A Classics Challenge -- September Post

This month's prompt for November's Autumn's A Classics Challenge is to find a piece of music that goes with the mood of the classic we are reading.

I am currently reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. In North and South, after a drastic change in lifestyle and insight in her father, Margaret, the protagonist, finds her family moving from the south of England, a country area that she is in love with, to the factory town of Milton in northern England. Margaret suffers many changes in her life in addition to the change of location, some as a result of the move and some perhaps not, but through it all, despite her good attitude, she longs for the south (at least to my knowledge... I'm not quite finished with the book).

Something about fall always makes me think of Simon and Garfunkel, so the first song that popped into my head while I was trying to think of songs that have to do with missing home is "Homeward Bound." While Margaret has a pretty good attitude throughout everything, I do think she would have related to this song if North and South had taken place during the sixties instead of the 19th century. :)

Literary Lyrics: Helplessness Blues by the Fleet Foxes

I'm told that the Fleet Foxes are the ultimate in hipster listening. I don't know if I qualify as a hipster, because I really don't care, although I certainly do shop at Urban Outfitters and like to eat granola with soy milk. I love this song for two reasons: It reminds me of Simon and Garfunkel, who are of course my dearest musical loves, and the lyrics are great.

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique

Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see

And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be

A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be

I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do

I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you

Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"

To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe

I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see

Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak

Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself

What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf

I'll come back to you someday soon myself

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore

And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore

Someday I'll be like the man on the screen

- Robin Pecknold

Literary Lyrics: The Dangling Conversation

I think "The Dangling Conversation," written by Paul Simon and performed by Simon and Garfunkel, is one of the most poetic songs I've ever head. I almost cried the first time I heard it, and every time it comes on my iPod now I have to stop whatever I'm doing and just listen.

It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
[

And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.

- Paul Simon