From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V7 #263 Reply-To: shindell-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk shindell-list-digest Monday, November 7 2005 Volume 07 : Number 263 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [RS] Wisteria, I do Love that Song [DBri732722@aol.com] Re: [RS] The Next Best Western... on my way to Berkeley soon! [john cleir] [RS] Wisteria [John McDonnell ] Re: [RS] Wisteria [Chris Foxwell ] Re: [RS] Playing Wisteria [john cleirigh ] Re: [RS] Playing Wisteria [john cleirigh ] [RS] Wisteria [John McDonnell ] [RS] Wis-teary-a ["Gene Frey" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 06:55:45 EST From: DBri732722@aol.com Subject: Re: [RS] Wisteria, I do Love that Song I agree that the reason for leaving is irrelevent. But, I think there is more meaning than "Couple lived in house. Couple creates memories in house. Couple moves from house. New family lives in house. New family cuts down beloved (although hard to tame) Wisteria". I interpret the wisteria to be a metaphor of the couple's life wound so thouroughly together. The melancholy reflection of a life together, with their home being the focal point of the song is, to me, ingenious. This is probably the most beautiful, romantic song I have ever heard. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 07:02:41 -0800 From: john cleirigh Subject: Re: [RS] The Next Best Western... on my way to Berkeley soon! She was still talking about it last night. Shindellevangelism *is* fun. john On 11/6/05, Chris Foxwell wrote: > Yes! I have witnessed this exact same reaction in my friends countless > times upon hearing Richard for the first time. It's the best feeling, isn't > it? > --Chris ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:08:10 -0500 From: John McDonnell Subject: [RS] Wisteria Hi All, Jim wrote: >>Yeah, I agree with Ron. The power of this song lies in its simplicity, which allows it to resonate with any listener's experience.<< I agree that the simplicity of the song is powerful, but I'm not so sure it has universal resonance. It struck me as a song for "older" listeners, or ones who could at least appreciate having bought or sold a house. I don't want to sound too reductive about the symbolism of the wisteria, but the concrete image of the house which grounds the memories is something which is both universal and specific (make sense?). However, I think being able to identify with the couple gives the song its real storytelling power. This post reminds me of the time an English professor told me that I was (then) too young to appreciate Yeats' later poetry--I was in my twenties, was looking to get my degree before my forties, so I thought he was a jerk. I appear to have adopted his position. John McD. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 11:38:41 -0500 From: Chris Foxwell Subject: Re: [RS] Wisteria On 11/7/05, John McDonnell wrote: > > Hi All, > Jim [actually Chris] wrote: > > >>Yeah, I agree with Ron. The power of this song lies in its simplicity, > which allows it to resonate with any listener's experience.<< > I agree that the simplicity of the song is powerful, but I'm not so sure > it > has universal resonance. It struck me as a song for "older" listeners, or > ones who could at least appreciate having bought or sold a house. I don't > want to sound too reductive about the symbolism of the wisteria, but the > concrete image of the house which grounds the memories is something which > is > both universal and specific (make sense?). However, I think being able to > identify with the couple gives the song its real storytelling power. > This post reminds me of the time an English professor told me that I was > (then) too young to appreciate Yeats' later poetry--I was in my twenties, > was looking to get my degree before my forties, so I thought he was a > jerk. > I appear to have adopted his position. No, that makes sense, you're not being a jerk. I'm in my twenties, and I freely admit that I don't have a clue about the emotional significance of buying and then selling a house (or about many other things). I can see how the song's resonance, powerful though it seems to me now, would be even stronger for someone who has experienced precisely this. However, I'm not arguing for true universal applicability, just a wider applicability than "you must have purchased a house with your loved one and then sold it in order to get the full power of the song". Many people who have never owned a house have still experienced the pangs of leaving one, as a result of moving away from a beloved house in one's youth, for one example. That is what I draw on when appreciating the song: a loss of childhood beauty and simplicity, things that are very much grounded for me in a certain house. I swear that house was built out of Youth and Magic. The memory of leaving it is palpable, and is very intense and vivid for me, even now, many years later. It's definitely vivid enough for the song to evoke very strong "house-leaving" emotions in me, though I've not experienced precisely that which the song depicts. So, yeah; even if the house is an integral part of the song's mood--still an "if" to me--I don't think it necessarily requires buying/selling, for every person. I would say that "living/leaving" is the foundational element, to be added to and personalized by one's experiences: buying/selling, youth/not-youth, loving/bereft, etc. Whether or not the buying/selling aspect is the single most powerful one out there, well...who's to say? People are very different, and take different things away from different experiences. As many of Richard's songs so aptly illustrate. :) --Chris -- "We were born in a dark age out of due time (for us). But there is this comfort: otherwise we should not know, or so much love, what we do love. I imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water." - -- J.R.R. Tolkien ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 07:18:10 -0800 From: john cleirigh Subject: Re: [RS] Playing Wisteria Hi Matthew, Ed Dupas' tab site was what helped me get this one. I think it's still linked on RS' new web site under FAQ next to RG's link. IMO, if you can do Reuinion Hill, Wisteria should come too. I play Wisteria with a partial capo these days. It makes embellishments on the 1st and 6th strings eaiser to reach for my aging left hand. john On 11/6/05, Matthew Bullis wrote: > Hello, so yesterday I asked about Fishing, and today I ask about Wisteria. > First of all, this seems to be one of the difficult songs to play in DADGAD. > I can't seem to get the fingering right. That tuning sure makes you sound a > lot more proficient and fancy than you really are, but this one is hard. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:49:36 -0800 From: john cleirigh Subject: Re: [RS] Playing Wisteria I found Ed's site, but I can't seem to expand the folders, Maybe you will have better luck than I did? Might be a firewall issue at work. http://users.ameritech.net/edupas/tab.htm I took Ed's TAB and RG's chord shapes and put together a recognizable version. john On 11/7/05, john cleirigh wrote: > Hi Matthew, > Ed Dupas' tab site was what helped me get this one. I think it's > still linked on RS' new web site under FAQ next to RG's link. IMO, if > you can do Reuinion Hill, Wisteria should come too. I play Wisteria > with a partial capo these days. It makes embellishments on the 1st > and 6th strings eaiser to reach for my aging left hand. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 14:54:23 -0500 From: John McDonnell Subject: [RS] Wisteria Hi All, Chris [not Jim] wrote: >>However, I'm not arguing for true universal applicability, just a wider applicability than "you must have purchased a house with your loved one and then sold it inorder to get the full power of the song".<< Perhaps I should clarify. I did not mean to reduce the song to bad case of seller's remorse, nor do I think it only applies to those who have bought or sold a house. I agree with everything Chris says, including a sense of loss that the song touches upon without having anything to do with the particular house (wind in the sycamores carrying the narrator home, for example), or a favorite object serving as a repository for, or even reification of memories and one's experiences. That alone is a testament to RS' storytelling ability--the particular application to the sale of the house, to me was a kind of added bonus which crystallized the sense of loss to which I related in a manner more specific than some generalized regret. Which is not to say that the song cannot have a general appeal--it obviously does. But I'm still not a fan of Yeats :) John McD. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:09:06 -0500 From: "Gene Frey" Subject: [RS] Wis-teary-a Hey you guys, For what it's worth, and I know I've told this story here before, Wisteria brought tears to the eyes of my daughter, then age 15, because it reminded her of her grandparents' old house. Richard, in this song as well as so many others, brilliantly conveys a universal emotion through a specific scene or act, and does it as well as any modern songwriter. While I hesitate to speculate what emotions a song will evoke in anyone else, the sense of being unable to recapture the past is what I get from this song, and I hear it in my head when I think about the places I've lived, the people I've known, or, really, anything in my life that is gone and will never come back. (Pause to compose myself) So, how 'bout them Giants, eh? Gene F. ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V7 #263 ***********************************