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THE SONGWRITER AS POET:
IAN MCCULLOCH AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRADITION
Kristin F. Smith
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Chapter 10: Impediments to the Creative Drive
Threats to creativity do not all stem from the marketplace or the public forum. Forces within the artist himself may prove every bit as corrosive. Chiaro dell' Erma, Rossetti's young painter hero in Hand and Soul, suffers his first crisis of creativity after meeting a famous artist and discovering that the man has less talent than he does:
"But the lesson which he had now learned, of how small a greatness might win fame, and how little there was to strive against, served to make him torpid…. Also, Pisa was a larger and more luxurious city than Arezzo…."[DGR; Hand and Soul; 1850]
Distracted by beautiful women, music and "gardens laid out for pleasure", Chiaro regains his course only when he learns he has a rival of true ability, who may surpass him. Thus challenged, Rossetti reports, Chiaro "now took to work diligently…." [DGR; Hand and Soul; 1850]
The young McCulloch's Poet encounters a character similarly afflicted by procrastination in Crocodiles:
"Met someone just the other day
He said wait until tomorrow
I said hey, whatcha doing today?
He said I'm gonna do it tomorrow" [IM; Crocodiles; CROCODILES; 1980]
For the Poet, as for Chiaro, the answer to such loss of focus, lack of will or failure of nerve lies in personal challenge, however impolitely expressed:
"Don't be scared when it gets loud
When your skin begins to shake
'Cos you don't wanna look back
You gotta look tall
Gotta see those creeps crawl" [IM; Crocodiles; CROCODILES; 1980]
McCulloch reiterates this point and celebrates the challenge a few songs later in Pictures on My Wall:
"Ooh, we should have
Should have got it right tonight
People come, I count everyone
Faces burning
Hearts beating
Nowhere left for us to run
--------------------------------
Don't you just love it
All?" [IM; Pictures on My Wall; CROCODILES; 1980]
There is something wonderfully vibrant about these lines. They are the work of youth, and they speak of adventure ahead and a world to be engaged with every fiber of nerve and sinew.
But challenge is as likely to come from inner demons as the world outside. McCulloch has written often of these inborn destroyers of the self. An early and significant work, Over the Wall [1981] gives us two vivid depictions of the demons at their craft. In the first, primal impulses push to the surface and interfere with reasoned "solutions" as the Poet complains: "the monkey on my back/Won't stop laughing" [IM; Over the Wall; HEAVEN UP HERE]. Monkeys appear with some regularity in McCulloch's earlier work, signifying ideas of mental and spiritual evolution.
The metaphor becomes more visceral a few lines later:
"There's something to be said for you
And your hopes of higher ruling
But the slug on my neck
Won't stop chewing" [IM; Over the Wall; HEAVEN UP HERE; 1981]
The studied detachment of the first two lines gives added force to the shocking image that follows. Whatever man's potential, McCulloch tells us, he is held back by those things which drain his will, his energy and his aspirations.
Rossetti understood this quite well. Though he expressed the idea with different metaphors, he too recognized the inner forces which eat away at resolve and innervate the soul:
"The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered…
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I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self…." [DGR; Lost Days; 1862]
Both Rossetti and McCulloch write much of missed opportunities, wrong-turnings, and the need to 'start again'. In CANDLELAND [1989], McCulloch sorts through these themes in the context of creativity and will, the conflict between public success and individual vision and the desire to recapture things which have been lost. The World is Flat, an enigmatic and interesting song from this period, recounts a dialog between the Poet and the Beloved. Like Rossetti, McCulloch inclines toward pronoun ambiguity, rendering unclear who is speaking and who is being addressed in the last stanza:
"You said you know the world is flat
Nothings gonna change your mind
You know the only way is back
To gather what you've left behind" [IM; The World is Flat; single; 1989]
Whether this refers to the creative world or some other aspect of life, it speaks of the need to return to one's true vision, to find again those ideals and principles which have perhaps fallen by the way. Rossetti uses a similar image in The Landmark [1854], a sonnet about his own creative journey. His Poet realizes he has missed his way and must return, to begin again:
"Was that the landmark? What,--the foolish well
Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
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Was that my point of turning?--I had thought
The stations of my course should rise unsought,
As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.
But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
That the same goal is still on the same track" [DGR; The Landmark; 1854]
But no artist truly attains his goals. The creative mind always reaches for more than it can grasp, to paraphrase Browning. And the world sets traps for us all. Pre-Raphaelite poetry is prone to self-abnegation. Rossetti, more than does McCulloch, writes of ultimate failure, of things which have not and never will be achieved. His personified images of abstract qualities give these poems immediacy. They draw us in. Lost On Both Sides [1854] describes his Poet's unrealized hopes in poetry and painting. These are, he tells us, like two men, bitter rivals over the same woman, who realize upon her death that:
"Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell" [DGR; Lost On Both Sides; 1854]
This depiction of hopeless rivalry reconciled is carried into his Poet's own soul, as Rossetti changes the imagery, creating a metaphor complicated in concept, yet simple to visualize:
"So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since:
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns." [DGR; Lost On Both Sides; 1854]
This elaborate little drama has a detached, intellectual quality. We admire the imagery more than we feel it. Fourteen years later, A Superscription [1868] presents a more direct -- and terrifying - portrait of lost aspirations:
"Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell…." [DGR: A Superscription; 1868]
Rossetti does not tell us just what this thing looks like. Instead, he describes concrete actions - the apparition holds out to the Poet two symbols of Art -- a shell and a mirror:
"…where that is seen
Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen" [DGR: A Superscription; 1868]
This abstract concept has transformed itself into a very real, demonic presence, seemingly inscribed ('superscripted') upon the Poet's very soul. The sonnet ends with what is arguably the most chilling -- and memorable - line ever written by Rossetti:
"Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,
Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes." [DGR: A Superscription; 1868]
McCulloch engages the demons of might-have-been most notably in the bleak and chilly Never [BURNED; 1995]. Rather than a confrontation with abstractions incarnate, we find his Poet all by himself and shivering in the midst of McCulloch's one and only lyrical blizzard. He has fallen into a "spell" and lost himself - in several senses. Worst of all, he sees "No way home". 'Home' carries strong connotations in McCulloch's lexicon, and estrangement from it is akin to Dorothy's exile from Kansas.
"Everything is gone/And I'm alone", the Poet tells us, simply, of this devastating development. He acknowledges his troubles are of his own making, confessing that:
"I thought I had the answers
Now I don't know" [IM; Never; BURNED; 1995]
In other words, he has led himself into a very biting Dantean pickle.
Like the demons of Rossetti's A Superscription, 'might-have-been', 'no-more', 'too-late' and 'farewell' hang heavily over the Poet as he laments opportunities forever gone: "All the things we'll never do". With glum resignation, he declares:
"So mister you
And mister me
Both are people
We'll never be" [IM; Never; BURNED; 1995]
There is much to praise in this song, including the uncompromising ending:
"I feel like going straight, but then again
No" [IM; Never; BURNED; 1995]
Never exemplifies the essential honesty of McCulloch's work. His characters do not always choose correctly, and he is tough enough not to contrive a happy ending. This parallels Pre-Raphaelite notions of 'truth': painting a thing exactly as it is, without adding a rosy glow. It is also analogous to Rossetti's key doctrine of the "inner standing-point" [Note 8]: a story should be told from the viewpoint of someone with a visceral comprehension of it, not an outside observer.
McCulloch is an optimistic writer (unlike Rossetti), and he rarely touches the level of futility evident in Never. Razor's Edge, from the same period, covers similar ground ("Lost my way at the water's edge"), but with a cheerily jaunty attitude ("You really had to be there"). Rather than the despair of Never, we get a carefully balanced assessment:
"These are the things that are gone
These are the dreams that can still be mine
These are the nights that remain
These are the nights I dreamed upon
Seeking that sun going down on the fire" [Razor's Edge; single; 1995]
The last line bespeaks transience; the sun moves ever closer to the western horizon. The "fire" could be either the creative flame or the life force. McCulloch uses the word in both senses, and in artists the two meanings often intermingle.
Flowers [2001] continues the analysis begun in Razor's Edge. The mood is reflective. "I've been laying down the flowers", the Poet tells us in the opening line; "I've been waiting in the sun" [IM; Flowers; FLOWERS; 2001]. He is, he remarks with nice ambiguity, "Still perfecting imperfection". He remains equally ambiguous regarding what brought him to this pass, though not about its end result:
"I even saw it come….
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Knew that I'd lost everything
Everything I'd won" [IM; Flowers; FLOWERS; 2001]
In the years between Never and Flowers, the Poet has learned how to take a hit. He contemplates his failures - and his own role in them -- with detachment, offering a sardonic toast:
"Here's to all the things we'll never
Here's to all we could have done
Here's to what became whatever
Whatever web we spun…." [IM; Flowers; FLOWERS; 2001]
These lines hold recognition of botched aspirations, world-weariness, sadness and regret. But McCulloch does not end with a catalog of losses. Unlike Never, Flowers tenders the bare hope of better days to come, and suggests that there are still things to strive for. The Poet reiterates his opening statement:
"I've been laying down the flowers
I've been waiting in the sun
I've been counting down the hours…." [IM; Flowers; FLOWERS; 2001]
Two interpretations come to mind, and McCulloch probably intends both. We plant flowers - or, with a greater leap of faith, bulbs -- because we expect them to grow and bloom. The Poet is not 'sitting' in the sun, or collapsed into a hammock; he is "waiting….counting down the hours". Future action seems anticipated. Perhaps he is going to 'start again' and redeem his losses. Or, perhaps he is simply making a philosophical statement: whatever happens, this Poet is not troubled. He is cultivating his garden.
Note 8: "But the motive powers of art … demand first of all an inner standing-point. The heart of such a mystery as this must be plucked from the very world in which it beats or bleeds; and the beauty and pity, the self-questionings and all-questionings which it brings with it, can come with full force only from the mouth of one alive to its whole appeal…." [DGR; The Stealthy School of Criticism; 1871]. Rossetti is here defending his poem Jenny [1848/1869], which deals with prostitution. See Note 9 below. Back to text
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An Annotated Discography: Works by Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, Electrafixion and Glide (off-site link)
Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Electrafixion: Album Reviews (off-site link)
The Bunnymen Concert Log: A comprehensive, annotated listing of concert dates, venues and set lists for Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Electrafixion (off-site link)
Bunnymen.info - The (Unofficial) News Source (off-site link, run by Charles Pham)
Aldems' Political Quotations: Apt and Otherwise
BlindFool and Scruffy Dog: Dilettantes-at-Large
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