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01/08/2007 Entry: "Inspiration"

Dave "Quick" Clarke wanted to know where "Ferry Me Down" came from. He asked if it had anything to do with Brian Ferry of Roxy Music.

Um, no.

It comes from two songs and a Sylvia Plath poem. See the "Get More Here" section for the lyrics and words.
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I will dress your eyelids
With dimes upon your eyes
Laying close to water
Green your grave will rise
Go to sleep little ugly
Go to sleep you little fool
Forty-winking in the belfry
You'll not feel the drowning
You'll not feel the drowning

Forget you once had sweethearts
They've forgotten you
Think you not on parents
They've forgotten too
Go to sleep now little ugly
Go to sleep now you little fool
Forty-winking in the belfry
You'll not feel the drowning
You'll not feel the drowning

Go to sleep little ugly
Go to sleep little fool
Forty-winking in the belfry
You'll not feel the drowning
You'll not feel the drowning

Hear you now the captain
Heed his sorrowed cry
"Weight upon your eyelids
As dimes laid on your eyes"
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That song led reminded me of Lyle Lovett
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"She's Already Made Up Her Mind."

She said something about going home
She said something about needing to spend some time alone
And she wondered out loud what it was she had to find
But she's already made up her mind

All my friends told me she was too young
Well I knew that myself and I tried to run
But the faster I ran the more I fell behind
Because she'd already made up her mind

She's already made up her mind

Now there is nothing so deep as the ocean
And there is nothing so high as the sky
And there is nothing so unwavering as a woman
When she's already made up her mind

So now she's sitting at one end of the kitchen table
And she is staring without an expression
And she is talking to me without moving her eyes
Because she's already made up her mind

She's already made up her mind
She's already made up her mind

And she said something about going home
And she said something about needing to spend some time alone
And she wondered out loud what it was she had to find
But she'd already made up her mind

So my friend carry me down to the water's edge
And then sail with me out to that ocean deep
And let me go easy down over the side
And remember me to her

She's already made up her mind
She's already made up her mind
She's already made up her mind
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And of course, stories about drowning lead me to Plath's book The Colossus and Other Poems. I did a major paper about Plath in college, and I remember some expert somewhere saying "Colossus is nothing but a book of poems about different ways of drowning." (A paraphrase, but that's the gist.) Here's Plath:
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"Lorelei."

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.
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Sorry the post is so long, but I put it in here, rather than link it, so you dear reader could avoid pop-ups. See, I care about you!