{"id":10880,"date":"2019-09-09T15:47:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T14:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10880"},"modified":"2019-09-26T11:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T10:40:00","slug":"excerpt-from-forgotten-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10880","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt from Forgotten Work<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Excerpt from Forgotten Work<\/em><\/h5>\n

 
\nLike all young bands, they bandied names about
\nAll evening. Lou, the lead guitar, liked \u201cLout,\u201d
\nA word that clubbed you like a cord of wood.
\nIt\u2019s dumb, said Lou, but arty dumb, like blood-
\nSmeared dolls deployed as drumsticks\u2014Henry Rollins
\nDoes Dada. Jim, on keys, preferred \u201cThe Dolphins,\u201d
\nAfter the timeless ballad by Fred Neil.
\nNeil\u2019s was the sort of myth that would appeal
\nTo men like Jim. His lungs were honeycomb,
\nHis low voice, ladled out. A man must roam
\nWas Neil\u2019s recurring theme; he wrote a few
\nGreat songs, swore off recording, then withdrew
\nTo Xanadu (read: Florida). In exile
\nFor several decades, Neil would not defile
\nHis myth by adding even one more note
\nOf music to his oeuvre. Where a boat
\nWas docked he could be found, his profile prow-
\nLike, pointed at the sea.
\n                                           \u201cI think that\u2019s how
\nGreat artists\u2014or great bands\u2014should be,\u201d said Jim,
\nAs if inside an auditorium
\nAnd not his unnamed band\u2019s rehearsal space.
\n\u201cThey should be hermits, right? They should efface
\nThemselves.\u201d Because he led the group\u2014composed
\nIts songs\u2014Jim sometimes went full lecture mode.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike, take The La\u2019s, who put out very little
\nProduct,\u201d said Jim. The La\u2019s had dared to whittle
\nAt one album for, like, years. The main
\nSongwriter couldn\u2019t make the sound his brain
\nContained. He ran through personnel, request-
\nEd miracles: a \u201c\u201860s mixing desk.\u201d
\nOne was supplied, but then rebuffed. Its pixies
\nHad fled; the desk, he said, was missing \u201860s
\nDust.
\n          The record company relieved
\nLee Mavers (connoisseur of dust; aggrieved
\nAuteur) of all the tape amassed to date,
\nAnd forced an album out that turned out great.
\nBut Mavers, thwarted father, disavowed
\nHis child. Much like Neil, he somehow wowed
\nThe world against his will, then stopped recording.
\nMuch like Neil\u2019s, his genius was for hoarding.
\nBoth lives proved a lesson: less is more
\nThan what most artists try to bargain for.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I am made more beautiful by losses,\u201d
\nAdded Jim. \u201cThat line is Howard Moss\u2019s.
\n\u2018The Pruned Tree.\u2019\u201d (Jim liked quoting poetry.)
\nAn editor, Moss knew that shears can free
\nA shape from shaggy chaos; that life requires
\nEdits; that first drafts should be filed in pyres;
\nThat most of what we make\u2014not just the rough
\nWork\u2014should be aired in public, puff by puff,
\nBy way of chimney. Artists need more patience.
\nThey flood the market, drown their reputations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d said Jim, \u201cwe need a hit before
\nWe vanish and become the stuff of lore.\u201d
\nSilence. And then: \u201cI\u2019m just not sure,\u201d said Lou,
\n\u201cThat I\u2019m a dolphin.\u201d Everyone laughed\u2014Jim, too.<\/p>\n

Jim\u2019s space, a cramped garage they\u2019d come to hate,
\nWas like a coop designed to incubate
\nAn attitude: you have to learn to thrive
\nIn limits. Jim had even had to hive
\nOff half the space; a wall of boxes, stacked
\nLike Marshall Amps, deterred (by literal fact
\nOf matter) arms inclined to windmill widely.
\nIt boxed the singer in; he couldn\u2019t idly
\nWander off and roam the room the way
\nA star, unmoored from mic stand, starts to stray
\nFrom band, or buoys himself upon the surf
\nOf upturned palms, or strolls the stadium turf
\nTo single out and serenade one fan
\nAs frond-like arms brush by. Jim didn\u2019t plan
\nTo pen his band like veal, of course. (His boxes
\nHad nowhere else to go.) But paradoxes
\nAppealed to him. He liked the thought that jail
\nProduced a form of freedom; that a wail
\nWithin a cell, hemmed in by razor wire,
\nWas a form of song.
\n                                     The book Pale Fire<\/em>
\nWas his favourite thing. If you behead
\n\u201cThis centaur-work\u201d (\u201chalf poem, half prose,\u201d as said
\nBy Mary McCarthy) leaving for the vultures
\nThe torso (prose) what\u2019s left is Western culture\u2019s
\nMost brilliant verse, by one John Shade. It dared
\nTo rhyme and scheme. (Most men are now quite scared
\nTo seem traditional or scan as staid.)
\nThe author, though, was fake. Behind \u201cJohn Shade\u201d
\nNabokov lurked like Oz. His book required
\nHe fabricate a poet the world admired,
\nWhich meant Nabokov had to ghostwrite first-
\nRate verse. The lesson: art can be coerced.
\nTo write about a brilliant poet, Nabokov
\nWas forced to be one. What a feat: to knock off,
\nBecause your novel needs it, verse to order.
\nIt\u2019s almost like a painter needs a corner
\nTo paint himself clean out of. It\u2019s almost like
\nThe most confining place to place a mic
\nIs where a restless man, weighed down with wings
\nTo stretch, should force himself to stand and sing.
\nPerhaps the cramped garage just might inspire,
\nJim thought. And then: \u201cHow \u2018bout the name Pale Fire?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from Forgotten Work   Like all young bands, they bandied names about All evening. Lou, the lead guitar, liked \u201cLout,\u201d A word that clubbed you like a cord of wood. It\u2019s dumb, said Lou, but arty dumb, like blood- Smeared dolls deployed as drumsticks\u2014Henry Rollins Does Dada. Jim, on keys, preferred \u201cThe Dolphins,\u201d After […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[379,380],"tags":[388],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nExcerpt from Forgotten Work - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10880\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Excerpt from Forgotten Work - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Excerpt from Forgotten Work   Like all young bands, they bandied names about All evening. 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