Something that happened last week got me thinking about the mysterious processes by which music stirs emotion in us.
Because my wife and I have Spotify, I can locate and stream most pop recordings pretty easily. I’ve started to enjoy the English folk-rock singer, songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson. There’s a song called “Beeswing” (should be written as “Bee’s wing” but never mind) on his recording “Mirror Blue.” It’s about a man remembering a lost love from long ago.
I listened to it twice on Thursday while driving alone to San Rafael to meet a friend for a hike. I liked the sound of it pretty well, but I wasn’t able to make out some of the words, so the song’s story was reaching me in disjointed bits and pieces. (I was about to say that my driving had distracted me, but that sentence sent a chill down my spine.)
The next day was our grocery shopping day. Now that I’ve retired, we do this together. Cristina had her phone with Spotify connected to our car’s speaker as she drove and I sat shotgun. On our way to our first stop, I remembered the song and put it on.
Listening to it for the third time, the song suddenly made sense to me. It’s about a certain kind of romantic love, wildness, regret, time, and memory – all of those things. The chorus goes as follows:
“Oh she was a rare thing
Fine as a bee’s wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away.
She was a lost child
She was running wild
She said “as long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay.
And you wouldn’t want me any other way.”
The song is 5 minutes and 30 seconds long. It ended as we approached our first stop. I wiped a tear from my right cheek and turned to Cristina.
“Well, what did you think?”
(In a tone of incredulity) “Was that his best song?”
(Even greater incredulity) “You didn’t like it?!!”
“No.” She looked over at me sympathetically, but giggling. My mouth hung open.
“What didn’t you like about it?”
“It’s repetitive. And the story’s just…. I don’t know, trite.”
“Repetitive??!!” She was parking now.
For a moment, I tried to analyze the song’s melodic structure, perhaps as a first step toward refuting her charge of repetitiveness, or ‘mansplaining’ the song’s excellence. I was so surprised that she considered the song “repetitive,” I didn’t even consider the charge of “triteness.”
Then, a thought came to me: In a few weeks’ time, there’s a chance I’ll tire of the song. Now, the full absurdity of the project I was considering hit me, just as the beauty of song itself had, and I began to laugh. We laughed together for a moment in the parked car. Then, we collected ourselves and went in to find fruit and produce.
At our next stop, I began to think more “objectively” about the song, like a person getting over a first wave of my infatuation. What was it that I loved about it and why did it fail to charm Cristina?
While searching for chicken bone broth, it occurred to me that the vocal melody of the song, sprightly and rhythmic as it is, is repetitive. It’s a folk tune, simple and not too clever. I’d have to concede that. But, that simplicity allowed me to hear the longing, the sadness, the regret in the singer’s voice, to feel those emotions in the acoustic guitar, in the penny whistle that came in at the end of each chorus, reminding me that the strange, haunted woman the singer remembers is gone, as far removed from his current visible life as the date of some obscure battle. Thinking about all this, it took me a while to find the chicken bone broth.
Our last errand was at the CVS. While standing in line at the prescription desk, another reason for our divergent reactions to “Beeswing” occurred to me. The story it tells evokes a certain kind of emotion, a way that men can feel when contemplating their beloved. It’s a feeling that mixes wonder, longing and anxiety. In one version of the chorus, Thompson sings
“Oh, she was a rare thing
Fine as a bee’s wing
I feared that I might crush her where she lay.”
I must have felt this uneasy mix of emotions a few times in my life, because the song tapped into a well of emotion in me, something I didn’t know was there.
Of course, this feeling, not uncommon in men, has in some cases led us to diminish the power of the women we love, to juvenilize them, to think of them, consciously or otherwise, as somehow akin to children. I watched this juvenilizing dynamic in my father’s love for my mother and saw how it weakened their relationship. I don’t believe this emotion has to operate this way, but I’ve seen it happen. Perhaps, the song reminded Cristina of this aspect of intimate oppression. Hmm.
One of the other things about the song that has attracted me is the way the inevitability of death and the impermanence of life lurk in the background of its lyrics.
Oh, the last I heard she was sleeping rough
back on the Darby beach
White Horse in her hip pocket
and a Wolfhound at her feet.
They say her flower has faded now
hard weather and hard booze
but maybe that’s just the price you pay
for the chains that you refuse.
Also, I should say that the song’s meter – one line with four stresses, the next with three, called “common meter”[1]) – heightens its charm for me.
For Cristina, Thompson’s tale of lost love is haunted not so much by death, but by a series of clichés. For her, the song is so full of stale, time-worn ideas about love as to be irredeemable.
These theories about our contrasting responses to the song, plausible as they are to me, are still just theories. I really can’t explain with any certainty why “Bee’s Wing” (or “Beeswing” as Thompson seems to prefer) has appealed to me and not her.
And now, a full week after my initial infatuation, I must acknowledge that I can sense a change coming in my relationship with the song. In the not-too-distant future, I suspect that the song and I will sit down for a conversation. I’ll explain that I think it best if I start spending more time with other songs. “Beeswing” really shouldn’t worry. There are plenty of other listeners – perhaps, a few more men than women – who should be susceptible to its charms.
[1] If the song gets too sad for you, you can replace Thompson’s words with the words to any other song or poem written in common meter. The Gilligan’s Island theme song works.
