Rowling and Tom Waits

No official news here - just something fun, and an argument in support of my once statement that the closest thing I can think of to the way the weird sisters are portrayed (as distinctly different from the banal teeny-bopper movie four punky-grungy-poppy-gothy band) is Tom Waits. I was piddling around this evening and pulled out my guitar and a sheets of Waits lyrics and chords I made up once from books of his songs I like. One that I always like to play is called "Tango till they're sore." The opening line/verse goes "well, you play that tarantella, all the hounds will start to roar, the boys all go to hell and then the cubans hit the floor, they drive along the pipeline, they tango till they're sore, they take apart their nightmares and they leave them by your door." Now the song as a whole shares certain themes with Ms Rowling's work, such as death ("make sure they play my theme song, I guess daisies will have to do, just get me to New Orleans and paint shadows on the pew"" ... but what caught my attention was that word "tarantella." I thought, I have read that recently ... while I was listening to book 2 coming back out here. And indeed I had. There is that spell Draco hits Harry with first in the dueling club in book 2 and also with which somebody (Dolohov I think but can't be sure without looking it up) hits Neville in the DOM in book 5 (remember, that is how he breaks the prophecy). Tarantallegra. If you look up tarantella on dictionary.com you read: a rapid, whirling southern Italian dance in very quick sextuple, originally quadruple, meter, usually performed by a single couple, and formerly supposed to be a remedy for tarantism. Which is pretty much what happens to Harry and Neville: Neville's legs are kind of flailing around and "the next second Harry's legs began to jerk around out of his control in a kind of two-step" (CS 192). In connection with the theme/image-set of psychological malady, the "disease" which the tarantella was though to be a cure for, tarantism, is described thus on dictionary.com: a mania characterized by an uncontrollable impulse to dance, esp. as prevalent in southern Italy from the 15th to the 17th century, popularly attributed to the bite of the tarantula. In addition we all know of Rowling's love of Italian Renaissance (cf John Granger's work) ... Now of course, for what I now refer to as the "proof-mongers" (those who focus on "proofs" instead of reading a piece of fiction/art for the beauty of the rough edges and nuances) - no, neither of these mention have anything to do with the band the weird sisters - and so I can't say "hey, everybody, I have proof that I have a real world referent for that band ... I can prove it! come and look!" - which was never my aim. My point is ... Waits would be a good match for what the music of the Weird Sisters sounds like for two reasons: 1) compare Waits music and instrumentation with the same elements described of the Wierd Sisters in book 4 (I think DD is described as doing some funky sort of waltz with Madam Maxime at the Yule Ball); and 2) They think of the same things, like the tarantella. My real point is ... this is damn funny. Rowling has a very wry and great sense of the humorous. A jinx that disables your opponent by making them dance a funky Italian quick-step dance ... now THAT is downright hilarious. UPDATE 1/26/08 Ok ... so I am reading Foucault - no small task in itself lol ... and way too long to explain, but he does mention Campanella - and in trying to track down stuff on origins of Abracadabra/Avada Kedavra I came across a book tracing development of theory in medieval magic, big emphasis on Campanella, a souther Italian (like the tarantella) monk ... I have had some friends cast aspersion on whether or not Rowling is really that intelligent and eductated ... she knows her stuff ... I really have to get more into this realm BUT, since that last was sort of not not necessarily really tightly connected with the first part of the post, this other thing presented itself to me while I was listening to book 2 while riding the recumbent bike in the gym (new years resolution, another long story) ... speaking of how funny this whole "jinx of dancing" is ... the spell that Harry hit Draco with first was "rictum-sempra" - the last part of course being the sempra we discussed so much in the Sectum Sempra as "ever cut - but here it is "ever laughing" - make the unable to stop laughing as a weapon - effing ingenious.