Today’s birthday boy is Tom Verlaine, born Thomas Miller, 65
years ago today—in Wilmington, Delaware, which is where I was born too. I’ve
posted already about Marquee Moon
(1977), the great punk era album from Verlaine’s band Television that graced my
late teens, and about “The Fire,” my favorite song from its follow up, Adventure (1978). In choosing today’s
song, I went with what may be my favorite Verlaine solo album. It’s either Cover or Dreamtime (1981), though I also liked his Songs and Other Things in 2006, which is when I finally got around
to seeing him perform live.
I picked today’s song, specifically, because the birthday of
the one of the greatest American poets, Emily Dickinson, was back there on the
10th. I don’t know that today’s song is meant to remind us of that one and only
“Miss Emily,” but it did for me anyway. In fact, I can’t hear the song and not
think of her a bit. Particularly as the song’s comment to Miss Emily—“I’d like
to work around your place / I’ll be a handyman”—makes me think of Robert Frost
and all those poems about doing little chores on some New England spread. Frost
and Dickinson are the “go to” poets of Americana, oddly gnomic in their
associations and yet full of an unmistakeable spirit that registers the old
Yankee landscapes and forms of speech. Though not a New Englander by birth, I’ve
always felt a little bit akin toward the region. Maybe it’s just a way of
saying that the sense of place I romanticize, in America, is New England.
So this feels to me a “New England” song, and it begins with
lines that make me think of how Dickinson can overwhelm one: “Day after day / I
heard your voice / In the silence, burning me up / Burning me up / Emily / I
worship you / Even in my dreams.”
One thing I like about Cover is the way the guitars attain a
density that has to do with Jimmy Ripp’s presence on the album. With Ripp,
Verlaine achieves a variation on the two guitar effects that were so
instrumental to the sound of Television. And “Miss Emily” is my favorite track
because of the big sonic cloud it creates. In the midst of that descending
guitar line that keeps swooping through the song, there are bright little
arpeggios that ring out clear like little drops of silver.
Unable to find an upload of the song as it appears on Cover, I link to a live performance of
the song in 1984. It’s good because you can see the interplay of Verlaine and
Ripp, but they don’t manage the density of the recorded version. And that
soaring exegesis on guitar that happens in the fade of the album version gets altered
live into a time change and what seems to me a more lyrical musical coda.
Of course, the song may have nothing to do with Dickinson.
It may be all about a hottie named Emily, “so fine, so fine,” making the dude
want “to work real hard” around her place, a handyman “until the sun goes down”
at which point he might be handy in a more intimate way, nudge nudge. This gets
more emphatic with “Will you take me on? / I’ll be your handyman.”
And yet that only seems silly if you quote it like I just
did. In the context of the song, it’s got a more morose, slowburn feeling, like
this guy needs to work off his debt and is in some kind of bondage—the bondage
of love and desire, sure, but that isn’t a laughing matter. It reminds me of
Verlaine’s great song “Kingdom Come” on his first, eponymous solo album of
1979, with its cry “I’ve been breaking these rocks / And cutting this hay / I’ve
been breaking these rocks / It’s my price to pay,” and “I won’t be breaking no
rocks / When the kingdom comes.” This hard working handyman in “Miss Emily” may
be hoping to approach “the kingdom” as well, that little heaven on earth of
lying with Emily.
Miss Emily / I’ll work
real hard / Till the sun goes down.
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