Manafon (1)

You can’t help but notice
A near absence of tenderness
And who wants to live like that?
   --David Sylvian, 'Emily Dickinson'.


I have been listening, spellbound, to David Sylvian's latest album. As with all the previous albums I know, it constitutes a unique experience, but this time for reasons which are themselves pretty unique: not only for its openly experimental amalgam of genres and aesthetics, but also for the overwhelming, looming, austere, cantankerous, intractable presence of a Welsh poet I greatly admire, R. S. Thomas.

As Sylvian himself acknowledges in a recent interview, it is not so much the question of Thomas's direct influence on his work that is relevant here but the poet's predicament and struggle with philosophical, moral and faith issues that run through all the songs and inform their grave, melancholic reflection on our contemporary condition:

There's such a rich complexity there [in R. S. Thomas] and we're only scratching the surface. These contradictions, this multifaceted character, although something of an anachronism in his own time, in some ways anticipates a contemporary predicament. On what does one ground one's own life? In a world that's rudderless when it comes to issues of morality, life values, where all is relative, where does one root oneself? It's a philosophical question that we, at some point in our lives, and the earlier the better, have to begin to ask ourselves. While it might be liberating to be freed from dogma and, for example, the rules of the church, as a society we hand much of that power over to government which steps in as surrogate patriarch and plays the enforcer. This will lead, I'm certain, to outbreaks of violence against societal laws and strictures. If a nation doesn't have a shared moral code how can it manage to order itself and maintain peaceful co-habitation without tighter and tighter reins being applied? With the death of god (as I recently read someplace, shot in the back of the head) on what energy field is the moral compass based? I feel that with the death of the notion of an external god, a necessary step in our evolution perhaps, to some extent we've also done away with the notion of ourselves as spiritual beings, as something more than flesh and blood. This imbalance will need correcting if we're to continue to evolve holistically.


It is almost unfair to single out a track, as they all require to be listened to as a sort of continuum within the album, but there are two songs that deeply touched me from the very first listening, for reasons I don't even dare verbalize. Here is the first one, "emily dickinson", about which Sylvian says, in reply to a question about Thomas:

R. S. Thomas isn’t an “easy” poet. He and his wife lived in the same house, but at opposite ends. They hardly ever spoke to each other, and only met at meal times. Yet after Elsi’s death, all these amazing poems started pouring out. Does love, or the notion of it and its difficulties, influence your own work? If so, how?

I would say the necessity and desire for love is an important underlying theme for me. This issue lies at the heart of a piece such as 'emily dickinson'. It's a fact of life that not everyone experiences unconditional love, finds themselves or others un-loveable, aren't willing to give, to sacrifice for the sake of love. Some simply cut themselves off from it. Withdraw. Yes, the theme of love or its absence is a constant preoccupation. To paraphrase the artist agnes martin, art is a celebration of the beauty in life or a protest against its absence.

Even though the song is not as yet available online, and it is sinful indeed to present it like this, uprooted, I cannot resist transcribing the lyrics, kindly provided by the artist's website:


Emily Dickinson

She was no longer a user
Don't think she realised we knew that
Not one to make a fuss
Why this and not something else
Wasn't it obvious?

She made such a hash of it
You can’t help but notice
A near absence of tenderness
And who wants to live like that?

And friends turned their backs on her
She, no longer a user
And she wanted to stay home
With a box full of postcards
And no place to send them
Live like Emily Dickinson
Without so much as a kiss
Or the comfort of strangers
Withdrawing into herself
But why this and not something else?