| The Flaming Lips – Do You Realize?? Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| It is virtually impossible to experience this song live and not hug the person/people you're with. | |
| Genesis – The Cinema Show Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Yeah, I know it's been over 2.5 years since someone (SurferDave) mentioned T.S. Eliot and over a year since anyone commented on this song at all, but just for the record, Cinema Show IS in fact a pastiche of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, at least in part. That is, it's not really about the Tiresias myth *directly* but rather a tongue-in-cheek version of the the scene between the clerk and typist in The Wasteland which refers to that myth. Rather than get into specifics, let me just quote the relevant part of the poem. Compare with the lyrics and you will see all the parallels and how Cinema Show is the cheerful, comedic counterpart to The Wasteland's bleak, tragic allusion to Tiresias as a symbol of gender duality. In the song it's all a matter of fun and conquest whereas in the poem it almost sounds like rape. The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest - I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . . |
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