This first chapter will deal with Nick Cave’s process of development from lyricist to novelist; it will be a chapter treating Nick Cave’s mid-80s lyrics, showing his preoccupation with communication and clarifying the relationship of the lyrics with the later novel. In this chapter I want to show how certain themes, such as love, death, and yearning for communication, run through much of Nick Cave's work.
What do I mean, then, by a yearning for communication? The yearning for communication represents a wish for the possibility of harmonious human coexistence. The story that Nick Cave tells in his novel is a story that depicts people who are basically unable to communicate with each other, and because of this, their lives are ruined, often violently. If his characters had been able to communicate properly, their lives might have been better. The novel seems to long for a world in which violence is not the final means of communication. I think that the question of how human beings can express themselves properly is a question that has followed Nick Cave throughout his career. For instance, the title of my thesis, "express thyself, say something loudly", is a line from one of his songs called "King Ink", where he urges his listeners to express themselves. I think that the main question he asks in that song, as well as in his novel, is whether true communication is possible. I intend to show that the answer we get from his novel is that it might not be possible, but the world would be a better place if it were.
When it comes to his lyrics, I will put forward three examples, and show how the ideas, images and language of these songs have been picked up and kept for later use by Nick Cave. I will show how he has worked with the ideas, how he has expanded and incorporated them into his novel. I will divide the songs into two categories: under the heading of development of motifs, I will treat the lyrics of "Swampland" and "Tupelo". The song "King Ink" will be treated under the title development of themes.
I want to show that Nick Cave has worked with the themes of communication before. If I also can prove that many of his lyrics have been developed further and "incorporated" into the novel, I think that I will make a stronger case for my thesis. The songs that I have chosen have a particularly clear relationship to the later novel, thematically and/or linguistically. There are certainly other songs that might have been taken into consideration,[1] but I have chosen to concentrate my attention on the three songs that I have already mentioned. These songs were written before and during the period when Cave was writing his novel, and they are therefore especially worthy of attention.
Sometimes poems have been used as lyrics for songs, and sometimes song-lyrics are treated as poems. Nick Cave has for instance made a song out of a poem that he wrote as a gift for his girlfriend. It was released as the song "Black Hair" on the album The Boatman's Call. However, I find it appropriate to emphasise that for the following reason I consider lyrics not to be the same thing as poems. It has been said time and again by teachers of literature across the world that poems are meant to be read out loud. That might be the case, but each enunciation of a poem is an interpretation of that poem. Usually there exist no canonical way of "performing" a poem, except perhaps in the cases where there are recordings of the poet personally reading his or her work. Even then, listeners might not take heed to the poet's intonation and accentuation, because they have usually read the poem before they ever heard it spoken out loud, and therefore they already carry with them preconceived notions of what the poem was all about.
This is not the case with lyrics. In the world of modern music, the lyrics of a certain artist are strongly linked to that artist's performance, the enunciation or singing of the song, and to the music that accompanies the lyrics. As opposed to poetry, lyrics exist as both a written and a vocal entity. The first time we hear a song lyric, it is already interpreted, and this interpretation influences our later readings of the words on the page. Artists can, of course, perform other people's songs and put a different "flavour" to the lyrics: for instance, in 1988, Bob Dylan released a song on the album Down in the Groove called "Death is not the End", which, in his rendition of the song, was a comforting, religious song that reminded people that even though life here on Earth might be difficult, there is a promise of a life after death. His voice sounds comforting, and there is a distinct gospel feel in the music. He also uses gospel singers to provide the background vocals for the track. When we take into consideration that this song was released around the time Bob Dylan declared himself a Christian, it becomes clear that this is a genuinely hopeful song. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds did a cover version of this song as the last track for their 1996 Murder Ballads album. In the hands of Nick Cave and his band, and in the proximity of nine blood-dripping murder ballads, this once so comforting song suddenly turned nasty:
When
the cities are on fire
with
the burning flesh of men
Just
remember that death is not the end
When
you search in vain to find
some
law-abiding citizen
Just
remember that death is not the end
These last two verses, sung by Bad Seeds member Blixa Bargeld and Nick Cave, become a reminder that our suffering does not end here on Earth. Their voices are low and sinister, and they emphasise certain words, such as "flesh" in line two and "death" in line six. The dominating images become those of "burning flesh" and "death". The message becomes hellish, as opposed to the heavenly interpretation of Bob Dylan. This simple example should prove my point. Even though the lyrics, the actual words on the page, remained the same, two different recordings of the song had the lyrics signifying opposite messages. This means that when it comes to the lyrics of a songwriter who is also the singer of his own songs, it is essential that the performances of the songs that he has chosen to make public are taken into consideration upon interpretation of his lyrics. I will therefore in this chapter not only refer to the lyrics as they are printed in King Ink, but also the published performances of the selected songs. With that in mind, let us turn to the song from which I have borrowed a line to provide this thesis with a title, namely King Ink.
The reason that I have chosen "King Ink"[2] is that apart from it being particularly well-suited to exemplify Cave's concern with communication, there is an autobiographical element to this song. This suggests that the issues dealt with in this song are issues with which not only the narrator, but also the author is concerned. Here is the text in it's entirety:
KING INK
King Ink strolls
into town
He sniffs around
King Ink kicks
off his stink-boot
Sand and soot
and dust and dirt and
5 He's much bigger than you think
King Ink
King Ink, wake
up, get up
Wake up, up, up,
up, up, up
A bug crawls up
the wall
10 King Ink feels like a bug
And he hates his
rotten shell
Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha
King Ink, get
up, go forth,
Wake up - what's
in that room?
15 Wake up - what's in that house?
Express thyself,
say something loudly
AAAAAAAH! What's
in that room?
Sand and soot
and dust and dirt
King Ink feels
like a bug
20 Swimming in a soup-bowl
Oh! Yer! Oh!
Yer! What a wonderful life
FATS Domino on
the radio[3]
First, a comment on the situation of the lyric. On the surface, the text seems to describe a physical character called King Ink. He comes to a town, takes his boots off and goes to sleep. He does not seem to want to wake up again from his slumber, but he is able to see a bug crawling on the wall, and he starts to feel like a bug and indulges in self-loathing. He does not seem to want to know anything about his surroundings, he does not want to go into any rooms or houses, he just lies still and listens to Fats Domino on the radio. All this, of course, is, as mentioned above, what is on the surface. We must take a closer look to see what this is really all about.
The title of the text, King Ink, seems to name a character that possesses a certain power, as he is portrayed as royal. However, even though the title of "king" denotes royalty, the name "Ink" suggests that we are not dealing with a king of the pre-revolutionary kind, with powers to rule over life and death, but rather a more or less symbolic creation. "King Ink" can be seen as an entity along the lines of the popular concept of "King Alcohol", with much of the same addictive force, but with a creative rather than destructive drive. Therefore, I think that the "King Ink" of this song can be seen as feature or character-trait of the speaker. Since an artist's choice of profession usually derives from his or her need to express him- or herself, it is not difficult to suggest that the creative drive of the speaker in this song has manifested itself as a symbolic character.
If we look at the relationship between the character "King Ink" and the speaker, we see that the speaker addresses a person he calls King Ink. The speaker knows intimately what King Ink feels, for instance in lines 10 and 11, where we learn that "King Ink feels like a bug/And he hates his rotten life". The speaker also knows what King Ink should do to rectify his situation: he should "get up, go forth," he should investigate rooms and houses, he should express himself and "say something loudly". The speaker seems very frustrated that King Ink is unable to do something about his state. He repeats endlessly that King Ink should get up, and in line 14 he seems to scream out his frustration.
What does all this mean? If we suggest that King Ink is a trait of the speaker's personality, it is obvious that the King Ink-persona is dominating the speaker's life. Because ink is linked to writing, it is easy to suggest that the speaker is a writer, and therefore he is dominated by this trait in his personality, he is dominated by the need to write, to create, to communicate. When the speaker urges King Ink to go forth and investigate what is inside rooms and houses, he is in fact telling himself to write and to create. The speaker is aware of his creative needs, as he is aware of his failure to comply. He seems to be a slave to his own creative drive. The duality of being King Ink and at the same time a slave to King Ink is well illustrated in the contrast between lines 5 and 10: Line 5 states that "He's much bigger than you think", while line 10 says "King Ink feels like a bug". The speaker feels that King Ink is big and that he is a heavy load to carry, but at the same time he feels insignificant, lowly and unworthy.
What is it, then, that makes the speaker feel unworthy? One way to answer this is to have a look at some of the symbols featured in this text. I have already touched upon the dualistic symbol of "King Ink", and suggested that it is symbolic of the "writer" within the speaker. King Ink seems to represent something that is dominating and addictive, like alcohol, and, as suggested by the colour of ink, something black and depressive. However, at the same time, King Ink symbolises something regal and creative. This means that the person who wears the crown of King Ink is haunted by the need to write.
The problem, however, is that King Ink is not able to create something new and different. He is not able to rise above the past that his "stink-boot" can be seen to symbolise, he is still surrounded by "sand and soot and dust and dirt," and therefore, he "feels like a bug." It can be suggested that the bug is symbolic of the speaker's feeling of inadequacy, uselessness and unwantedness. The last sentiment is particularly obvious in lines 19 and 20, where he says that "King Ink feels like a bug/Swimming in a soup-bowl." The speaker knows that the songs that he has created are being presented to people through records, concerts, TV and radio, and he feels that he is as welcome as an insect in your soup.
As in all of Nick Cave’s early songs, the environment in which the "action" of the song King Ink takes place, is vital. In the first line of the lyric, we learn that "King Ink strolls into town." "Town" is here a key word, and it designates the realm in which the subject-matter of a poem, story or even conversation takes place. As Nick Cave says:
What
I often do with songs is build up the environment which the songs
will exist in, first. I find that extremely important in my
lyrics, this is making very visual descriptive image (sic) of the
environment which the song is going to take place in my head.
[...] I think the environment which the song happens in is
extremely important, particularly in my case, where the
environment and the buildings and the nature of the place exerts
a strong authority over what happens to the actual characters.[4]
From this it is possible to suggest that what is going on is that the speaker has "put on" his King Ink-persona, and entered into the "environment" in which the song is eventually going to exist. We learn that it is a miserable place, full of bugs, dirt and dust. King Ink does not seem to interact with anyone at all, he just lies still in a room. In other words, he is confined in a small place, unable to communicate. We observe that the physical realities of the world that exists in this lyric helps underline the themes of creative impotence and yearning for communication.
As we have seen, the first three lines contain three of the four dominant symbols of this text, and the first six lines sets up the action of the rest of the lyric. The first two lines are filled with wary anticipation. King Ink enters "town", i.e. the environment in which communication and creation can take place. He "sniffs around", as if he is searching for possibilities. However, already in line three things start to go wrong. Instead of starting a creative process, he preoccupies himself with his past, his "stink-boot". He kicks it off, but he can not escape his past. The "stink-boot" is an interesting symbolic entity. King Ink wears smelly boots. This suggests that he has walked far, that he has come a long way. King Ink seems to have a need to rid himself with his "stink-boot". My suggestion is that he tries to free himself from his own writing tradition. He has walked down many roads as a songwriter, but he feels that he has only collected dirt, dust and a foul stench. This troubles him, and he tries to liberate himself by discarding his past.
The speaker quickly realises that King Ink is not able to examine the environment that he has entered, and he starts urging him to wake up and to investigate. If King Ink is a part of the speaker, it is worth noting that the speaker seems to try to set up an environment in which to create, but as he fails, he becomes increasingly frustrated, and tries desperately to incite his creative imagination. Scalise and Cangioli say:
Songs such as Nick The Stripper and King Ink are in part autobiographical but the borderline which divides reality from imagination is fleeting. King Ink, in particular, gives birth to a poetical transfiguration of the author endowed with an autonomous life. [5]
King Ink seems to be a semi-autobiographical account of the chores of song-writing. It is a lyric expressing the pain of creation, or more precisely, the pain of wanting to create, but not being able to.
This feeling of pain and frustration is something that comes very much to the forefront if you listen to the two officially released recordings of the song, a studio-recording released on 1981’s Prayers on Fire, and a live-recording released on 1999’s Live 1981-82. The music of the piece is a mid-tempo, bass-driven and staccato back-drop for Nick Cave’s low-register voice. He sings slowly, and with a clear tone of derision, scorn and contempt in his voice when he sings the first six lines, narrating what King Ink does and how he appears. He particularly emphasises the words "King Ink" and practically spits them out. He clearly expresses his contempt of being slave to this persona. The main feeling that you get from the performances of this song, however, is a sense of urgency and desperation. This comes clearly to the forefront when he urges King Ink to do something about the state he is in. Line eight is practically shouted out in desperation, and each repetition of the word "up" is synchronised with a beat on the snare-drum, emphasising the importance of the words. The word is repeated far more times than it is written on the page, in fact it is repeated about forty times, and this suggests added importance to this line. Another line that is only represented one time on the page, but repeated several times in the recordings of the song, is line sixteen: "Express thyself, say something loudly,"[6] This line is so strongly emphasised in both official recordings of the song that it becomes almost impossible to overlook it. It is not only the centrepiece of the text, carrying within it the compressed message of the lyric, but it is also the crux of the entire song, performed or written. Here, the speaker states what King Ink needs to do to remedy his situation. If he wants to get out of his depressed state of mind, he needs to express himself, to communicate and create. With Nick Cave’s desperate enunciation of this line, repeated incessantly, it is not hard to suggest that this message goes out not only to King Ink, but to all who are listening.
It is obvious that the non-communicative world that King Ink inhabits, is infertile and desolate. The message to listeners and readers is that life in a world where you are not able to express yourself and communicate properly is a barren existence. Taking into consideration that The Birthday Party was an avant-garde punk-rock band, it is no surprise that the message of the song comes out more strongly when the song is performed. Punk bands tend to pound the message home. The Birthday Party is no different. The message of the text is hammered out, and important words or phrases are underlined by use of repetition or instrumental facilitation, thus making the message of the song more readily available.
The themes of this song, the longing for the ability to create and communicate coupled with a severe feeling of distress of being in a situation where you are not able to create and communicate, are themes that we can easily recognise from And the Ass Saw the Angel. The protagonist of the novel, Euchrid Eucrow, finds himself in a situation not dissimilar from that of the protagonist of "King Ink". He is unable to express himself, and he suffers because of it.
This feeling of one’s ability to communicate being blocked co-exists with a need to speak, and in the novel this unfortunate combination ends in violence. In the lyric "King Ink" however, the culmination of frustration ends not with a bang, but on a whimper: instead of taking any kind of action, the protagonist remains unmoveable and listens to Fats Domino on the radio. Instead of trying to create something of his own, he chooses to passively digest something that somebody else has already created. However, it is clear that even though the conclusion of the two texts differ, the relationship of themes seems very clear. Nick Cave has taken the themes of "King Ink" a giant step further, and incorporated them and made them an integral part of his first novel. This will be discussed at greater length in chapter 2. At this point, I would like to discuss the lyric of another song from the early eighties, namely "Swampland".
"Swampland"[7] has a particularly strong relationship to the later novel, as it can be read as a first draft to the story. The language of the lyric is very similar to the language Cave used in his novel. Particularly easy to recognise is the use of "ah" for the first person singular. In the novel, however, this is done consequently and throughout the book when the protagonist is "speaking". This is not the case in the lyric of "Swampland" as we can see in line 16, where the speaker suddenly says "I". As I see no reason for this, and as I cannot distinguish between the pronunciation of that particular word "I" from any of the instances where it is written out as "ah", I suggest that this is a typographical error. Furthermore, the use of autodiegetic internal focalization is easily recognised, as is the situation of the protagonist:
SWAMPLAND
Quixanne, ah'm in
its grip
Quixanne, ah'm in
its grip
Sinken in the mud
Patron-saint of
the Bog.
5 They come with boots of blud
Wit pitchfawk and
with club
Chantin out mah
name
Got doggies
strainin onna chain
Lucy, ah'll love
ya till the end!
10 They hunt me like a dog
Down in
Sw-a-a-a-amp Land!
So cum mah
executioners! Cum bounty hunters!
Cum mah county
killers - for ah cannot run no more
Ah cannot run no
more
15 Ah cannot run no more
No I can't
Lucy, ya won't
see this face agin
When ya caught ya
swing and burn ...
Down in
Sw-a-a-a-amp Land!
20 The trees are veiled in fog
The trees are
veiled in fog
Like so many
jilted brides
Now they're all
breakin down and cry
Cryin tears upon
mah face
25 Cryin tears upon mah face
And they smell of
gasolene
a-a-a-a-ah
scr-e-e-e-a-am
Lucy, ya made a
sinner out of me
Now ah'm burnin
like a saint
30 Down in Swa-a-a-a-amp Land!
So cum mah
executioners! Cum mah bounty huntahs!
Cum mah county
killers - ya know ah cannot run no more
No ah cannot run
no more.[8]
As I did with "King Ink", I would like to start with a general comment of the situation of the lyric. The protagonist is clearly caught in quicksand, and lies there waiting for his pursuers to catch and kill him. It seems that he has done something wrong in connection with somebody called Lucy. In line 28, he says "Lucy, ya made a sinner out of me". We never get to know exactly what he has done, but it is clearly something serious, since he is being hunted by men that want to kill him. As he is caught in quicksand, there is not much that he can do about his situation, and eventually his pursuers find him, pour gasoline over him and set him alight.
This is almost exactly the same scenario as the one we can find in And the Ass Saw the Angel, except that the protagonist in "Swampland" is not mute, as we observe in line 27:
"a-a-a-a-ah
scr-e-e-e-a-am". His voice can definitely be heard. The
other main difference is the name of the female character; Lucy
in "Swampland" becomes Beth in And the Ass Saw the
Angel. If the differences are few, the similarities are
legion. There are for instance certain things that suggest that
the action of "Swampland" takes place not too far from
the place and time of And the Ass Saw the Angel. The fact
that there is a swamp, combined with the protagonist’s
dialect, and the use of the word "county" in line 13,
and the word "pitchfawk" in line 6, strongly suggests
that this is a rural area in the South. This impression is
further amplified by line 18: "When ya caught ya swing and
burn". This suggests that there is a tradition for such
things in the area in which the action of the lyric takes place:
when you have done something severely wrong, you run the risk of
being caught and killed by a lynch mob. This also helps us place
the time of the events in the lyric: it is placed in the first
part of the twentieth century. After that, the
"tradition" of lynch mobs has all but disappeared. The
reason why I do not place it in the nineteenth century or earlier
is that the lynch mob pours gasoline over the protagonist, a
commodity that was rather unusual in the nineteenth century.
As we already have established, the speaker is also the protagonist in this text. He reveals quickly that he is uneducated by his extensive use of slang and dialect. He also seems to be preoccupied with Christian religion. In fact, he dubs himself "Patron-saint of the Bog" in line 4, and he likens himself to a martyr in line 29: "Now ah’m burnin like a saint". The protagonist, like Euchrid, seems confused when it comes to issues of religion. This can be clearly observed by the claims in line 28 that he has been made a sinner by Lucy, that are quickly succeeded by claims to the fact that he is a saint in the next line.
The speaker’s tone is ultimately that of self-justification. He seems to think that he has been placed or pushed into the situation he is in. He emphasises at least five times that he "cannot run no more", and he says: "Lucy, ya made a sinner out of me". He blames circumstances and other people for the trouble he is in. It seems that he thinks that there was nothing he could do to avoid this unfortunate situation. This feeling is, of course, amplified by the title of the song. "Swampland" suggests a dangerous place where you do not want to be, and if you are sucked in, it is difficult to escape.
The mood of the lyric is one of horror and despair. After all, the speaker knows that he is going to die soon, either by being dragged under by quicksand or being killed by a lynching mob. The feelings evoked by the lyric are amplified by the performance of the song. It opens with a martial beat on the snare drum, with Nick Cave's voice moaning and screaming in the background. The feeling of resentment and bitterness is particularly palpable in his distorted voice as he screams out the title words of the song. His voice sounds fierce and desperate throughout the performance, and this feeling is amplified by added screams in the background, most notably in lines 12, 13 and 28. These screams emphasise words and phrases like "executioners", "cannot run no more", and "made a sinner out of me". The emphasis on these phrases can help us understand the symbolic values of the song.
It is possible to look at Swampland as an entirely symbolic song. If we first of all look at the main conflict of the lyric, it is clear that it is the conflict between the protagonist and his pursuers. The hunters clearly feel that the protagonist has done something that makes him deserve death. The protagonist obviously feels that whatever he has done, it was not his fault, he only did what he had to do. Ian Johnston has suggested that the hunted protagonist, caught in quicksand, is a symbol for the author himself: "Cave manages to deliver a compelling vocal track to "Swampland", punctuated by chilling screams, the song in part being a metaphorical view of his own hounding by critics and fans alike."[9] By assuming this, it follows that the hunters can symbolise critics, who certainly at times can act like a lynching mob, and "slaughter" an artist for what he has produced. Lucy, who the protagonist says he will love "till the end", might be said to represent the artist’s work. The artist’s message, then, is that he did what he had to do with his material, wrote his songs and recorded them in a certain way, and he released them. He feels persecuted by the critics for doing the only thing he was capable of doing, namely creating a certain work in a certain way at a certain time. Once he has made a certain work public, he "cannot run no more", he can only wait for his critics to judge him. This interpretation is amplified by the fact that Nick Cave has chosen to add screams in the background at chosen instances to underline certain symbols: his "executioners", the critics, are brought to attention by this device, and the fact that he "cannot run no more" now that his work is made public is also underlined. The entire song can be seen as a lament of the situation of the artist when he must face his or her critics.
The most interesting thing about "Swampland", however, is the fact that it reads like a very short version of the later novel. Nick Cave found the motifs of this song so inspiring that he wanted to elaborate on them. Ian Johnston says:
Cave
talked publicly for the first time (in February 1983) about the
rough outline for a narrative entitled "Swampland",
centred around the death of a character who is sinking in
quicksand, listening to an approaching lynch mob seeking
vengeance after he has attempted to murder an orphan girl. As he
slowly sinks he is beset by visions and believes he is visited by
an angel who absolves him of his crime. This tale would preoccupy
Cave for the rest of the decade, materialising first in a song
then as an outline for a film script, before becoming the basis
for the most ambitious undertaking of his career, his first
novel.[10]
It is not hard to see that the themes of "King Ink" in combination with the setting and imagery of "Swampland" point towards the later novel. These songs were written before he started the novel, but also after he had started writing, some of his songs seemed to come from the world depicted in And the Ass Saw the Angel. Nick Cave says:
[W]hat really happened was that I created in my head this mythical landscape in which Euchrid and the story operated, and because I was writing the book continously, and I was quite obsessed with the book, many of the songs also came from the same mythical landscape.[11]
The last songs I will comment on, "Tupelo", belong in this category. [12] The lyrics in combination with the music creates a sombre and gloomy landscape. We recognise the rain and the birth of the twins from the novel. We shall take a closer look at these motifs.
Tupelo is a town in Mississippi whose biggest claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Elvis Presley. The birth of Elvis is also the theme of the song. It depicts the story of the birth of the twins Jesse Garon and Elvis Aaron Presley. Jesse Garon died shortly after birth, and was buried in a shoebox in an unmarked grave. The song tells the story of the circumstances of their birth, how a terrible storm and flood is raging outside their "clap-board shack with a roof of tin" while their mother lies "frozen on a concrete floor". The song is
pretentious,
pounding, absurdly overblown, and it grabs you by the throat.
[...] Cave's "Tupelo" is instantly biblical, a torrent
of incantinations that drive all rational objections straight out
of mind. A storm is raging, then a flood. The Beast - the Devil -
comes up; God is missing. Time stands still; the laws of nature
are suspended. [13]
The song seems to be a reinvention of the Elvis myth. Cave mixes the myths and images of Christ and Elvis, and creates a synthesis of the two:
And the black
rain come down.
Where no bird can
fly no fish can swim
No fish can swim
Until the King is
born!
Until the King is
Born
In Tupelo!
Tupelo-o-o!
Til the King is
born in Tupelo![14]
It is clear that the "laws of nature are suspended": birds cannot fly and fish cannot swim in Tupelo. It is as if the birth of "the King", i.e. Elvis, will bring order out of chaos and restore the natural state of things. This strongly suggests that Cave likens Elvis Presley to Jesus Christ. Of this comparison, Greil Marcus says in his book Dead Elvis that
[t]he
identification of Elvis with Jesus has been a secret theme of the
Elvis story at least since 1956; since Elvis's death it has been
no secret at all. In 1982 in Memphis, Sam Phillips told a crowd
of fans and followers that the two most important events in
American history were the birth of Jesus and the birth of Elvis
Presley. The audience didn't know how to respond - was this
blasphemy, or the truth? Cave raises such questions and escapes
them, barrels through them. [...] Cave seems to be less making
the music than carried away by it. [15]
The myth surrounding the birth of Elvis Presley seems to be enormously fascinating to Nick Cave. Not only did he elaborate the myth through the song "Tupelo", but he also virtually transferred the birth-scene he had described in the song to his novel. A comparison is in order. First, we take a look at the song:
In a clap-board
shack with a roof of tin
Where the rain
came down and leaked within
A young mother
frozen on a concrete floor
With a bottle
and a box and a cradle of straw
Tupelo-o-o! O
Tupelo!
With a bundle and a box and a cradle of straw
Well Saturday
gives what Sunday steal
And a child is
born on his brother's heels
Come Sunday morn
the first-born's dead
In a shoe-box
tied with a ribbon of red
Tupelo-o-o! Hey
Tupelo!
In a shoe-box
tied with a ribbon of red.[16]
Here we see Cave's version of the birth of the twins Jesse and Elvis Presley. It is suggested that the mother uses some alcoholic beverage as an anaesthetic, and we are given the impression of extreme poverty. The firstborn dies during his first night, and is buried in a shoebox. The place of birth is one major difference in the presentation of the birth of Euchrid and his twin brother, as they are born in the back-seat of an old car. Apart from that, the similarites are striking.
It
was his brother who tore the caul on that, the morning of their
birth, and as if that sole act of assertion was to set an
inverted precedent for inertia in his life to come, Euchrid, then
unnamed, clutched ahold of his brother's heels and slopped into
the world with all the glory of an uninvited guest. [...] Prising
the liqour bottle free from her grubby clutch, for even out cold
she hung on and hung on, Pa broke the bottle carefully on the
car's rusted tail-fin.
Taking
intuition as his midwife and a large shard of glass as his
cutter, he spread his prostat wife-with-child and dowsed her
private parts in peel liquor. And with a chain of oath spilling
from his mouth, and with all the summer insects humming, with the
sun in the sky and not a cloud in sight, with a hellish shriek
and a gush of gleet, two slobbering bundles came tumbling out.
'Jesus!
Two!' cried Pa, but one died soon.[17]
Another difference is the weather. In the song, the rain-storm has already descended, but in the novel Euchrid is born on a sunny day. However, the rain motif comes back with full force later in the book, not surprisingly in the section entitled "The Rain".
Cave's fascination with the tale of the birth of Elvis is obvious, and it has created a powerful song in "Tupelo", as well as strong images in And the Ass Saw the Angel. With the birth of Elvis we have a case where an actual historical event has been turned into a mythical event. Cave’s re-invention of the myth in "Tupelo" creates a strong connection between Elvis and Christ. However, when he reproduces the birth-scene in And the Ass Saw the Angel, we observe an inversion of this connection. Elvis is born on rainy day, when everything seems to be askew: "the hen won't lay no egg/Cain't get that cock to crow" and the streets are no longer streets, but rivers. The narrator of the song claims that nothing will be normal "until the King is born". The birth of Elvis is seen as a positive event that is expected to bring redemption. Euchrid's birth, however, takes place on a sunny day with no clouds in sight. The unnatural rain that his hometown experiences when he is a boy is brought to an end not by him, but by the arrival of the new-born Beth, the very girl he later tries to kill. It is only after his assassination attempt that we see that Euchrid's birth and life is a complete reversal and distortion of the Elvis myth; Elvis brought order, and made the rain go away, but Euchrid brought chaos, or as he says it himself: "ah brought the rain."[18]
As we have seen, it is clear that the novelist Nick Cave leans heavily on the lyricist Nick Cave and vice versa. Nick Cave uses motifs and themes he has already touched upon, he reinvents them or recycles them. Sometimes he even copies a line or sentence almost completely, as he has done with a line from the song "Up Jumped the Devil": "My blood was blacker/Than the chambers of a dead nun's heart."[19] In And the Ass Saw the Angel, we can read: "The moon was a steely prong stabbed into a sky as black and untried as the chambers of a dead nun's heart."[20] At other occasions he uses scenes and motifs that are slightly reworked. This lingering on these themes does not suggest limited talent, but rather an obsession with certain themes and images. This obsession seems to be so strong that it flows through the major part of Nick Cave's work up until 1992, with the release of the album Henry's Dream. Songs like "Papa won't leave you, Henry"[21] with it's rain motif, "Watching Alice"[22] with it's voyeuristic content, "From Her To Eternity"[23] with it's obsessive yearning for love and understanding are a few examples of this fact.
Apart
from the motifs Nick Cave has re-used in his novel, we have also
seen that he has treated the theme of frustrated communication in
his early work. "King Ink" is of course the obvious
example of this, being a lamentation on the difficulties of
communicating and creating. However, "Swampland" can
also fit into that category. It depicts the mechanisms that come
into play when communication breaks down. This song tells us how
someone, presumably the artist, has tried to communicate, and not
been understood. In fact, the consequenses of not being
understood are severe; the artist is symbolically
"killed" because of the failure of his attempt to
communicate with the outside world. As we shall see, these are
themes that are treated seriously in And the Ass Saw the Angel.
[1] Such as "The Carny" from Your Funeral, My Trial (Mute, 1986), "Crow Jane" from Murder Ballads (Mute, 1996), "Up Jumped the Devil" from Tender Prey (Mute, 1987), "Far From Me", The Boatman's Call (Mute, 1997), "Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry", "John Finn's Wife" and "When I First Came to Town" from Henry's Dream (Mute, 1992) .
[2] From Prayers on Fire (4AD, 1981), Hits (4AD, 1992) and Live 1981-2 (4AD, 1999).
[3] Nick Cave, King Ink, (Black Spring Press, 1988), p. 12.
[4] Andrea Cangioli, Maria Alessandra Scalise, Nick Cave (Stampa Alternativa - Nuovi Equilibri, 1995) p. 43.
[5] Ibid., p. 11.
[6] The live recording released on Live 1981-82 has a variation of this line. Here, Nick Cave sings "Express yourself! Say something!".
[7] From Mutiny! (4AD, 1983) & Hits (4AD, 1992).
[8] Cave, King Ink, p. 50.
[9] Ian Johnston, Bad Seed - The Biography of Nick Cave (Abaccus, 1996), p. 132.
[10] Ibid., p. 127.
[11] Cangioli, p. 41.
[12] From The Firstborn is Dead ( Mute, 1984).
[13] Greil Marcus, Dead Elvis - A chronicle of a cultural obsession (Doubleday, New York, 1991), p.121.
[14] Cave, King Ink, p. 112.
[15] Marcus, p. 122.
[16] Cave, King Ink, p. 112.
[17] Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel (Penguin Books, 1990), pp. 7-8.
[18] Ibid. p. 308.
[19] Cave, King Ink II, p. 12.
[20] Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel, p. 266.
[21] From Henry's Dream (Mute, 1992).
[22] From Tender Prey (Mute, 1987).
[23] From From Her To Eternity (Mute, 1983).