More literary inspiration for some Shriekback tunes
Barry talks again about the literary inspiration for a few Shriekback songs. 'Faded Flowers' makes another appearance. Why not? It's a great song! He tells us about how 'Faded Flowers' and 'This Big Hush' owe a lot to Sylvia Plath, and specifically her 1962 poem 'Elm'. It's nice to hear Barry give the poem a read.
"Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic."
Then it's 1992, and the album 'Sacred City' is released. There's the song 'Signs' with influences by Jonathan Raban's 'Soft City', and Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities'.
"You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognised that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter."
"Beatles Zebra Crossing?" brings us to a tale of the famous 'crosswalk' or as we say in the UK 'Zebra Crossing'. It leads us to an interesting thought experiment...