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Tuesday, May 17, 2005
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All plots tend to move deathward. ... says Jack Gladney, the narrator of Don DeLillo’s novel, White Noise. UD followed a little plot yesterday, and it did just that. Sadly. It began with coffee last week in the GW student center. UD was waiting there for the opera her kid was in at GW’s Lisner Auditorium to begin. One of her kid’s friends was there too, and she was reading a rock music magazine. “Hey look,” the girl said, showing the magazine to UD. “It’s about Ferdinand the bull.” Sure enough, there was an article about Peter Wentz and his band, Fall Out Boy, whose latest album is From Under the Cork Tree, a clear reference to Ferdinand. Wentz talks to the magazine’s reporter about how “his band’s new record is named after a children’s story he read when he was 4. ‘You should read it,’ Wentz says, sitting in the back lounge of Fall Out Boy’s tour bus as it idles in the parking lot of a Salt Lake City nightclub. ‘Wait, have you read The Story of Ferdinand'? The answer is ‘yes,’ but you can probably assume that much about people who are interested in a punk band that’s both muscular and emotional - which is one description for the music Fall Out Boy make.” The reporter then gives us a plot summary of Ferdinand, and adds that “it makes a lot of sense that Wentz has a certain affinity for it. Elliott Smith had a rendering of Ferdinand tattooed on his right bicep. As far as bulls go, he’s irrefutably emo.” Nice convergences here -- Ferdinand the Bull, whose creator Munro Leaf lived with his wife Margaret in UD’s house (this backstory is for readers who haven’t visited UD before) a house whose front garden has not one but two topiary bulls in Leaf’s honor -- and emo, a musical style in which UD has some interest… But who is Elliott Smith? “Elliott Smith, that gentle soul who sports a Ferdinand the Bull tattoo on his right upper arm, released his second Dreamwork's album, Figure 8, to almost Easterlike anticipation by critics and die-hard fans,” a reviewer UD googled says. Smith’s another musician. A rock star. UD found some photos of Smith and his tattoo: Here's one. Here's another one. And here’s an interview about the tattoo: " Y3: I have to ask you about your tattoo of Ferdinand. ES: Oh yeah, a children’s story. Y3: I grew up on that story. The bull who was too gentle and content to attain fame in the bullfighting ring like his friends, and chose instead to while his days away in a field, smelling the flowers. It’s a great dichotomy, this powerful beast who doesn’t want to use his power. ES: Yeah. I’d like to say I got the tattoo because of the story. I do like the story, and that’s one reason. But my initial plan was just to get a tattoo of a bull, and I like Ferdinand better than I like the Schlitz Malt Liquor. Y3: It’s almost analogous of you and your life. I noticed it on your arm and went, “Oh my god, that’s Ferdinand.” That is just the most perfect tattoo. It’s the first tattoo I ever saw in my lifetime that I would get. ES: I haven’t ever regretted it. It seems to make more sense with my life over time. " Wentz’s affinity with Ferdinand has to do with personal integrity: “There’s something really honorable about following your own path and not doing what’s expected of you.” Smith’s seems to have had to do with fragility, withdrawal, and silence. Fame appears to have destroyed him. He killed himself (or was murdered) last year. Here are some of the lyrics to one of his most famous songs -- it was the background music for a suicide attempt in the film The Royal Tenenbaums: Needle in the hay Now on the bus Nearly touching this dirty retreat Falling out 6th and Powell A dead sweat in my teeth Gonna walk walk walk Four more blocks plus one in my break Down downstairs to the man He’s gonna make it all ok I can’t beat myself I can’t beat myself And I don't want to talk I’m taking the cure so I can be quiet Whenever I want So leave me alone You ought to be proud that I’m getting good marks Needle in the hay Needle in the hay Needle in the hay Needle in the hay Drugs and alcohol were a big part of the deathward story… a circular story from UD’s perspective, winding back around to DeLillo and his novel Great Jones Street, about a famous rock musician in search of silence. |
