From Songs To Remember:
"Asylums in Jerusalem"
"Jacques Derrida"
From a Q&A between ELVIS COSTELLO & GREEN GARTSIDE: A Scritti Politti-Costello chat in the October 28, 2006 Los Angeles Times (would've included the link but it's for pay now)...
ELVIS COSTELLO: Wordplay is something for which I was constantly flagged in the early part of my career. People find it in my songs even when none is present. At one point, I could pun and alliterate compulsively, but I cannot do crossword puzzles. Do you think that perceiving patterns in groupings of words can be an affliction, or is it just a trick talent in service of an idea or emotion?
GREEN GARTSIDE: Well, wordplay is important in all aspects of life. In understanding the world. In certain circumstances it helps rhetorical force, in other places it undermines it. I don't think of "it" instrumentally. It's endlessly productive.
EC: Have you ever hesitated before including a reference in a lyric that might be regarded as too obscure or, that most English of accusations, pretentious? Have you ever gone ahead anyway, just for badness?
GG: No I don't mind being pretentious. I think there may well be something to be said for pretensions. I don't police my lyrics much.
EC: Speaking as someone who only had a Secondary Modern education [high school], I feel fortunate to have had a reading list reflecting a life and class structure that I could recognize, even if I didn't feel bound by it. I'm speaking of "angry young man" writers like John Osbourne and Alan Sillitoe, with some obligatory Shakespeare thrown in. Is there anything in your education that particularly influenced your work?
GG: I'm really alarmingly unfamiliar with great swaths of 20th century writing. I've generally been more inclined to read books that are "philosophical," a word that others find more wanting than I do. That's a self-taught thing. I started at art school with Wittgenstein. I was interested principally in the indiscrete problem of meaning. The Beatles introduced me to the most powerful thing: ambiguity.
The interview of Green Gartside (the creative genius behind Scritti Politti ) in the Times made me think of the song "Jacques Derrida" from the 1982 Songs To Remember. I had intended to post it when Jacques Derrida died on October 8, 2004. He is by far one of the most influential of the philosophers that I read. But, even in the lyris of "Jacques Derrida" and throughout the rest of the album, there are further references to Lacan and Marx. I do love the "wordplay" that Gartside does over the complete album. It seems that Gartside wants to live above the Law. He's been talking in the tongues again. Here are the lyrics to "Jacques Derrida":
I'm in love with the bossonova
He's the one with the cashanova
I'm in love with his heart of steel
I'm in love
I'm in love with the bossonova
He's the one with the cashanova
I'm in love with his heart of steel
I'm in love
How come no-one ever told me
Who I'm working for
Down among the rich men baby
And the poor
Here comes love forever
And it's here comes love for no-one
Oh here comes love for Marilyn
And it's oh my baby oh-oh my baby
What you gonna do?
In the reason - in the rain
Still support the revolution
I want it I want it I want that too
B'baby B'baby it's up to you
To find out somethin' that you need to do
Because
I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love
I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love
To err is to be human
To forgive is too divine
I was like an industry
Depressed and in decline
Here comes love for ever
And it's here comes love for no-one
Oh here comes love for Marilyn
And it's oh my baby oh my baby
What you gonna do?
In the reason - in the rain
Still support the revolution
I want it I want it I want that too
B'baby B'baby it's up to you
To find out somethin' that you need to do
Because
Oh I'm in love with bop sh'dayo
Out of Camden Town for a day - oh
I'm in love with just gettin' away
I'm in love
Oh I'm in love with militante
Reads Unita and reads Avanti
I'm in love with her heart of steel
I'm in love
He held it like a cigarette
Behind a squadee's back
He held it so he hid its length
And so he hid its lack - oh
An' it seems so very sad
(all right!)
Well I want better than you can give
But then I'll take whatever you got
Cos I'm a grand libertine with the
Kinda demeanour to overthrow the lot
I said rapacious
Rapacious you can never satiate
(ate what?!) desire is so voracious
I wanna eat your nation state
I got incentive that you can't handle
I got the needs you can't assuage
I got demands you can't meet
'n' stay on your feet
I want more than your living wage
Well I want better than you can give
But then I'll take whatever you got
Cos I'm a grand libertine with the
Kinda demeanour to overthrow the lot
I said rapacious
Rapacious you can never satiate
(ate what?!) desire is so voracious
I wanna eat your nation state
