Over the past 6 months, I've been listening a great deal to Jackie Leven. His music has been routinely recommended over the years by various musicians/writers whose opinions I respect and I repeatedly made mental notes to investigate his music. However, it was only on learning of his passing in November 2011 that I finally managed to begin listening to his music in earnest.
What really prompted me, however, was learning that Jackie Leven was a great fan of Judee Sill and that he considered her his single favourite singer. Perhaps he recognised her as a kindred spirit more than most. (In the early Eighties, walking home late at night after a recording session, he was set upon by a gang of thugs, one of whom attempted to strangle him. It was only the chance intervention of his manager, who happened to be passing by, that saved his life. His larynx was left badly damaged and he was unable to sing or speak for the next two years, during which he became addicted to heroin and became a recluse. Somehow, he found the inner strength to re-launch his career.) One of her greatest songs, The Kiss, was his favourite song of all and he insisted that it be played at his funeral, a request that was thankfully honoured. (It was, in fact, played as his coffin was being removed from the church, which must have been a quite overwhelming experience for the attendees.)
He wrote a beautiful song dedicated to Sill, entitled Silver in her Crucifix (and a highlight of his Oh What A Blow That Phantom Dealt Me! album) which really gets to the very heart of this most elusive of talents. Three simple, but elliptical, verses are mere hints of thoughts akin to fleeting snapshots of memory. There is nothing concrete in these verses. There appears to be no direct reference to Judee Sill, which, I believe, is rather appropriate considering the fact the stories circulating about her life following her self-enforced retirement from music may very well be apocryphal. Ever-present, though, is an overwhelming sense of sorrow at the inexorable passage of time and the casualties that are left behind. They could almost be scattered thoughts, each of which are framed and contextualised by the bridge, "And Judee Sill just stood there/With her gold key in her heart/And the silver in her crucifix /Kept warring worlds apart". However, this is all just a preamble to the quietly devastating final verse where the "ones who yearned for fame" are now just "charred remains" which are viewed dispassionately by a crow with no interest at all in "the slow and dreadful burning of the papers of the dead". These papers, which might well have encapsulated the hopes and dreams of people who once burned brightly and were illuminated from within by these creative fires are now no more than dust and chaff in a "burned-out outhouse". Perhaps I'm stretching a little here, but this reminds me strongly of the following line from Peter Hammill's The Comet, The Course, The Tail: "In the slaughterhouse all corpses smell the same, /whether queens or pawns or innocents at the game; /in the cemetery a uniform cloaks the graves/except for outward pomp and circumstance. "
Aside from the lyrical content of this song, it’s also worth pointing out the gentle phrasing of Leven’s singing. There’s a particularly lovely fragile quiver to his voice (perhaps a result of the damage to his larynx) which just breaks my heart, and which also recalls Sill’s gently nuanced and unforced vocal delivery. Nothing is exaggerated here and everything is understated, which makes it so enriching and so powerful an experience.
Leven had a great appreciation for poetry and one poem he returned to again and again was Theodore Roethke’s very great (and deeply unsettling) poem, In A Dark Time, and in particular, the famous line “what’s madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?” Leven’s experiences of people at the fringes of society, coupled with his own dark times, taught him to respect and be compassionate to those who appear alien to us. The duality of human nature is something that Roethke’s poem confronts directly and, in particular, the realisation that to understand it in others is to understand it in yourself. “In a dark time, the eye begins to see/I meet my shadow in the deepening shade. /I hear my echo in the echoing wood/A lord of nature weeping to a tree”. Although a survivor himself, Leven recognised Sill’s “purity of pure despair, / [a] shadow pinned against a sweating wall”. “The edge is what I have” could almost serve as a personal maxim for Sill. The line, "A man goes far to find out what he is", is significant. Roethke is referring to the distance travelled in the emotional landscape of one's own mind (the accretion of subjective experience over time) as opposed to any physical journey. And, in Roethke's poem, where all is inverted towards the "deepening shade", the protagonist sees his life as inexorably leading toward what is seen to be the inevitable consequence of what went before. And in making a decision, whether it be Leven emerging as a survivor or Sill taking her own life, we see this objective impassivity being fulfilled in the crow's dispassionate observance of human strivings and their consequences.
Perhaps the one thing that distinguishes singer-songwriters is their apparently casual brilliance whereby they might toss in a line or a few words, which initially is lost in the melee, but over repeated listening stands out and gradually becomes the fulcrum on which the rhythmic and emotional weight of the song hinges. In this song, what always makes me stop and catch my breath is the alteration of the words, "silver in her crucifix" to "shadow in her crucifix". I really think that only somebody who has really lived with Sill's music and could truly empathise with her sufferings could write words like that. The silver crucifix which represents her faith, was, I believe, gradually crushed by the realities she faced in her life, to be replaced by a shadow of what was there before. This shadow sustained her for a while, and “kept warring worlds apart”, before she took her own life. (To recall Roethke’s poem, “Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. /My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, /keeps buzzing at the sill.) The shadow that she lived under must have been very similar to the reclusive existence that Leven himself endured whilst addicted to heroin following his own near-death experience.
Silver in her crucifix
Tough old ports in freezing weather
A foghorn on the go
An old dog by the bakery
Young sailors walk in snow
A ship sailed down the air
Crushing children's dreams
Flowers were sent flying
The red wine ran in streams
And Judee Sill just stood there
With her gold key in her heart
And the silver in her crucifix
Kept warring worlds apart
Some men were making cars
The tramlines disappeared
Autumn brought the usual flood
Of lovers shedding tears
And Judee Sill just stood there
With her gold key in her heart
And the shadow in her crucifix
Kept warring worlds apart
And in the burned-out outhouse
I see the charred remains
Of emperors and poets
The ones who yearned for fame
A crow across the snowy fields
Had no interest at all
In the slow and dreadful burning
In the papers of the dead
And Judee Sill just stood there
With her gold key in her heart
And the shadow in her crucifix
Kept warring worlds apart
In a Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
