Mercy Now
by Mary Gauthier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL6JoP0KCoo


Hi D&D. I just heard this song on the radio for the first time today. Likely not all the words are up your alley but some sure pertain to today's realities, as well as life in general.

And the melody, and Mary's voice, oh my.

I thought of you as I was listening. I remember that you enjoyed the aboriginal music link I sent a while ago. Different style but similar melancholy. Sometimes melancholy fits our mood exactly and that is therapeutic somehow.


Excerpt:

Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, they'll do anything to keep their crown
I love life and life itself could use some mercy now

Yeah, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don't deserve it but we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance dangle 'tween hell and hallowed ground
And every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2021 02:31PM by Nightingale.

I don't think I could have appreciated that song half as much without having gone through this last year. Mercy could soon be my drug of choice. Had a lot of tough times in life, but have never felt like I do now. Don't know what to do but keep going.

The music is so beautiful but it is the constantly changing inflection of the tone and simplicity of the let's-see-what-comes-out" voice that give edge to the lyrics--sort of like sharp velvet. Mercy, indeed. Wrings the emotion out of you, that song. Hard not to put yourself right into it.

Should be sung at the inauguration. Thank you for thinking of me Nightingale.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> Had a lot of tough times in life, but have never felt
> like I do now.

I can sense that in your poignant posts.


> sort of like sharp velvet.

Love that.


> Should be sung at the inauguration.

Great idea! Call Joe & push it. :)


> Thank you for thinking of me Nightingale.

Yeah. That one has your name all over it. Take care, D.

In case you see this . . . I ordered a book, novel, I think you may like as we seem to have a mutual fascination with words.

"The Liar's Dictionary" by Eley Williams.

The story of one person in the 1800's working at a Dictionary company who made up his own words aND stuck them in. The second story follows a present day worker at the same company charged with sorting out the fake words.

"The Liar's Dictionary is a raucous orgy of words," says the reviewer. "Williams juggles them, plays tunes with them, tries them on and takes them off, tastes them, and spits them out. All the while she's using them to frame a thoughtful inquiry into truth and meaning."

I'll let you know if it turns out to be good. Well, for me. Good is as subjective as it gets nowadays.

"...a raucous orgy of words" - wow - I love that.

I'll look forward to your review!

D&D: I think it was you, long ago, who mentioned the song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday. I hadn't heard of it before. It is the saddest, most haunting melody and Billie's rendition is heart-wrenching. I looked it up again the other day for a friend as we were speaking of the current situation in the US and the roots of some of the upheaval. She had never heard of the song. I found I couldn't read the words to her - cannot get used to them, too tragic, and she didn't want to know them anyway when I told her about the subject (which she guessed just by the song's title, in the context of our prior discussion). However, maybe we honour those affected more if we do delve into the guts of it all.


The story of the writer of the song, which first started out as a poem, is also fascinating.


https://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/158933012/the-strange-story-of-the-man-behind-strange-fruit


"In 1999, Time magazine named "Strange Fruit" the "song of the century." [amazing!] The Library of Congress put it in the National Recording Registry. It's been recorded dozens of times. Herbie Hancock and Marcus Miller did an instrumental version, with Miller evoking the poem on his mournful bass clarinet.

"Miller says he was surprised to learn the song was written by a white Jewish guy from the Bronx. "Strange Fruit," he says, took extraordinary courage both for Meeropol to write and for Holiday to sing.

"The '60s hadn't happened yet," he says. "Things like that weren't talked about. They certainly weren't sung about."


Written by "a white Jewish guy from the Bronx" - funny and yes, unexpected. Meeropol was a teacher.


Another fascinating piece to this story: Meeropol and his wife adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after they were executed for treason. I don't know how the adoption came to pass. The boys grew up to become college professors and were involved in social issues.

Music isn't just about sound but also about human history. Fascinating.

That was a nice remembrance for MLK Day.


I'm one of those who has trouble hearing like in a buzzy restaurant and I'm laughing and nodding like I can tell what anyone at the table is saying. I also have a lot of trouble hearing song lyrics. For years I thought "High Flying Adored" from Evita, was "I fly through the door."

I loved Billy Holiday even when I was young and I heard the song. She had a way of just throwing around bits of truth like she was feeding birds. Between my trouble hearing lyrics and my naivite I never knew what the song was. It was only when I heard it later in life and really "got" the lyrics, that it practically undid me. I couldn't process it. And that is why it sears. IT should never be processed.


I love knowing what you just revealed about who wrote the song. Adds another layer. Empathy is not for nothin'. An outsider CAN understand. Can care.

And . . . Emmitt Till needs a song too.

Oh yes, MLK Day. I didn't think of that when I was writing about this song but I had heard it mentioned on the news this a.m. I also saw a string of amazing photos of MLK posted on Twitter, many I had never seen before. It's a good week for the new VP to be sworn in. Fitting. And exciting. And amazing.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It was only when I heard it later in life and really "got" the
> lyrics, that it practically undid me. I couldn't
> process it. And that is why it sears. IT should
> never be processed.

Yes. Agree. I had the same reaction, as I mentioned, when I first heard Ms. Holiday singing this song and when I looked up the words and history again the other day.


> Empathy is not for nothin'. An outsider CAN understand. Can care.

Agree. Hope that is obvious but it's not always. Not even in my own family. My mixed-race niece recently called me "some white woman" and that really bit deep. Still struggling to put it aside. Of course I can't help the colour of my skin and also struggle with being seen as an oppressor-type, especially for events that occurred before my birth or age of maturity. The worst offence I've committed, as far as I am aware, is of being slow to realize the nature and extent of the human tragedy of the race wars, or whatever term is used in various places and ages. Especially here on the west coast of Canada it's not really a widespread thing in the way it is in your country (I believe the Black population in B.C. is 1% so the issues can be hidden or not well understood or realized). Of course, much injustice has been perpetrated here towards the indigenous peoples (i.e. residential schools where children were forcibly taken away from their parents by the government, causing them to lose their language, socialization and family ties and even more tragically, for some their lives).

A good and necessary reflection, especially on this day, as you note, D&D.

I'm sorry you can't hear lyrics that well, D. I think I can usually but sometimes find I've got it wrong. Not a lyric but a saying that I messed up for a long time is "cutting off your nose to spite your face". My parents used that one a lot. I thought they were saying "... despite your face", hahahahahaha. What that erroneous one even means who knows. :)