Music and experience become intertwined. This is the principle of one´s life having a "soundtrack."
22 years ago, on a late January day, I finished reading the last chapter of Gabriel García Márquez´s Cien años de soledad. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was bleak and white and snowy outside. I was listening to Peter Gabriel´s So album, and the song "Mercy Street" was playing as I read the last paragraphs of the novel. As a consequence, whenever I hear that song, even these many, many years later, I am thrust back into the dissolution of the world at the end of that novel, despite the fact that the song and novel bear only a distant thematic relation – perhaps something on the axis of dreaming and perception and subjectivity.
What I´m listening to right now.
Peter Gabriel´s "Mercy Street," in point of fact, is dedicated to the poet Anne Sexton, and treats some aspects of her biography. Here are the lyrics.
looking down on empty streets, all she can see
are the dreams all made solid
are the dreams all made real
all of the buildings, all of those cars
were once just a dream
in somebody's head
she pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
she pictures a soul
with no leak at the seam
let's take the boat out…
…wait until darkness
let's take the boat out…
…wait until darkness comes
nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey
nowhere in the suburbs
in the cold light of day
there in the midst of it so alive and alone
words support like bone
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your inside out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
…swear they moved that sign
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms
pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth
tugging at the darkness, word upon word
confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
to the priest – he's the doctor
he can handle the shocks
dreaming of the tenderness – the tremble in the hips
of kissing Mary's lips
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your insides out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
…swear they moved that sign
looking for mercy
in your daddy's arms
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
Anne, with her father is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves on the sea.