Why Would Anyone Care? Morrissey Autobiography Review

I am asking myself that question about my view of Morrissey's book.  (Not about the book itself, of course.  Millions want to know!) It seems an appropriately Morrissey-esque question as I serve up my opinion.  I kept thinking as I read this book how likely Morrissey would be to despise me if he knew me (he despises so many) and how I would actually be a little afraid of him if we ever met.  Not much risk of that, thankfully.  So here's the review.

Autobiography by Morrissey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you have ever wanted to visit Morrissey's inner life (and I guess I have) it's in here. Quel surprise! It is a difficult, uncomfortable place to spend time. He is so vulnerable and so judgmental all at once, I kept thinking as I read (or skimmed the dull Morrissey's revenge bits) that it must be exhausting to be him (or be around him). I was, however, interested to hear about his family background and to see the few photographs of family that are reproduced here. There is an incredible charisma on view there, so it is not really true that he is the son and heir of nothing in particular. Also, among the screeds and puffed out calendar entries there are passages of pure poetry. The one near the end, where he is alone on a Mexican beach and feeling tired, is a passage I intend to go back to. This is not a careful or crafted book but it's his book and he is really something special.


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Morrissey's Best Song

Here's a picture that I took in a London market in Islington (near Camden).  It's here because I don't like blog posts with no pictures and because I liked these stamps.  (I bought three, then left them on a London bus. But that's another story).

Camden is a borough of London.  It has a famous market and a famous canal.  It's interesting, like all London neighborhoods.  Morrissey sings about it in "Come back to Camden," a somewhat obscure number in the Morrissey canon that first appeared on his 2004 album You Are The Quarry.  It was co-written by Boz Boorer.  (I looked Boorer up and he's famous, at least inside the music industry.)

I am a longtime Morrissey and Smiths fan but not an obsessive one.  I heard the song for the first time only about six months ago when it spun up on my Pandora playlist.  I  stopped what I was doing to listen. I  heard it again, made note of the title, and bought it on iTunes.  Then I bought it again when  iTunes told me that my computer wasn't authorized to play the track.  (I wondered if prickly Morrissey was requiring hyper-vigilance by Apple to make sure no one's cheating with his music).

I have since decided that "Come back to Camden" is Morrissey's greatest song. (Hold on, there's a link below to a fan-made video so you can listen after I've shut up). I admire the song for the way Morrissey and Boorer invoke the real Camden, with poetry that stands inside the circle of W.H. Auden - e.g.:

Drinking tea with the taste of the Thames, 
sullenly on a chair on the pavement; 
here you'll find my thoughts and I,
 and here is the very last plea from my heart. 
My heart.  
For evermore. 

Where taxi drivers never stop talking, under slate grey Victorian sky, 
Here you'll find despair and I, and here I am 
every last inch of me is yours...YOURS...For evermore. 

That physical Camden is thus summoned economically and powerfully, as is the damaged survivor of a broken love affair:

Your leg came to rest against mine, then you lounged with knees up 
and apart, and me and my heart - we knew... We just knew...

What makes the song truly great, however, is that "Camden" is also a metaphor: a garden of Eden where love bloomed until the shocking eviction.  The hopeless plea at the end of the song,

Come back to Camden and I'll be good, I'll be good!

is delivered with elemental desperation, as heart rending as the screams of a confused child in a hospital.  It is made more searing by our certain knowledge that there is no getting back to that Garden.

In his autobiography (which I am reading now and which is surprising and not surprising all at once - more on that in another post), Morrissey said: "The magical properties of recorded noise had trapped me from 1965 onwards [note, that Morrissey was six in 1965]. Song made a difference to everything, and permitted expressions that otherwise had no way through."(emphasis added).  When I read that, my thoughts flew to "Come back to Camden:" which conveys this world of meaning in its tidy, listenable four minutes and fourteen seconds, thanks to the singing.

All songs are more than the sum of their parts but this song: words, music, and that voice, carry a payload all out or proportion to the apparently modest package.  I hope you will like it as much as I do.

Last Night I Dreamt of New York City...

I dreamt that my fifteen-year-old daughter had rented a nice one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise somewhere in mid-town.  I was impressed. How had she managed this at fifteen? I wondered in my dream.  I have been underestimating her, I thought, as I noted that the three rooms were all decent-sized.  I was also worried, however, because there was something menacing about the crepuscular streets below.  Also, though her roommates had not yet arrived, a lot of people had left skis and snowboards in her living room. I was worried these ski owners were taking advantage of her and apartment in Manhattan - and then I woke up.

I know dreams are among the dullest topics of conversation but indulge me. I'm struggling here.  I am trying to stay awake until a grown-up's bedtime.  I am blaming my dream-filled morning for my fatigue.  That and work.  My daughter recently got her first job and she's showing a certain terrifying initiative.  Manhattan is down there waiting. Apparently, I have things on my mind.

OK.  So it is now just past 9 PM and I think I can retire without being  positively geriatric.  Actually, one bit of excitement remains in this short evening. I just downloaded Morrissey's autobiography to my iPad and I'm going to read it as soon as I get my teeth brushed.  I'll report back here.  Here's what they're saying about it over on Goodreads.  What kind of dreams might Morrissey's life story trigger?

Good night.  Thanks for bearing with me.

Forget Laboring on Labor Day - Free Reading! News of England and Top Tips

That book about which I have been blathering on about for the last year or more will be free for your Kindle (or Kindle app) over Labor Day Weekend.  To be more precise, it will be free to download  from midnight, Pacific time on August 30 to midnight September 2, 2013.

Here's a the link, for your linking convenience.

IN OTHER NEWS

I bought a plane ticket yesterday BOS to LHR - or, for you non baggage handlers, that's Boston to London.  I'll be over in Blighty from September 15 to the 23.

This trip is a case of how a mighty oak (trip to England) may grow from a small acorn (a twitter post).
I know: Please to explain!

Sometime in July The Paris Review (which I don't read but which I do follow on Twitter) posted this picture:

I had to get a closer look at that, obviously.  

Turns out that William Gladstone left his very fabulous personal library in trust for the public.  That's it, in the picture.  The library (and his whole estate) is in Flintshire in north Wales and (are you sitting down?) you can stay there!  For not very much.  Read all about it here.

So, I booked a room the very night I ran across that twitter post.  The deposit was non refundable and I figured I would be forced thereby to actually go to England.  

Of course, my head cooled thereafter.  It's a hassle scheduling things at work and the kids (my son is away on a school trip to Maine that week), it's expensive blah blah.  But I got a shove over the Atlantic from our English friends who are visiting Vermont as we speak and who leaned on the family Chief Financial Officer (not me) to allow the visit. They held out promises of accommodations for the days when I am not in Wales, tours of Oxford, London bookshops etc. into the mix.  And so.... BOS to LHR it is.

Another big pull was exerted by the fact that G's Library is only about half an hour from Erddig Hall, in Wrexham, Wales.  Erdigg is the National Trust property on which I based the fictional Quarter Sessions in the above-mentioned book.  I spent years reading about Erddig as I was writing and I feel like I am making a kind of pilgrimage.

Here is a little bit of that magic place as well:

So, that's my big news.  I promise to report back.  

ONE LAST THING...

I like to provide the occasional top tip here.  My way of giving back because I am that kind of generous person.  I listen to Pandora these days when I am at my computer and have been introduced to a lot of music that I love and that I couldn't believe that I had missed (some of it is not new).

So, I am here to recommend to you Knuddlemaus by Ulrich Schnauss

(nothing to look at in this video, but you can hear the music)

and most especially, this Morrissey Song: Come Back to Camden.

This song has such a hold on me right now that I had to research it on Wikipedia.  It was written by Morrissey and Boz Boorer, (whom I probably saw when I went to that Morrissey concert in Burlington last fall though I had no idea at the time what a big deal he is, musically speaking).  I am wondering if one of them might be the reincarnation of W.H. Auden or something because this song is a work of genius.  (Thank you, Youtube fans, for posting...)

You Are Repressed, But You're Remarkably Dressed

I didn't get any takers on the little challenge I set out at the end of the last post (from whence did I steal the title of that last post?) So, rather than keep you all in suspense for another minute, I am just going to tell you. It was from the Morrissey song on the Bona Drag album, "Hairdresser on Fire." This post title is another bit of lyric that sticks...

"Hairdresser on Fire" comes from the mid-career, post-Smiths, Morrissey ouevre, when he was still young and tormented. (I understand that lately he has settled a bit and might even have taken a stab at some form of romance).

There are a couple of live versions on Youtube, but I prefer to listen again to the one that plays in my head, from the days when Bona Drag was a regular in my car's CD rotation. Some fan painstakingly collected all these views of M and overlayed them on that familiar track, if you want to hear it for yourself.



Remember me to Sloane Square.

A little more follow up on the last post, keeping with our U.K. theme, I did make it to the British Invasion Car Show in Stowe last weekend. The best part of it was listening to the Beatles tribute band, "Britishmania" (not to be confused with Beatlesmania (TM)). They played at a block party on Stowe's lovely Main Street on Friday night. The kids danced. I bobbed my head and sang along and watched the other people in the audience - New England types who did not want to get too close to the stage and who also limited their display of interest to headbobbing and singing along. Late in the evening (like, 8:30) a few people migrated out of the beer cage (it was a very well-regulated event and beer was sold only in a small area enclosed by snow fencing) and some of those people moved their legs and arms a bit and shouted requests. We all sang "Yellow Submarine" together and bonded.

Adding to the festive atmosphere were all these fabulous old Jaguars and MGs and Minis and Sprites and even a Rolls or two that were parked up and down the street which was otherwise closed to traffic.

On Sunday, the Understudy and I went up to the show field and caught the tail end of the main show. Well, mostly we shopped feverishly in the goods tent as the vendors were packing up all around us. You'll be relieved to hear, I am sure, that we we were able to buy a bunch of things emblazoned with Union Jacks, albeit under pressure. We also got to see at least a few cars and I managed a few photos (above and below). These pictures don't do the cars justice because we had to hurry and also because it was too sunny and bright to get the romance of the things. Still, here ya go.