough truths of darkness emerge in poems such as “The Clod and the Pebble,” and “The Tiger,” but he grasps on to darkness as a theme in “Auguries of Innocence.”  The Doors take this theme and propel it.  Their 1967 song “End of the Night” pulls in their perception of Blake as front man Jim Morrison repeats, “Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to sweet delight, some are born to the endless night.”

End of the Night (audio with lyrics in description)

 

The set of lyrics as a whole falls upon the concept of the greater depth and fulfillment in night, in darkness.  The Doors see Blake as a seer, with the greater understanding of the artistry and beauty that the band members see in the night, the emotional and mental darkness that they experience and are made more creative and insightful as a result.  For Jim Morrison, Blake captures the divide between those that are, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words, “in a real dark night of the soul.”  Fitzgerald and Morrison may have been dragged into this night under circumstances related to nightlife and alcoholism, but both artists understand the irreplaceable creative value in their experience in this state of greater consciousness, of greater touch with the darker and truer elements of reality.  Blake saw it, epitomized it in literature, first.  To Morrison, Blake is a thinker trapped in this darkness, deep enough and for a long enough period of time so that his eyes have adjusted to the lack of light as an animal’s, and he is able to see clearer the reality of night.  To exist in this mental night, to be a part of it, is to understand life and reality without idealistic flourishes, false hopes, or familiar façades.  It makes one immune to the mundane, and at a greater level of consciousness than the common mind, as all is exposed in the night, and those that dwell in it are able to see its truths.  The song is enhanced with creepy, droning guitar lines and desperate- sounding crescendos in the lines leading up to Blake’s words, emphasizing the startling level of understanding that Morrison found in Blake’s insight.

The Doors take the darker themes of William Blake and dote on them, reflecting a vision and perception of Blake as a deep thinker with uncanny artistic vision into the darkness who found a greater truth in the dark side of his mind.

 

 

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I Want! I Want!: Music About Desire and Ambition Inspired by William Blake

Oct 26th, 2011 by

Walk the Moon's "i want! i want!" album cover

The Cincinnati indie rock band, Walk the Moon, released their debut album, “i want! i want!”, in November of 2010. An engraving William Blake included in his 18-piece compilation called For the Children: The Gates of Paradise inspired the title of the album. For the Children: The Gates of Paradise is a series of tiny engravings that chronicle the life of man—from birth to death—including events such as interactions with the fire and earth and the natural human feelings of fear and desire. The album’s namesake, “I Want! I Want!” is a 6cm by 5cm engraving in which a figure wearing a wide hat stands at the foot of a slender ladder that is propped against a crescent moon. The man wearing the hat is not looking up at, the moon smiling its Cheshire cat smile, but at the starry background and/or a couple who stands behind him, embracing one another, seemingly oblivious to his astounding yet dangerously disastrous ambition.

On the “i want! i want!” album there is a song entitled “Want! I Want!” and a song entitled “William Blake”. The two songs share the same lyrics, which describes the adolescent desires of a 17-year-old boy and alludes to sexual encounters and the shedding of innocence, however “William Blake” is more upbeat with a faster tempo and a strange, chipmunk distortion. While the distortion of the instruments and vocals adds emphasis to the lines outlining how strange “feigning innocence” is or the sounds of his love are, one could argue there isn’t a point to the distortion at all. I would assume the band was trying to fill space on their album, and wanted to try out song editing, granted that this was their first album and it was self-produced. However, the story woven in the lyrics of “William Blake” add commentary to the “I Want! I Want!” engraving in the form of Walk the Moon’s interpretation of the image.

Engraving of "I Want! I Want!" from William Blake's "For the Children: The Gates of Paradise"

The song is about love and the desire of every aspect of love, regardless of how “strange” or risky. It was the close scrutinizing of the song lyrics that brought out an essential detail of the engraving that is easily missed amongst the backdrop of mystical space and the absurd, impossible idea of climbing a flimsy ladder to the moon. The man at the base of the ladder is looking at what he desires, or wants, the most, and it’s not the moon. His head is turned, and you can’t see his face, but it is clear to see that he is either looking at the starry sky or toward the embracing couple standing behind him. At the observation of this essential component of the piece, one can see now that Blake was juxtaposing the desire of romantic relationships (and often times the feeling of how unattainable that is and how lonely someone can be when single) to the impossible idea of climbing to the moon—which is obviously a disaster waiting to happen, but a symbol of dreaming big and wanting all of what the vast universe can offer. In the Walk the Moon song, William Blake is not only a symbol of ambition and the zest of human desires, but an inspiration and also a model of how to present common, everyday experiences and feelings through a creative medium.

 

Somewhat incorrect lyrics can be found on the “William Blake” youtube video linked above.

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