I recently referred to a dustup on a facebook page devoted to people who grew up in my hometown during the 1950s and 1960s. Members reacted angrily when I simply asked what they thought about OWS. They said that the site was only for memories of the past. One person said that she wanted and needed only warm and fuzzy memories. I have been thinking about this. I am a sap for pretty (and sometimes sappy) tunes, and I like the song Memory from Cats. I enjoy the version sung by Sarah Brightman, who was married to Andrew Llloyd Webber. Memory is the only song in the musical that doesn't come mainly from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. It was written by Trevor Nunn, the musical's director. It is based in part on Eliot's poem, Rhapsody on a Windy Night. This is a great poem. It doesn't invoke warm and fuzzy feelings, but it makes Webber seem like he would be a good candidate for that facebook group!
TWELVE o’clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, “Regard that woman Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin.” The memory throws up high and dry A crowd of twisted things; A twisted branch upon the beach Eaten smooth, and polished As if the world gave up The secret of its skeleton, Stiff and white. A broken spring in a factory yard, Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two, The street-lamp said, “Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter.” So the hand of the child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child’s eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three, The lamp sputtered, The lamp muttered in the dark. The lamp hummed: “Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners. She smooths the hair of the grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain. The reminiscence comes Of sunless dry geraniums And dust in crevices, Smells of chestnuts in the streets, And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors And cocktail smells in bars.”
The lamp said, “Four o’clock, Here is the number on the door. Memory! You have the key, The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair, Mount. The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall, Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”
The last twist of the knife.