The Country Mystic Who Lived ... and Died

MERLIN'S TRIBUTE TO JOHNNY CASH A couple of my posts, including a very recent one, have been on Johnny Cash. I thought I would here give a tribute to the Man In Black that is also a defense of why I think it relevant to discuss his music on a Harry Potter discussion site. This is really important to me because to me both Cash and Potter are instances of art that I feel really gets to the core of the real questions of our lives as muggles seeking the magical, and I think there is a common theme that makes this the case. The Next To Last Album: Solitary Man. In 1996 Cash won the Grammy for best country album with his Unchained, which was a phenomenal album itself. But in between this album and his next album, Solitary Man, he suffered a stroke. I think at that point Cash figured he had one good album left in him before both he and June exited the stage of the wayfaring state, and he wanted it to be his best ... and it was. In truth Cash had one more album left in him after Solitary Man, which would be much more of a closing retirement album, and I'll discuss that one next. But I think at the time Cash did Solitary Man he thought it might be the only one he had time left for and had a message he really wanted to get out, more important than a closing retirement album. I should clarify that I mean a message encompassing a whole album - he had 2 songs on his final album that were a similar message in regards to his career and life, but this did not encompass that whole album. A couple people have noted, in speaking of Solitary Man, that Cash's voice is notably weaker on the album than the album before, and thus say that it's not as strong of an album. But, given what I will discuss below, I think it is a stronger album specifically because of that fact. I think that when you listen to the album and the themes, noticing the weakness of the voice accentuates to you how much Cash wanted to get this theme out, how much desire, determination and drive is there. It reminds me of a book I read for a course in college, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Occasionally Ellison, as the first person narrator, drops out into sort of soliloquies that are all in italics and the style of which strongly resembles a very hot jazz trumpet solo (kind of fitting, Solitary Man reminding me of soliloquies). In one of these pieces he is speaking about an African-American girl singing a solo in a college choir, and he says that her voice sounds too big for her body. This is what Cash's vocals remind me of on this album: a meaning and desire that is to big for the voice so obviously weakened by stroke, all the more effective because it is bursting at the seems. Structure: The structure of Solitary Man is, like the video for "Hurt" from the next album, about Cash's life and the meaning of it. It begins with his "standard fare" throughout his years. There is the "man in black" image in Neil diamond's "Solitary Man"; There is the toughness of his persona in Petty's "Won't back Down"; There is his history in Americana folk and country music in songs like "That Lucky Old Sun" and "Nobody"; and there is his fascination with and appropriation of contemporary music in U2's "One" (In the 80's he had done Springsteen's "Highway Patrolman" and in the 70s he was notorious for covering Dylan tunes like "Don't Think Twice" and He and June doing "It' Ain't me Babe" together on stage) Then comes the center of the album, THE message Cash is hitting: two songs - "And I See a Darkness" by Will Oldham who sings backup on the song, and "Mercy Seat" by Nick Cave and Mark Harvery. The first is the question of our lives, the presence of the darkness that haunts our existence ever since a man and a woman and a serpent met and talked beside a mysterious tree. It is a song, in short, about the dementors that guard Azkaban Prison. Rather interesting, is it not, that one of the most important projects to Cash in his earlier career was playing in Folsom and San Quentin prisons? In the recent movie the warden at Folsom asks Cash not to sing any songs that remind them they are in prison and he replies, "Why? You think they've forgotten?" "Mercy Seat" is downright haunting. The primary image of the piece is that of the electric chair viewed by a death row inmate as mercy and release from suffering. This is basically the effect the dementors have on us. The song is meant to drive home one strong point, to drive it home pointedly like that spike one the wall of Michael's doorless cell in Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross: suicide is wrong, BUT you MUST understand WHY it is so wrong, and WHY it is so tempting to some - if you are ever to help those tempted by it. NOTE: The bishop of the diocese I live in, Wheeling-Charleston WV, Rev. Michael Bransfield, did his MA Philosophy thesis on a French philosopher named Camou, who asserted that suicide is the main question for philosophy - and I would have to agree because I think it is a defining question of the Incarnation and redemptive work of Christ: what is the difference between the suicide and the martyr, and what does it say about the meaning of human life? It's simultaneously a VERY fine line and an unbridgeable chasm ... you find the same in The Ball and the Cross when the two assistants jump from Lucifer's flying ship and only Turnbull and McIan know there is hope for them because of the dreams they had where they did the same for the right reasons. The answer to these fundamental questions of life is given in the next two songs on the album, "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)?" (a love song), and "Field of Diamonds", a song of wonder at the beauty in life. The next to last song has a double meaning for Cash, I think. It is his standard country tune with tongue in cheek about "love gone bad" but I think the title "I'm Leaving Now" also refers to where he believed he was in his musical career as well as his life. The Last song is an old traditional that I also play a lot and which my father enjoys listening to me play, "Wayfaring Stranger." The Church standardly refers to human life as "the wayfaring state" or "the pilgrim state." I think Cash used this song as a capstone to the album, saying "there's my/our life and what we have done with it, there's the deep problems and there's what I believe are the answers, so where are we left after all that while we still travel the road of earth?" - we are wayfaring strangers. The Last Album: Cash's last album was The Man Comes Around. Like I said, this is his retirement album - in 2 ways. The First was that I think John new the end was coming. Although June was in the video for "Hurt" which indicates she was alive when the album was released, I think John had a feeling their flight was leaving soon. The second way it is a retirement album is that it is not necessarily a "tough" album as an album as a whole - but that is ok. Paul simon put out an album called You're the One, and I heard some say "well, I just didn't like it the way I liked Graceland", and my thought was "the songs were pretty decent - but, hey, Simon had one hell of a career and I think he deserves a "wind-down" album or two in his retirement years." On WTMCA, for the most part of the album you have Cash continuing his fascination with personal/religious songs by other artists, and while I would not have chosen Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" ... to each his own. You have Cash singing old standards like "Danny Boy," "Streets of Loredo" and the Hank Williams SR classic "So Lonesome I Could Cry." You also have Cash giving a smiling farewell wave by closing the album with "We'll Meet Again." But the album does pack one Wallop, and that is the two opening songs. "The Man Comes Around," is an adaptation of the Book of Revelations (St. John's Apocalypse). If a man is nearing the end and thinking about what it's all about, the last book in the Bible and the most mysterious in the whole Bible is a pretty natural topic. The real wallop is the cover of Nine-Inch-Nails "Hurt." I already covered some of that in talking about the video, but here I would note one thing about the video and that is the closing. It closes with two shots: young Cash rising, and old Cash saying goodbye. The first is black and white from the Sun Records years, of Cash on stage with the lights fading (a televised performance). The second is the gripping one, Cash at the piano, after the last note has sounded, closing the lid on the keys and putting his musical career to rest (at least in it's "big world" or officially public aspect). Pretty much the span of his musical career and public life from beginning to end. The End As I said in my previous post, once June exited the stage, John basically just grabbed his coat with a hearty "I'm coming, Dear." What this reminds me of is Dumbledore's comments, in book 1, on Nicholas Flammel and his wife setting their affairs in order and going to bed after a VERY long day. May John and June Rest in the Peace of the LORD.