RE: (TV) What's it all about?/ Can't Blame it on Coffee

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@VOLPE.DOT.GOV>]

I think list member Brian Young---hope you haven't left for New 
Zealand yet---may have put it best (or at least put it most succinctly) 
when he posted to list last year: 

"To me, Marquee Moon is Verlaine's version of Robert Johnson's Cross Road 
Blues, updating the myth of meeting the Devil in the graveyard at midnight 
and learning how to play and sing the other-worldly blues."  
http://www.obbard.com/tvlist-archive/0105/msg00096.html

OTOH: I also strongly agree with Jesse:
>I'm tempted to reply that as far as I can tell, it's [song MM] 
>not "about" anything other than ***a set of impressions** that, to me, 
>add up to the image of a particularly ominous night. 
>I find a lot of Television/Verlaine songs to be impressionistic like that ..

And that's another reason why I appreciate this list, people love 
Television's music because of its rock elements and instrumentation, 
but listers can also go deep and insightful too, with verbal touchdowns. 

OTOH Part 2: 
Not all of the song's lyrics and guitar segments evoke a sense of ominousness 
or foreboding (at least for me): I find the calmer, and bird-like guitar 
sounds after the long sequence of musical climaxes to be filled with more 
of a sense of beauty and wonder than dread. 
 
Moreover in an 1987 Options Magazine interview TV describes a scene in an 
1950s' Elia Kazan directed movie entitled "Wild River" and starring Montgomery 
Clift and Lee Remick.
 
Verlaine to interviewer: 'There's one beautiful shot in the film 
where he's [Clift's] in this vacant house with Lee Remick and it 
starts to rain, and basically there's very quiet voices with the sound 
of the rain beating on the roof. The way it's shot, the way it looks, 
it's a great love scene, a really beautiful love scene.' 

I have always believed Verlaine's "Wild River" comment sheds some light 
on the song's following set of lyrics:

"I was listening, 
listening to the rain 
I was hearing, 
hearing something else"

My [possibly fanciful?] belief also has its early roots in that an 
x-girlfriend, K., of mine (who was then the classic poverty-stricken 
film-maker, student) had a 'similar' interpretation (i.e., these 4 
lines allude to a love scene/making, or to the notion that 'everything 
was more than we take it for'----though she never explicitly claimed 
the lines might have been inspired from a movie.

OK, OK, that's enough from me today---see how just the thought of another 
person who looks a little alive can severely downgrade my powers of 
perception and turn me into a babbling fool.

	Leo 
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