Re: House of Mystery

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

WretchAwry (vickie@pilot.njin.net) picks up on the House of Mystery thread:

> > ]Now, here's a new mystery for you English Lit types:
> > ]Listening to "December will be Magic", what connection does
> > ]Oscar Wilde have with Christmas?  O. Henry, Charles Dickens I
> > ]can obviously see if Kate used those as a literary referance.
> > ]But Oscar Wilde?  Is there some story of his ("The Importance
> > ]of Being Santa"?) I don't know about?
> 
> Hey, where are all the experts??  My memory is not so good, and I don't
> remember the name of the story, but during the unedited MTV interview
> Kate talks about an Oscar Wilde story she loved as a child.  It has
> to do with a jewel-encrusted statue of a man and a little bird.  I
> don't think it's a "Christmas" story, but it ends in the wintertime.
> Surely IED (or Ron) transcribed(?) that interview which was filmed
> during her November 1985 visit to NYC.
> 
> I now turn the topic over to IED, or someone with fancy technology
> who can scan the archives (specifically The Garden or Cloudbusting)
> easier than I can.

       Not that fancy; but thanks for the clue, Vickie.  Not in The Garden, 
but Cloudbusting has it <WARNING!  SPOILER!  DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO FIND 
THE STORY FOR YOURSELF FIRST!>:

       I don't know if there are any writers that have really influenced me. 
       Particular books certainly have.  But again they're much on a novel 
       level rather than a reality level.

        UH, HUH.  WELL LIKE LET'S HAVE A COUPLE OF EXAMPLES.

       I used to read quite a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and C. S. Lewis when I was 
       a kid was one of my biggest ones.  I also think when you're very 
       little, like I don't know if you were ever read fairy stories by your 
       mother, I think those kind of things get in very, very deep.  And when 
       I was really little, one of my favorite writers was Oscar Wilde and 
       his fairy stories.  And I actually think that they got in quite deep. 
       I think his sense of tragedy and poetry is something that still moves 
       me very much.

        I DIDN'T KNOW HE HAD FAIRY STORIES.

       Yes, he does indeed.

        OH, REALLY?

       Oh yes, and they're beautiful.

        CAN YOU LIKE DESCRIBE ONE?

       Well one of them.  [COUGHS].  Just trying to think what it's called.  
       The Happy Prince is one of his stories.  It's about this huge statue 
       that stands in the middle of a city.  And it's incredibly beautiful, 
       it's coated in gold, his eyes are rubies, he just sparkles.  He's a 
       beautiful statue of the prince.  And there's a little swallow who's 
       flown in and nests at the feet of the statue overlooking the city.  
       And the statue speaks to the swallow and says does he realize how much 
       poverty and sadness is going on in the city.  So bit by bit the little 
       swallow strips the statue of the gold and the rubies and distributes 
       it around the city to all the poor people.  So eventually the Prince 
       is just like a lead blob.  He eyes are taken so he's blind, and he's 
       just left completely alone, all his great finery has gone to the poor. 
       And it's winter and the swallow should really migrate or it will die 
       and the swallow will not leave him.  And the tragedy is the closeness 
       between them - that the swallow should go or it will die and how 
       beautiful he was and now he's completely stripped.  The little swallow 
       dies and eventually they just sort of pull the statue down and stick 
       him in the dump.  [LAUGHS]

        OH, NO.

       But the way it is written and it's so beautiful and so sad!  And there 
       was one... you know, at the point where the swallow was discovered I 
       always used to cry as a child.

        SO YOU LIKE TO WRITE SONGS LIKE THAT THAT ARE SORTA SO ARCHETYPAL IN 
        A WAY?

       I think his sense of tragedy in telling a story attracts me 
       tremendously.  And I think it's very similar in a way to a lot of the 
       traditional music that I was again influenced by when I was very 
       little... by my family.  My brothers were really into folk music.  And 
       a lot of folk music is so into telling stories.  And it's in a way 
       something that doesn't feature so much in contemporary music any more. 
       I think contemporary music is used to help relationships a lot of the 
       time.  Like you go to the disco and you meet someone, so you have a 
       song, and it's your song.  It's more about that then actually telling 
       stories.  Like the traditional things are.  And I think that's a big 
       fascination for me.  (1985, MTV)

............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
            "Ooo, it's quiet inside            pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu
              Here in Oscar's mind"                 72020.366@compuserve.com