Thom Moore lyrics and inspirations Why Clouds

WHY CLOUDS?

Why clouds, why rain?

Why's that girl go dance that way?

Why love, why pain,

dancing, dancing, round the brain?

Last week he had no cares, just

the boy and his place up the stairs.

Now something's in the air: wants to

dance with the girl downstairs.

With that dancing girl down there.

Why night, why day?

Neither one comes 'round to stay.

Why work, why play?

Neither one's come round, today.

He's lost to ev'rything but

the beat of that song they sing th't

gives dancing girls their wings:

angel making this boy a king.

Dancing girl makes a boy the king.

Here it comes, love's Rule of Thumb:

boy and man see her dance.

Why up, why down?

Why's the world go round and round?

Why smile, why frown?

Either one just mows him down.

He's in an avalanche,

upside down, root and branch,

awash in the undertow,

swept along where the dance-girl goes.

Where that dancing girl may go.

Why black, why white? Where's that girl go every night? Why old, why wise? Why's this come as no surprise? He minds the times before, when some girl got his shoes on the floor —guess he's that kind of guy: Dancing girls catch the lonely eye, wish for love like a clear blue sky. It’s funny how many songs one interesting tune can develop into: from its first penetration into my brain as a peculiarly wonderful Irish reel, back in the Pumpkinhead days of the early 70’s, this particular tune has produced not one but three separate songs during its sojourn inside my head. I won’t name the others, because the delights of sleuthing await anyone who cares to identify the original tune as well as the other two songs – one of which is actually on this recording (big clue!). Good luck. The theme of this song is a fairly consistent one in songs of mine, a Gravesian sort of conundrum for an otherwise self-sufficient young man: what to do when you feel yourself being drawn to someone of the opposite sex? Of course: your duty ... But whenever I think of the word ‘duty’ in the context of some young boy or man learning about it, what it is, at first hand, I am reminded of the Kipling story The Drums of the Fore and Aft, which features two young drummer boys in Afghanistan in the mid-19th century, drunk on gin, deciding to redeem their regiment’s honour by drumming up the valley towards the Afghans, in the opposite direction from their retreated older comrades. They don’t survive the foolish bravery of their gesture, but the regiment, shamed by the boys, returns and carries the day. Hmmm. Afghanistan. British Army. Duty. Drink ... wow, all the elements of modern life. And that anecdote brings me to another: in 1986 or so, browsing in the stacks of the North Hollywood library, I ran across the 1961 edition of The Best Short Stories of Kipling, compiled and edited by the American poet Randall Jarrell. I was prepared for something nice: he had managed to include this story among his choices. I opened to it and began reading. I got a shock: Jarrell is a philistine. In the original story, it opens with the writer discussing traditions of bravery in British arms: Kipling recalls, without naming the great Voltaire, who coined the phrase, that the British Admiralty had executed Admiral Byng for cowardice in the face of the enemy ‘pour encourager les autres’. Kipling’s use of the phrase is literate and funny, quite in the spirit of the original Voltaire. Randall Jarrell, either not understanding the provenance of the phrase, or its humour, or its allusion to the great Frenchman, simply translated the Kipling original as ‘to encourage the others’ ... which, when you think about it, is not even English, let alone something Kipling might write. This is either shameful illiteracy or shameful patronizing of the reading audience, either of which means that neither I nor anyone should take Randall Jarrell seriously about anything. Come to think of it, it was Jarrell who generously praised Robert Graves’s poem To Juan at the Winter Solstice, while denying the rest of Graves’s poetry any worth at all. What a twit. The poetry establishment regards Jarrell as canonical, while it thinks little or nothing of Graves. Plus ça change ...