'Seventh Sojourn', a Moody Blues Peak

              

THIS was the final album The Moody Blues made before a break after seven albums, and the last before Mike Pinder left. It was a significant loss in my opinion. The sound and line-up (slightly) changed after this- and when many people think fondly of The Moody Blues, it is the years between 1967 and 1972 that they are usually thinking of.

Mike Pinder is well known for his use of the Mellotron- apparently delighted when The Beatles used it on Strawberry fields Forever. On Seventh Sojourn it has given way to something presumably similar called The Chamberlin. You can hear the sound on most of the songs on this album, especially the Pinder ones. I learnt recently that he played (joyously) on John Lennon’s ‘I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier, Mama’ (from Imagine). (And, as I discovered last year, John Densmore of The Doors played tambourine on one of the tracks onstage during Van Morrison’s live Astral Weeks set).

To get back to Seventh Sojourn, the first song is a Pinder song- ‘Lost in a Lost World.’ It’s grand in its scope, tackling world peace, dislocation, racism…

‘I woke up today, I was crying,
Lost in a lost world,
So many people are dying,
Lost in a lost world.
Some of them are living an illusion,
Bounded by the darkness of their minds,
In their eyes, it's nation against nation,
With racial pride, sad hearts they hide
Thinking only of themselves, they shun
The light. They think they're right
Living in their empty shells.’

 

Good songs often have something to say. When do words and ideas like these ever go out of fashion? I remember running along the beach at Torquay one night, listening to Marvin Gaye’s album ‘What’s Going On?’ and thinking the same thing. There are so many big and little Vietnam’s occurring around us.

‘Everywhere you go you'll see them searching
Everywhere you turn you'll feel the pain
Everyone is looking for the answer
We'll look again, come on my friend
Love will find them in the end
Come on my friend we've got to bend
On our knees and say a prayer.’

Some people might see Mike Pinder as self-righteous, sanctimonious, but I’m glad someone was saying these things back then. It was a time for a lot of people to be writing about love being the answer (we hear it all the time in ‘Mind Games’ by John Lennon). ‘Everyone is looking for the answer.’ There are scores of songs about trying to find peace of mind because it is a universal thing, where, if happiness is denied, people look for solace or comfort or calm, and try and escape pain, loneliness, fear and even terror.

There is a lovely backing throughout the song ‘’so many people’ chanted over and over again. And Pinder sings the song like he really is pining for some kind of comfort, or some kind of sense, amidst the confusion that people felt at the end of the sixties and still do. The music isn’t particularly complex- the Chamberlin raging in the background- but the words and earnestness of the singer really drive it.

The song fades beautifully into a soft, acoustic ballad called New Horizons, which has to be one of the best songs Justin Hayward ever wrote. You can’t tell by looking at the words immediately, but he apparently wrote the song for his father, who died around the time the album was being made.

‘I've had dreams enough for one
And I've got love enough for three
I have my hopes to comfort me
I've got my new horizons out to sea

But I'm never gonna lose your precious gift
It will always be that way
And I know I'm gonna find my own peace of mind
Someday, someway.’

The idea of having new horizons is a fantastic thing. The breath of fresh air when we attain such things is amazing. Most of us get to the age when our parents become old and die. It doesn’t always work out this way, but what a great thing, too, when a son can recognise a precious gift that has been let to him by his father. We would all like to pass on such fantastic things to our children. And to have them respect us so much when we are so old. Apparently Justin Hayward’s daughter, Doremi, was born around this time. So there we have it- two, vastly different, new horizons. Your life can change so quickly. By 1972 Justin Hayward was around 30 years old. Often an age of some kind of change.

‘On the wind, soaring free,
Spread your wings, I'm beginning to see
Out of mind, far from view
Beyond the reach, of the nightmare come true.’

Justin Hayward often writes about birds being the key to some kind of freedom or hope. In an earlier song, Voices in the Sky (see it on youtube.com from the ‘Colour Me Pop’ 1968 sessions), he writes

‘Bluebird flying high, tell me what you sing.

If you could talk to me, what news would you bring

Of voices in the sky?’

 

The bird becomes the catalyst for change and often for freedom. He uses the symbol again on this very album in The Land of Make-Believe- but there is always that nagging insecurity or uncertainty, now, and in 1972. As much as you have these new horizons, you are entering unknown territory:

 

‘Where is this place that we have found
Nobody knows where we are bound
I long to hear, I need to see
Cos' I've shed tears too many for me.’

 

 

Ray Thomas wrote the next song, ‘for My Lady’ which, it seems to me, is as much about change as the last song, this time propelled by love and the way it can calm everything.

 

‘My boat sails stormy seas
Battles oceans filled with tears
At last my port's in view
Now that I've discovered you.’

 

The ship metaphor continues in other verses:

 

‘Set sail towards the sun
Feel the warmth that's just begun
Share each and every dream
They belong to everyone.’

 

The rhythm of the music rocks gently backward and forward, mimicking the motion of the waves. It is a song that is pretty, and full of hope, and so different to an earlier Thomas song, also about the sea and waves, called ‘And The Tide Rushes In’, which is full of bitterness and acrimony. It’s not like For My Lady is terribly significant, but in its way it’s the complete song, and when I saw The Moody Blues in Nottingham in 2002, it received rapturous applause.

 

Side One ends with Isn’t Life Strange, a John Lodge epic. Growing up, John Lodge was, for me, a minor member of the band, totally subordinate to Justin Hayward in talent and importance. This is a view I no longer have. Some of my favourite Moody Blues songs, I have come to realise, are written by John Lodge. There’s this one, with its beautiful chorus (sung, incidentally it seems, by Hayward), and Candle of Life, One More Time To Live, Emily’s Song, to name just a few lovely ones. Lodge is the only band member I had a brief chat with through the bus window that night in Nottingham- the Hayward window was too crowded.

 

Lodge gets fairly philosophical at times. The lovely words from One More Time To Live from an earlier album are testament to this: ‘One more time to live and I have made it mine/ Leave the wise to write for they write wordly rhymes/ He who wants to fight begins the end of time/ For I have riches more than these…’

 

Isn’t Life Strange is also philosophical, meditative, but with a sense of urgency. There is Pinder’s Chamberlin and Thomas’ flute side by side, and then Hayward’s electric guitar comes into play half way through each chorus:

 

‘Isn't life strange
A turn of a page
A book without light
Unless with love we write.

To throw it away
To lose just a day
The quicksand of time.’

 

This is a slow dreamy song that is full of love for me but might be full of self-importance for others. The contrast with the first song, on Side 2, is extreme. You And Me is fast, furious, with a catchy, rollicking rhythm, filled with fun but earnest at the same time. It is a Hayward song, co-penned with the band’s drummer Graeme Edge:

 

‘There's a leafless tree in Asia
Under the sun there's a homeless man,
There's a forest fire in the valley,
Where the story all began.

What will be our last thought
Do you think it's coming soon
Will it be of comfort,
Or the pain of a burning wound.’

 

A protest song about Vietnam? What will indeed be our ‘last thought’? The song throws up more questions than answers. The song is really in two parts. The mysterious lyrics that engage the mind and the strong bass lines and rhythm that engage the body and motor you along when you’re running. I have always wondered about these last couple of lines about comfort and pain. About whether or not it relates to the innocent bystanders of the terrible war who couldn’t predict their personal outcome because it was totally out of their hands.

 

The final Hayward song is next, called The Land of Make-Believe. It is one, it seems to me, of gentle despair. I say ‘gentle’ because the music is lovely and upbeat and hopeful and at times soaring, but the words have a certain darkness, and depict a world in which ‘make-believe’ becomes an unreal escape from some kind of awful claustrophobia:

 

‘We're living in the land of make-believe
And trying not to let it show
Maybe in that land of make-believe
Heartaches can turn into joy.

We're breathing in the smoke of high and low
We're taking up a lot of room
Somewhere in the dark and silent night
Our prayer will be heard, make it soon.’

 

This is as dark as it gets for Justin Hayward. There is usually a way out of things. In a hit song on an earlier album called The Story in Your Eyes he sings: ‘Listen to the tide slowly turning/ Wash all our heartaches away/ We’re part of the fire that is burning/ And from the ashes we can build another day.’

 

In The Land of Make-Believe he seems to be appealing to a new naked sort of honesty, as if that is the way out of things, rather than this false life that really doesn’t achieve anything:

 

‘Open up the shutters on your windows

Unlock all the locks upon your doors

Brush away the cob-webs from your day dreams

No secrets come between us any more…’

 

The song is very clean and compact. It simply is four stanzas with a consistent rhyme scheme that repeats itself, albeit a little more passionately the second time around. It’s a good representation of an album I have always liked. It sits with me incredibly comfortably because I know its nuances so well and I like every song. It’s interesting that The Moody Blues were going through a turbulent time during the making of the album, that there was less collegiality this time compared to other albums, that it was strained in the studio and had become apparent that this would be the last album for a while- indeed as a unit, because Pinder left shortly after. It’s a similar story with The Beatles who put together Abbey Road as a last magnificent hurrah after the turbulence and dislocation that was the making of Let It Be.

 

The second last song is another Pinder song, and probably my favourite. When You’re A Free Man is lovely and melodic and lilting. It seems to be about Timothy Leary. I see somewhere that he was arrested and placed in jail around this time, and the reference to ‘Rosemary’ must be his wife. But it’s more than a song about Timothy Leary. There is more than one kind of ‘free’ that is alluded to as well:

 

‘I often wonder why

Our world has gone so far astray

Someway I know I’ll see you shining

When we’re all free men again.’

 

Pinder is always singing about our world going astray, and who can blame him? The hope and optimism in these last two lines is beautiful and touching. There is a section of the song that makes reference to two men being on a mountain-side, which reminds me of the philosophy of D H Lawrence. It is the closeness of men he always wrote about, ‘Blood Bruderschaft’ and specifically I have an image of Lawrence talking intimately with his good friend Aldous Huxley in Switzerland during ski season or at Lawrence's home, the Villa Mirenda, near Florence, about all manner of things men:

 

‘High on a mountain-side

We laughed and talked of things to come.

Someday I know I’ll see you shining

When we’re all free men again.’

 

And then we have Lawrence again near the end, and his idea of a close, reliable community of genuine friends, his Rananim:

 

‘You gave love freely

To those with tears

Your eyes were sad when

You saw the need.

You know that love lasts for eternity

Let’s be God’s children

And live in perfect peace.’

 

 

 

It is the atmospheric music I like above all. The flute soaked fadeout is gloriously wistful. It gives way to the growing sounds of a real rocker, the most prolonged soaring guitar solos that The Moody Blues ever produced- John Lodge’s anthem ‘I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock And Roll Band).’

 

It has a frantic pace throughout with lots of single syllable words helping create this freneticism:

 

‘I’m just a wandering on the face of this earth

Meeting so many people

Who are trying to be free

And while I’m travelling I hear so many words

Language barriers broken

Now we’ve found the key.’

 

The words are fairly despair-laden and take us back to the Pinder song at the start of the record. Again, we are dealing with the frustration of war, poor communication, a lack of understanding:

 

‘How can we understand

Riots by the people for the people

Who are only destroying themselves

And when you see a frightened person

Who is frightened by the people

Who are scorching this earth.’

 

Lodge says ‘Music is the traveller crossing our world/ Meeting so many people bridging the seas.’ But in the end music can only do so much. And the ban can only do so much. After all, collectively, they are ‘just the singers in a rock and roll band.’ The John Lennon/ Yoko Ono frustrating pleading- ‘All we are saying/ Is give peace a chance.’

                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1990's JONI MITCHELL- NIGHT RIDE HOME

'Because Elvis gave them cars

You think I'm cheap...'

  

                                              

 

I DISCOVERED Joni Mitchell late, at an unfortunate time. It was in the early 80’s and the 80’s wasn’t, in my opinion- others will differ- a kind decade for her. The 70’s were, alternatively, a glorious time. It culminated in the more experimental records like ‘Mingus’ and ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’ which were triumphs of courage as much as anything. She knew, and the record producers were telling her, that she would lose a lot of her loyal ‘Court and Spark’ and ‘Hejira’ fans, simply because these albums were risky and breathtakingly different. Perhaps the 80’s albums were different too, but I have never been able to get into them. They include ‘Dog Eat Dog’ and ‘Chalk Mark in the Rainstorm.’ I suppose Joni Mitchell’s career threatened to suddenly end then. A great period from the late 60’s, when she began, and a brilliant decade throughout the 70’s, and then music oblivion. This would be different to her contemporaries, like Van Morrison, who, in my opinion, had a decade in the 80’s very much as successful and creative and full of wonder as the 70’s.

Thankfully, there were three excellent records created by Joni in the 90’s, as a kind of comeback from unsuccessful 80’s experimentation. The first of these, ‘Night Ride Home’, from 1991, has been on my record player a lot lately, as I sit at the long table in the kitchen, or the leather couch in front of the stereo. I find myself humming the tunes all the time, and thinking about them, lyrically especially, as lyrically is probably all I can do. Don’t expect me to be discussing harmonic palettes, or dominant and non-dominant chords, for that matter.

‘Night Ride Home’ has ten songs, and is quietly inspired. It is produced by Joni and her then husband, bassist Larry Klein, and guest artists include Michael Landau and Wayne Shorter. The first song, the title track, is a relaxed and lovely paean to a simple night drive next to the person you love. The chorus features the simple refrain: ‘I love the man beside me/ We love the open road.’ It is the 4^th of July holiday and the couple have been on the road, escaping from the madness of being weighed down by phones-‘No phones till Friday’- which is reminiscent of ‘Court and Spark’s song ‘The Same Situation’ where the speaker is ‘tethered to a ringing telephone.’ The imagery is smooth, and relaxed, and lovely, as the poet recalls the various highlights of their trip away- the surreal ‘big blue moon’, the fireworks and ‘the ukulele man’, the way the powerlines gleam silver from the beams from the headlights, and (my favourite image), the majestic and mysterious ‘big dark horse’: ‘Red taillights on his side/ Is keeping right alongside/ Rev for stride.’ This is the most gentle and assured of all the songs on the album, with its absence of any noticeable tension. There are even soft, sibilant sounds of chirping crickets on the soundtrack. It is a mature couple’s celebration of peace and fulfilment.

Several tracks later ‘Nothing Can Be Done’ appears, and with it all the tensions that can exist in relationships. Joni shares the vocals with somebody with a young, strong voice called David Baerwald. The lovely surreal blue moon has been replaced bed as being y ‘graffiti ruins.’ A tender and loving heart is now described as ‘a smoking gun.’ The speaker’s lover suddenly leaves in anger, running red lights, accompanied by ‘trash-can-rock-band-pounding.’ Middle age is uncertainty is creeping in- ‘Oh I am not old/ I’m told/ But I am not young/ Oh and nothing can be done.’ This song has a harder edge, the male vocal emphasising a certain kind of moodiness and soft aggression. A part of it seems to be about regret. The words are quite simple, but the arrangement is interesting with the layered vocals and heavy percussion.

‘Ray’s Dad’s Cadillac’ is probably the weakest song, but it’s fun, and a return to the lightness of mood. It is the second last song on the album and has a catchy refrain, based around its title. There are a couple of songs on this album that conjure up the past. Here, the singer sings of her rock ‘n’ roll days, of romance in the back of the Cadillac, and the ‘pink fins’ of the car ‘in the falling rain.’ Ray’s dad, it seems, is her ‘math’ teacher and she is no good at math. Her mind is on other things, rather than school. She wants to escape. She dreams of ‘blue runways’ and ‘Blue lights out on airport road’ and the bolts and ‘tire treads’ of low planes. For Joni, the past is often about romance, and music, and dreams of escape- an ‘urge for going’ which she often explored.

The past, and boys, and romance comes up again in the longest song, the charming ‘Come in From the Cold.’ In ‘Turbulent Indigo’, recorded a few years later, and one of Joni’s best records, she sang and wrote mostly about contemporary issues, like domestic violence and natural justice. On ‘Night Ride Home’ Joni is still singing about the past and reminiscing about rock ‘n’ roll and her youth when she was discovering new things. This song, ‘Come in From the Cold’ is an excellent example.

The listener is transported back to 1957 where potential young lovers were kept ‘a foot apart’ at dances by adults holding rulers ‘without a heart.’ These ‘wise guardians’ were unable to prevent the occasional touch of a fingertip, or legs touching under the table, and the sensation of experiencing something innocent but still forbidden is captured beautifully by Joni when she sings of contact with another making ‘our circuitry explode’ and how she feels ‘renewed’ and ‘disabled’ by these ‘bonfires in my spine.’ In ‘Down To You’ from ‘Court and Spark’ the touch starved adult is startled by the close proximity of another: ‘In the morning there are lovers in the street/ They look so high/ You brush against a stranger/ And you both apologize…’, however this experience is different. It’s all about innocence and new experiences, and finding your way and discovering who you are. There is an echo of Van Gogh (like there is on ‘Turbulent Indigo’), when Joni talks of being ‘flesh and blood’, and ‘not some stone commission/ Like some statue in the park.’ Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo with similar complaints about his desperate need for affection and intimacy from another human being. There is also something cerebral about the whole thing as well. Amidst tactile images about wanting to make physical connections, Joni sings of what was on her mind and the thoughts that dwelt in a 1957 mind: ‘We really thought we had a purpose/ We were so anxious to achieve/ We had hope/ The world had promise/ For a slave/ To liberty.’

Next there is a reality check on the album when the listener is taken away from the idealism of the past into the rude awakening of the present. I have read somewhere that Joni had a housekeeper that ripped her off and even tried to sue her, and ‘The Windfall (Everything for Nothing) clearly comes out of that. The song is bitter and accusing, even if it is saved from a morbid vengefulness with the humour in its opening lines:  ‘Because Elvis gave them cars/ You think I’m cheap / And you’re hard done by.’ There is a lovely lilting sing-song sound in its melody that also belies the acrimony on display, in lines that are spat out like ‘Oh I’m tangled in your lines/ Your scam/ Your spider web/ Spit spun between the trees/ Doors slam/ You want my head/ You’d eat your young alive/ For a Jaguar in the drive…’

If we believe the lyrics, the housekeeper was a rapacious parasite, and Joni meanwhile looked after her generously and fairly throughout, paying for trips to ‘tropic shores’ and allowing her access to a ‘big blue pool’ and ‘clothes from fancy stores.’ The song becomes a rant against justice and the judicial system of lawyers and in the end it’s a very nicely constructed song and very musical, but also deeply personal with the feel of wanting to get things off your chest.

Much more universal is the charming ‘The Only Joy in Town’, set in Rome, and one of dozens of songs, no doubt, about becoming besotted, as a tourist, by a charismatic figure wandering around a foreign town. Joni gives a convincing female heterosexual slant on things by referring to the wonder boy throughout as the alliterative ‘Botticelli black boy’, a boy that is mesmerizing and lovely but full of self-conceit as he is ‘Breathing in women like oxygen/ On the Spanish stairs.’ I’ve sat on the Spanish stairs and I can easily see just how Joni’s intense and sexual image can be played out, on the first day of Spring, no less. She recreates the place names, and the atmosphere of Rome, with references to ‘Deadpan side-walk vendors’ and ‘Fellini’s circus’ and ‘La Dolce Vita clowns.’ There is a lovely melancholy edge to the whole song, however, with its reference to the empty streets at night- ‘Where does everybody go’, and the fact that, by 1991, the idea of following some charismatic boy around seems ridiculous: ‘In my youth I would have followed him/ All through this terra-cotta town.’ Sadly, he is the ‘only joy in town’, and he is unattainable.

Equally unattainable, it seems, is the mysterious figure from the last song, ‘Two Grey Rooms.’  This song took a while to grow on me, musically, at any rate. But for a long time I have now considered it to be the best song. It, too, is full of melancholy, as the title suggests, an echo of the melancholy book ‘Death in Venice.’  The singer is living in an undisclosed location and is besotted by another figure, this time a man, older, it seems, than the ‘Botticelli black boy.’ The image this time is of masculinity and sexuality: ‘Hot days your shirt’s undone/ Rainy days you run/ Oh and then you fade so fast/ Below my window.’ It’s the story of an infatuated voyeur, and the strings used in the song add a touch of grandeur and a tinge of sadness. This is unrequited love and its painstaking in its obsession. The lyrics also add the idea of it being like some kind of retreat- ‘No one knows I’m here/ One day I just disappeared/ And I took these two grey rooms up here…’  Just to remind us that not all of Joni’s songs are autobiographical, the idea apparently comes from an experience of the German director, Fassbinder, who saw a former lover from his window and became newly hypnotised.

Joni dips into the past again with a beautiful, sad song called ‘Cherokee Louise.’ It seems to be based on her relationship with a childhood friend. Joni’s songs about her childhood past and her young friendships are some of her most haunting. I am thinking of songs like ‘Song For Sharon’ and ‘Urge For Going’ and ‘Chinese Café’, etc, and this one is as good as these. ‘Cherokee Louise’ tells the sad story of a girl running away from her sexually abusive stepfather and hiding in a tunnel ‘in the Broadway bridge.’ It is also a song about ignorance and being ostracized. The poor girl isn’t allowed into the speaker’s house, and gossip and innuendo inflict their usual damage: ‘People like to talk/ Tongues are waggin’ over fences/ Waggin’ over phones…’ Joni contrasts the cruel adult treatment of Cherokee Louise with her own innocent games with the poor victim: ‘Last year about this time/ We used to climb up in the branches/ Just to sway there in some breeze/ Now the cops on the street/ They want Cherokee Louise.’  This song, in its sense of social satire, is reminiscent of certain songs on ‘Dog Eat Dog’, and foreshadows themes that appear on ‘Turbulent Indigo’, such as ‘Not To Blame’, also about assault. The masked sweetness of the song is punctuated by the lovely bursts of soprano sax from Wayne Shorter.

The last two songs up for discussion are, lyrically, the most challenging. The lyrics for one of them- ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’, belong to W B Yeats, not Joni.

Joni is generally cynical about Catholicism- see ‘Shine’ on the album of that name, and ‘The Magdalene Laundries’ on ‘Turbulent Indigo’- these are two examples- and my feeling is that she is probably cynical about religion in general, but I might be wrong about this- at least organised, established religions at any rate. Her most beautiful realisation of religious themes in music is ‘The Sire of Sorrow’ from Turbulent indigo, where she puts herself (as far as I can tell) in Job’s harrowing position. This religious motif is repeated on this album on the  triumphant ‘Passion Play (When All the Slaves Are Free’). The lyrics are, apparently, an echo from Luke, discussing an encounter a tax collector made with Jesus, when Jesus unexpectedly admitted him into his home. The tax collector’s name was Zacchaeus and he wanted to be seen by Jesus, who was travelling through Jericho, and being short, decided to climb a sycamore tree to enable this to occur. Joni’s words seem to talk of this encounter: ‘I am up a sycamore/ Looking through the leaves/ A sinner of some position/ who in the world can this heart healer be/ This magical physician.’ Then there are perhaps more contemporary references about ‘dirty work’ and slaves, and Mary Magdalene makes an appearance, and somehow Joni weaves thoughts on Exxon Blue into her tapestry. It all makes for a complex but very tuneful song. And a very confident song.

The only song on the album that doesn’t feature Joni’s words is the Yeat’s poem, ‘The Second Coming’, which Joni gives the title ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ (I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Joan Didion wrote a book with the same title in 1968 about San Francisco). The song, and poem, begin with ‘Turning and turning/ Within the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart/ The center cannot hold/ And a blood dimmed tide/ Is loosed upon the world.’

Yeats wrote his poem just after the end of the First War. It clearly still has relevance today. Joni felt, no doubt, that the falcon still could not hear the falconer. It’s not an optimistic song, but there is plenty on ‘Night Ride Home’, including the title track, to counteract any gloomy mood.

 

 

 

SYLVIA PLATH: THE DEATH OF HER FATHER, IN EARLY FICTION

                             

EVERYBODY knows that Sylvia Plath’s father died when she was very young- about eight or nine, I think. It had an absolutely profound effect on her writing and the way she viewed the world, as well her relationships and the way she lived her life. The death, as unnecessary as it seemed, was a cruel blow to an otherwise happy, yet sometimes intense, precocious child. It is inextricably linked, it seems, to her many suicide attempts, the earliest it seems when she was finishing high school and taking medication for depression. This whole thing, dealt with in her only published novel, ‘The Bell Jar’, makes fascinating reading. And lately I have come across a very short story called ‘Among the Bumblebees’ which also deals with the subject of the loss of her father. It was a topic that not only preoccupied her, but also haunted her, and this early story, written only when she was about nineteen or twenty, makes compelling reading.

‘Among the Bumblebees’ starts with an image of her father ‘tossing her up (lovingly) into the air’ and then ‘holding her in  a huge bear hug.’ The speaker, as Plath as a young girl, is Alice Denway. The reliance on, and sheer love, of her father is palpable throughout. There are countless images throughout the beginning of the story of (Mr Plath) as a strong, reliable and fiercely protective father. (One can’t help wonder if the strong, sturdy and hulking Ted Hughes whom she later married might not have been a father replacement, perhaps like Joe DiMaggio might have been temporarily for Marilyn Monroe).

Alice’s father is said to be a ‘giant of a man.’ Alice worships him because ‘he was so powerful.’ He always knew best and ‘never gave mistaken judgement.’ You can clearly see well ahead of time what poor little Alice Denway will be facing when such a colossal figure is to all too soon collapse around her.

                                                           

The connection between Alice and her father- as opposed to her father and younger brother Warren (no change in name from real life here)- is made clear. Alice is simply ‘her father’s pet.’ After she has surreptitiously kicked her little brother under the table, her father will ‘tweak at her pigtail’ and ask “who’s my girl?”

The level of indiscriminate worship is increased even further a little later when Alice observes her father at work in his study (the scholarly Otto Plath was a professor and wrote influential books and articles on bees and other insects). Little Alice imagines her father lecturing students at work ‘like a king, high on a throne’ with a ‘thundering voice.’ I can imagine Hughes using a thundering voice, in his case a thick Yorkshire thunder.

And then, in an image that is very Plath-like, created at such an early stage of her writing career, she imagines the little red correction marks on her father’s students’ papers as ‘the color of the blood that oozed out in a thin line the day she cut her finger with the bread knife.’ One can’t help but think of the late poem ‘Cut’, written about 1962, which begins (from memory), ‘What a thrill! My thumb instead of an onion/ The top quite gone/ Except for a sort of a hinge...’ It is the thrill of the ‘ooze’ in the case of the Alice story that stays in your memory.

Later in the story Alice goes swimming with her father. Plath grew up in near Boston, quite close to the sea, and loved the water her whole life, always lamenting the crappy English beaches, and often reminiscing, in exile, of the apparently glorious American ones (Hughes writes of this, memorably, in ‘Birthday Letters’).

                                                                 

 

During incredible storms as ‘swollen purple and black clouds’ break open with ‘blinding flashes of light’, Alice’s father places his ‘strong arms around her’, enabling her to ‘face the doomsday of the world in perfect safety.’ I am reminded of another Hughes poem here, called ‘Wind’ from his first book of poems. In this poem Plath and Hughes can ‘feel the roots of the house move’ and hear ‘the stones cry out from under the horizon.’ The setting is England this time, but the idea is the same, even though the male, as fierce protector, is not quite as well spelt out.

Just before the crisis which tragically concludes the story, Alice’s father takes her out to the garden to show her how to catch bumblebees. His extraordinary affinity with bees seems to parallel the affinity that the Aboriginal writer, Roberta Sykes, has with snakes. He can stifle an angry buzzing bumblebee in his fist and then let it go without any hint of being stung. Plath’s lifelong fascination of bees, inherited obviously from her father, can be seen in a poem like ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, ‘black on black, clambering.’

Then, suddenly, Alice’s father can only talk in whispers, and the sunlight is too bright for his eyes. Soon he is very vulnerable, reliant on a ‘plump, silly doctor’ and his big silver needles. Moreover, his face is the ‘sallow color of candle wax’ and his flesh is ‘lean and taut about his mouth.’

It is, undoubtedly like it was in real life, a terribly sad and tragic ending. Bewildered little Alice stands beside the bed ‘clenching and unclenching her thin hands by her side’, like a figure in an Edvard Munch painting. She places her head on her father’s chest as the pulsing of his heart is becoming weaker. The story concludes with this final sentence:

‘She did not know then that in all the rest of her life there would be no one to walk with her, like him, proud and arrogant among the bumblebees.’

Ted Hughes, who came into her life just four or five years later, may have been, for a short while, this proud and strong, and imposing, reassuring man, a replacement figure for her father. But that’s another topic, for another day.