From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V9 #55 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 Friday, April 13 2007 Volume 09 : Number 055 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [RS] Who's Nora? ["Matthew Bullis" ] Re: [RS] Listening vicariously ["kunigunda" ] [RS] Nora ["John McDonnell" ] Re: [RS] Nora [Amy ] [RS] Nora ["John McDonnell" ] Re: [RS] Nora ["Chris Foxwell" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 03:11:50 -0700 From: "Matthew Bullis" Subject: [RS] Who's Nora? Hello, was able to afford Sparrow's Point and South Of Delia this month, as my income is fixed and limited. I don't understand this song at all, this Nora. There appear to be a few literary references in there, which I don't get. There are a few other songs I don't quite get, which I'll get to in other e-mails. The last time I asked about Wisteria and Fishing, there were several days worth of lengthy discussions on each, so depending on the responses and discussions which may result, I'll wait to ask about other songs. Thanks a lot. Matthew Tired of HotMail? Try Runbox. 1 gig of storage for a reasonable price. Use this link as your referral. http://1362.runbox.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 08:54:44 -0500 From: "kunigunda" Subject: Re: [RS] Listening vicariously Yep, that's what i'm doing these days. My nephew went to the show at Eddies Attic last night....and loved it. I even got to listen to a few songs via his 5 year old cell phone including my favorite...Reunion Hill...complete with violin! What a desperado I am! Carrie in KC ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:57:32 -0400 From: "John McDonnell" Subject: [RS] Nora Hey All, Matthew wrote: >>I don't understand this song at all, this Nora. There appear to be a few literary references in there, which I don't get.<< I hate to "summarize" songs, but this one struck me as fairly straightforward from a narrative perspective, though I still have an area of murkiness. It appears to me to be a letter--a common literary device (epistolary)--from Nora's lover, though I may be wrong because he later meets with Nora's husband and they drink together. The amicability of that meeting seemed unlikely, but that there is talk of turning the other cheek, makes it likely. As for litereary references, the Nora to me has shades of Nora Barnacle, James Joyce's eventual wife--they met in 1904, but did not marry until 1931. They, too, corresponded with love letters, just as Abelard and Heloise did. I may be stretching here, but Joyce sent Nora back to Galway at one point in their relationship (I forget when), and Abelard sent Heloise to a convent. That the narrator had a romatic relationship with Nora is borne out by pressing "a rose in the pages"--I think a reference to La Roman de la Rose, a 15th century allegorical poem of chivalric love--and it provides dramatic tension for the meeting of the narrator and Nora's husband in the bar. The song appears to have several themes--yet another example of RS stellar songwriting. It seems somewhat radical, in that the proclamation of "no sin" in Abelard and Heloise's relationship becomes universalised into "there is no sin"--secular humanism at its finest, I suppose. Faith, the Church, fogiveness, contrition, sex/romance, recrimination, castration--(like Scorsese meets Tarantino!)--are all there. I was intrigued by the reference to Abelard who was castrated by Heloise's uncle (at his behest, more accurately), and the implied emasculation of Nora's husband, who drowns his vows with his wife's lover rather than kicks his ass. But then to a large extent the song is about forgiveness, and choosing to suffer and sacrifice, perhaps as a form of redemption, salvation, or may be just a better way iof being in the world. In this way, I feel the song implies that it is that choice which is a truly spiritual one, and one which is contrasted against the tenets of a given Church. Abelard seduced his student Heloise and though he did marry her, the marriage jeopardized his position at Notre Dame (no, he was not perched atop Touchdown Jesus). Heloise's uncle was also a Canon at Notre Dame--that he perpetrated Abelard's castration seems less than pious. I'm still curious, however, at just what Heloise's "injury at the hand of an almighty memory" is. Anyway, I haven't thought about the song for quite some time--that may be a relief to many. John McD. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:24:13 -0400 From: Amy Subject: Re: [RS] Nora Excellent summation of "Nora", John! I won't even begin to compete, except to add that Richard has said that the song was a deliberate nod to Leonard Cohen. I always read it as a re-casting of the themes of "Famous Blue Raincoat", written from the perspective of the other man in the triangle. And with that, back to outlining. Law school is Fun! Amy Amy Cocuzza, MILR Juris Doctor Candidate, May 2009 University of Michigan Law School cocuzza@umich.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:04:13 -0400 From: "John McDonnell" Subject: [RS] Nora Hey All, Amy wrote: >>Richard has said that the song was a deliberate nod to Leonard Cohen. I always read it as a re-casting of the themes of "Famous Blue Raincoat", written from the perspective of the other man in the triangle.<< Right--I didn't meant to skip over that "homage"--I had asked about it before, and on listening to FBR the similarity jumped out at me. Also, Nora reminds me of a Leonard Cohen quote, and it may just be coincidence, but he said, "Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true." This reminded me of Nora's husband drowning his vows at the bar, appearing to forgive both Nora and her lover. Just a thought. John McD. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:47:05 -0400 From: "Chris Foxwell" Subject: Re: [RS] Nora On 4/13/07, John McDonnell wrote: > > I hate to "summarize" songs, but this one struck me as fairly > straightforward from a narrative perspective, though I still have an area > of > murkiness. I think I see the song along much the same lines, although in a way more straightforward, and in another way not at all as straightforward. I think. Make sense? :) Being much more familiar with Abelard and Heloise than I am with Leonard Cohen, I see the song as a recasting of the Abelard and Heloise story, only with a more "humanistically cynical" take on Abelard's probably mentality, in perfect line with Richard's more humanistic/cynical view of Christianity. (In brief: Abelard was a 12th century Christian scholar, one of the most brilliant logisticians/dialecticians of his time, who seduced his (willing) pupil Heloise--herself a brilliant thinker and scholar of literature--and carried on a love affair that culminated in their marriage, despite Heloise's protests that it would ruin Abelard's reputation. Heloise's uncle had Abelard castrated, believing that Abelard intended to repudiate the marriage after he had Heloise installed as a nun (when in fact he intended no such thing). Abelard survived, with a "deepened" sense of religious piety and dedication (as far as his letters indicate, at least), while Heloise was stuck as an Abbess, wracked with longing for Abelard and the accompanying religious guilt for the same.) In Richard's song, we see a very different Abelard. (Or at least I do, since this is only my take, heh.) Here is not the pious, "thank you Lord for delivering me from carnal temptation," utterly-devoted clerical scholar Abelard, as his letters suggest he is following his castration. Here is a bitter, resigned, no-longer-mad-but-not-quite-okay Abelard, who still thinks to himself "dammit, it wasn't a sin." This is an Abelard who sees Christmas as being "blue," bitterly referring to all those angels "trumpeting their ecstasy." I can just see him: "sure, okay, so 'they' [the historical Abelard and Heloise] were able to 'turn the other cheek and take it on the chin,' fine...but, dammit Nora, it was no sin. It was no sin." Pretty powerful, to me at least. So in my view, the competing husband of Nora is actually God, or the church, and not another man, as is true of the "competing husband" of Heloise. (Becoming a nun is, within the Christian tradition, becoming married to Christ, explicitly.) Furthermore, as Abelard came to believe, it was God Himself who came between him and Heloise, "breaking them up" as it were; Abelard viewed his castration as a blessing, divine intervention, ridding him of his carnal desires for Heloise and allowing both him and her to pursue their destinies as devotees of the church. In terms of the song's lyrics, the reference to Nora's husband accepting a parish offers at least a link to a religious figure, with the "drowning his vows" an unsurprisingly cynical take on the whole "organized religion" thing. As far as raising a glass to Nora and making a truce with the husband, well, and again this is only my own interpretation, I picture the narrator sitting alone, drunk in a bar, conversing with God in his mind, and trying to make a peace--with his past, with his God; with himself--but winding up only calling out her name ("by your name", following a significant pause). Again, really powerful images for me, but admittedly with a lot of imposing onto the song of what seems moving/striking to me. A few additional random comments: perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I like how the narrator thanks Nora for the play she wrote about Heloise, a play which somehow reached the narrator...perhaps sent to him by Nora, perhaps not. The whole saga of Abelard and Heloise's letters begins with Abelard writing out the whole history of their relationship and his misfortune in a letter, meant to be read by a friend, ostensibly to make this friend feel better about his own woes..but some scholars speculate that it was in fact written by Abelard for the world at large, under the guise of a personal letter, so as to generate awareness/sympathy for his position. Thus Abelard can be said to have been writing a "play" about their story, intended for general viewing/appreciation, which then somehow--like Nora's play--found its way to Heloise/the narrator. Kinda neat. Also, I love how, in the bar, the narrator and Nora's husband/God/whoever raise a first, then a next, then a third glass; in Abelard and Heloise's letters, Abelard repeatedly references an incident when an ancient abbot is offered a glass of wine during some ceremony, and the abbot accepts the first drink, and the second, but when he is offered a third drink, he says "Peace, brother; do you not know that it is Satan?" (paraphrased). Total coincidence, probably, but I was struck by how Richard enunciates each of the drinks, one at a time, ending with the third and then moving on to "hunched on our barstools" in a reference to abject drunkenness. (And this following the "drowning his vows at the bar" line from earlier.) Oh yeah, and John, in terms of Heloise's injury "at the hands of an almighty memory": I see this as Heloise's lifelong torment of having to live without her lover, who is no longer capable of feeling anything at all for her anymore, and of struggling with her passions while being the head of a respected convent. Heloise describes, in heartbreaking detail, how the "memory" of her times with Abelard is absolutely unbearable, as is her physical and emotional longing for him, compounded by the inappropriateness of such passions in her position. In typical brilliant RS fashion, the song casts this as a kind of injury done to her by the "hands" of the "Almighty," who--in Abelard's view--intervened to end their romance. Abelard's injury removes all longing from him, well and good...but the resulting injury done to Heloise carries no such finality, and most scholars feel that she arrives at no peace whatsoever for the rest of her life, as far as her letters indicate. (Hmm, so perhaps the song can be seen as a flip of Abelard and Heloise's conditions...?) - --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 ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V9 #55 **********************************