I've been listening over the past week to Peter Hammill's Silent Corner and the Empty Stage. Recorded during the enforced sabbatical of Van der Graaf Generator, it contains some of his greatest songs. One of them, The Lie (Bernini's St. Theresa), might just be his finest achievement.
The Lie concerns a conflicted seeker after truth. He can sense the mystery in the church, the sense of adoration of the Other, yet his conscious mind feels compelled to debunk it. In the first verse, you have, on one hand, "genuflection", "sacristy cloth", "sacred secrets", and "benediction", whilst on the other you have "erection in church", "moth-eaten shroud", "fictional fear", the snigger of "incautious laughter after confession". This, to me, is the mind eternally being caught by the body which, in turn, is then caught by the mind in a vicious circle. Question followed by qualification, the overrriding impression is of a mind that is cosseted by self-assurance, yet fractured by self-doubt. What mystery, he seems to say, even "grace", a state to which the faithful aspire, is "just a word like chastity or Lucifer or mine". And yet, "you took me through the window stain, drowned in image, incense, choir-refrain and slow ecstasy". He seems to be consciously aware of being attracted to an all-consuming, all-satisfying belief, but he pulls himself back - "I'd embrace you if I only knew your name". And then the image of Bernini's famous sculpture of St. Theresa comes to mind, the vision of Teresa of Avila willingly submitting herself to a spear being thrust into her heart by an angel, and an expression on her face of ecstasy. It is the most direct reference in Renaissance art to the theological conflict between eros and agape (the physical love as opposed to the spiritual love). To the unbeliever, it appears to be an image of sexual consummation, whilst to the believer it represents a subsuming of oneself to God, a ripping aside of the body so that the soul can present itself unvarnished by the original sin of the body. It's a fascinating image to Hammill,and one which summons up grave doubts within his mind. On one hand his heart is tempted and seduced by the thought of embracing some unknowable Other (and "walking through the one-way door" of absolute faith), yet his mind pulls him back. He is left hanging in limbo. He is compelled to ask for a Name, and without that Name, he feels that acknowledgement of that Other would be a lie.
The central line here - "The silent corner haunts my shadow prayers./Ice-cold statue, rapture divine,/unconscious eyes, the open mouth,/the wound of love,/the Lie." - is one of his finest. The contrast between the "ice-cold statue" and "rapture divine" is significant and encapsulates in a very succinct way the essence of divine rapture in which the more ravished the lover, the more ardent her desire. And yet, whilst she experiences the rapture, she knows nothing of it on a conscious (or physical) level. The "ice-cold statue" and the "unconscious eyes" indicate her lack of knowledge of the event of her life, whilst the "wound of love" ultimately represents the transfigured mien of the "open mouth" and the "unconscious eyes". The implication of being "wounded by love" in this context is, ultimately, death. Yet, "love is as strong as death" (Song of Solomon 8:6), and love transcends death.
Ultimately, Hammill is deeply conflicted between his outward rationalisation of the effect that the image of the Bernini has on him, and what he is tugged by inwardly, which frightens him immeasurably, a question to which he has no answer and which is left unresolved, and which is epitomised in the primal roar of the closing scream of the words "the lie".
When I think of Bernini's St. Teresa and the images it confronts, what comes to my mind so very forcefully is one of Judee Sill's greatest songs, The Kiss. I believe that this was her most personal song. When speaking about this song, Sill confessed that she could never tell whether it was about physical love or spiritual love, but that she knew it was about a communion of opposites. The opposites, in one sense, are the divine and the human coming together, but also, the worthy deigning to descend to the level of the unworthy. Yet she does not dwell on the implications of the latter thought, but rather she is filled with an idealistic joy at the imminence of that Other which she has yearned for. It is no surprise that, like The Donor, this song had its genesis in a dream she had, but unlike the nightmare visions in The Donor (where she feared a life in limbo after her death as she expiated her sins on earth), this song simply encapsulates in a single concentrated moment of joyful expectancy everything she craved in her life. The expectant joy implicit in the words is redolent of the unconscious mouth waiting to receive the holy breath. She yearns in a very human way to give herself to her God. It's worth recalling the exact language that Teresa of Avila used when writing about her dream/vision:
"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it."
Like Teresa, Sill hungers passionately for her flesh to be stripped away from her, and yearns for her soul to be exposed. Unlike Hammill, Sill sees no conflict in her thought, the kiss is divine and all-encompasssing, a sweeping away of the detritus of her physical body (which she may well have detested, so emblematic it was of her transgressions and physical weaknesses) to be united in communion with that "holy breath". The ultimate consummation of this spiritual kiss is the "sad nova's dying cry". This is the very epitome of agape, or spiritual love, which Teresa felt in her heart, as opposed to eros, or physical love. The line - "Sun, siftin' thru the grey/Enter in, reach me with a ray/Silently swoopin' down/Just to show me/How to give my heart away" - conjures an image of a shaft of light penetrating the waiting Sill illuminating her from within. Key to this transfiguration of the spirit is the line - "And lately sparklin' hosts/Come fill my dreams descendin' on firey beams/ I've seen 'em come clear down/Where our poor bodies lay/Soothe us gently and say,/"Gonna wipe all your tears away" - which is a remarkably succinct expression of the pining after redemption that Sill yearned for.
Putting aside the lyrical content for a moment, it's worth mentioning that she achieves the desired effect of her song without resorting to sanctimonious platitudes or hectoring moralism (which blighted Dylan's conversion albums of the late 70s/early 80s). Her faith was a very personal thing that she expressed very simply without resorting to explicit religious imagery. The hallmark of this song, as it is of all her songs, is gentle naivete, which is all the more surprising given the harsh life she lived, yet it is this gentleness of touch that makes The Kiss such a deeply moving experience. The curious contrast between the gentle and unassuming innocence of her music and the harsh realities of her earlier life is something that I have always found interesting. In person, she was apparently extremely defensive and suspicious of people in general, which gave her the reputation of being difficult. The impression I get is of somebody who didn't really understand life outside her music and books, and so she expressed in her songs what she could not communicate to other people.
Very few videos of Judee Sill in performance exist, but thankfully, one of those videos is a priceless document of Sill performing The Kiss for The Old Grey Whistle Test. In this performance, she communicates simply yet so very effectively the intoxicating beauty of the song through the sheer gentle restraint of her singing. Eyes closed, utterly consumed by the music, and apparently lost to the world around her, this is a profoundly affecting version of one of the most sheerly beautiful songs I have ever heard. One dearly hopes that she did indeed find this redemptive grace on her passing which she so clearly craved all her life.
"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame." (Song of Solomon 8:6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbqczZP3tWw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feFedDW_iQ
