Dream Theater and T. S, Eliot: An Essay

Not much of a connection there I'm sure ... Frank had enough vampires around him from record companies to some fans ... that he made many efforts to get rid of more than once!

 

(Part 2)

 

... As David Perkins, an English and American literature professor at Harvard writes of the "mad medley's" first fans, "admirers were challenged to account for their feeling of coherence in a poem without continuity of setting, style, speaking voice, or plot. The poem, they presently said, was organized like music" (Perkins 76).... ... The poem utilizes three main themes that reccur throughout the entire work to convey the concept of the wasteland: the theme of the "wasteland" itself (to represent the defeated, conformist state of humanity), the "water theme" (to represent salvation from the wasteland), and the metropolitan theme (to represent the masses who are stuck in the figurative wasteland). ...

 

I would probably revisit these three themes. The water theme is more about the constant change and movement that is is about anything else. Where that water goes, and what it does and what it eventually accomplishes, we do not know until we see the end of it. Thus, "salvation" is not necessarily true, or possible, if in the end, the river dumps itself in the Atlantic Ocean and kills all the fish when it falls off in those falls! (hehehe Amazon river!). The other two are basically ok, although I would be wary of stating something like that ...

 

... ... "Octavarium" deals with non-conformity to social norms with the lyrical symbol of the octavarium. The octavarium is a word which functions as a Latin neologism: "octave", meaning the concept of a musical octave, and "-arium", used to denote a place where something is held (Octavarium 1). The arrangement of notes on the eight-step musical scale has a bottom note, "1", and a top note, "8". The top "8" can be expressed as the "1" of a higher scale (the distance between 1 and 8 is called an octave), beginning the 8-step scale anew ... ... The lyrics first give a narrative of the protagonist's decision to pursue the life that is right for him before they tell of his subsequent desire to be like everyone else: "So suddenly / the only thing / I wanted / To become / To be someone just like him".... ... The protagonist asks the doctor to cure him "from a state of catatonic sleep", but in the end, the doctor provides no cure for him, despite his pleas for assistance: "Medicate me […] / can't you stop what's happening?"... ... Dream Theater's octavarium seems to come out on top at the end of their piece as well. The narrator admits to its triumph in the final movement by stating the phenomena's effects as fact, saying, "We move in circles […] / A perfect sphere, colliding with our fate / the story ends where it began." ...

 

Not sure this is quite right or correct. The narrator of the poem, comes back to the beginning, more in his mind, than in the poem itself ... his mind is not happy meandering on these things, and in the end ... it doesn't matter ... you go home, eat dinner, watch a little tv and then go to bed, get up in the morning and go to work, and so on ... the cyclical nature of the whole day is really the issue, and the poem, in essence does the samem thing, and regardless of what it says and does, in the end ... it still comes back to the same thing ... almost like ... back to the same spot and ready for another moment in time that might, or might not, be a part of the poem, or the piece of music in question.

 

... "Octavarium" and "The Waste Land" utilize impressionistic techniques to solidify abstract concepts in their audience's minds ...

 

There is a tendency to think that just because you and I think of something that it is "impressionistic" to everyone else. Not necessarily. I maybe simply telling you a story ... and if you can relate to the wording, you will follow it regardless of how I state it. But, it might appear that I am NOT telling you a story, and am merely doing observations on something or other, and there really is no story on that to discuss ... and the only thing that would "attract" you to that would be if I did something unusual with it, or you came up with a theory that this piece went alongside the silent "Jazz Singer" or "Rin Tin Tin" (just being silly for silly's sakes!) in moods and attitudes, and you might ... MIGHT ... think that it means more than what I meant or intended because you saw it as something else that relates to your experience, not mine!

 

The use of the term is also ... dangerous, in some ways because the movement in the arts that caused that also suggested a very slanted and distorted view of reality, which in both of these cases and pieces that you are discussing is NOT the issue whatsoever.

 

... Despite the conflict between progressive rock sympathizers and those with no taste, the pieces, for those who can appreciate both, are like-minded works that function as appeals to resist conformity aimed at the masses that consume them ...

 

And this is very tough, because there is no artist, musician or painter out there that is trying to not be himself/herself with their very own expression and ability. In the end, there is a bit of the ho-hum attitude that it can all be reduced to A, or B, or C#, or F, or Gm and so on ... and for some people the music itself is "not alive", because they are seeing only the notes, and this could almost be considered a criticism of a lot of music schools that tend to evaluate music based on standards that have been there before --- instead of working to understand the "literature" and the "feeling" behind it that defines it as music in the first place. As I like to say, it's not about the "notes" as much as it is what these folks feel and wish to represent with their way of playing music and expressing themselves ...

 

The hard part, for a "public" place like this one is the last line of what you wrote. " that function as appeals to resist conformity aimed at the masses that consume them." ... and this is the same cyclical thing that the poem and the music talk about ... that is very difficult to get over and around. IF all you know is a top ten, you end up "conditioned" by it, and to it, and bound by its "conventions" and "styles" ... the end result of that is that you will eventually get bored because it's always the same thing, and it is human nature to give that up as soon as you get to that boredom stage. This is one of the main reasons why so much popular music comes and goes ... because too much of it is strictly attempting to wipe your thirst for "something" with a song, that more often than not has not a whole lot to say ... but you like it anyway. It is really important that we make a division and a call here ... that we not spend our time "judging" the very folks that like our work and want to buy it. However, as the saying goes, it is the artist's prorogative to make the statement, and this is the part that is difficult for "fans" and one of the reasons why some folks tend to prefer earlier works by this band, not a work that is so well defined BEYOND a simple song structure, meanign that the other stuff is easier to understand and relate to ... whereas this one is ... not eminently logical and easy to get!

 

Goodness ... I haven't written a "paper" in years ... good work. This was fun.

 

Next assignment please!

 

I'm working on DT's lyrics right now, btw

 

You know, as I was checking this one out again, a thought entered my mind, and it was the famous line from the Prufrock song ... and the women come and go thinking of michelangelo ... and how so much of the stuff posted here on this board is just like that, and might even have a lot in common with Wasteland. All of Elliott is very Zen ... and this board is nowhere near most Zen with one exception ... it's open-ness to all posting and comments, even in the fun and whatever section.

 

I've always tried to keep the slopping and the nothing posting down to the minimum ... but seeing a band, any band ... that has done some reading, studying and has some appreciation for some of the literary works, yeah yeah ... some are over rated and all that ... but that's like thinking that rock music is any better progenitor of literary marks and works through our lifetimes ... and our history has been that the majority of it has been mostly commercial music and not enough of it has a whole lot of literary/artistic value to make it more valuable or interesting. But that's also like saying that no one else did anything ... which we know is not true and all of a sudden something else shows up we did not notice or take into account.

 

DSOTM, like some other works by PF, only show their level of education in school as much as a whole lot of others in Canterbury, and also how little education/schooling a lot of other London/NY?Paris?SF/LA scenes that became famous simply because of the numbers in those cities and what they sold, rather than any defined "value" otherwise. It also shows some of the humor that Robert Wyatt so lovingly displayed with his famous ABC ... which really was a retort to the high class snobs that were in front of his band (same place as PF later in "Tonite We All Love in London" ... btw!) ... to which he gave us his opinion of that stuffed up rich snobs and class! But you and I do not have to sit here and discuss the literary content in Jim Morrison's lyrics ... which are way above and beyond the majority of any rock band out there ever.

 

I can appreciate Iggy Pop these days just fine, but what he was doing 40 years ago, was not music at all ... but it was a rebelliousness that stands up well against the stodgy and full of it classical music crowd ... so it's nice to see that huge difference, way before Sid V showed up. I'm not sure it makes for a Wasteland, any more than it does "women come and go" ... but in the end, it's hard to not think that the value of the human experience is lessened simply because it is not compared to a literary academic value, and I reject that on concept altogether ... for ALL human experience is valuable regardless. And thus one of my integral parts of definition of music and the arts. Yes, there are preferences, but those have nothing to do with the "source" or the "work" ... all of which is valid regardless of what ones background is.

 

I'm going to re-read Wasteland ... and then reply more on this ... but it seems to me that the women's line is so much more like the folks that listen to DSOTM and their like for the "music" and the "guitar" ... and I wanna see how many fingers you can bring up of those folks that even know the lyrics! Even I don't! That would suggest something else subliminal that you and I find attractive, but putting a name or word on it ... is probably impossible. But then, how many folks here have read much of anything other than the Wiki's version of the Cliff Notes ... with bad information and links on top of it! And that would make TS Elliott and any other artist, or wroter, a total chump when it comes to most folks these days ... as evidenced by some of the stuff shown here. And I'm sure that none of us wants to be thought of as "chumps" ... yet there it is ... I don't know why I like it, but I like it and that makes it progressive. Now I can use the cookie cutter ... jagged guitar and what not ... yeah ... yeah ... yeah ...

Very good work man!

 

And a damn good job ... albeit I think that TS was writing more about the wasteland left behind the world war than he was about the theme of non-conformity, which is all that is left, when all else is dead and gone ... there is no "society" to conform to ... which is the point that is kinda missed all along.

 

TS's work, is not the easiest thing to discuss, and it is really easy to get lost in the generics of a lot of academic terminology that is not very good any more, and tends to dilute the strength of the work altogether ... no one writes because it is a symbol of the degeneration of the social conformity to ideals ... you write because there is something that you don't like that everyone does in your midst ... and that -- eventually -- gets lumped into some fuel for a fire to supposedly mean this and/or that ... and in general, that is 'AFTER" the fact, not during, or with (even!) the person that created it off their vision.

 

I like DT's work, on this one, even if some don't ... and many times, because they don't! ... why? ... because it takes guts, determination and a very special desire, to even consider writing and doing something like that ... and the band deserves the credit for doing it ... but how to make sense of it, and help us not get lost is another story ... and I'm not sure they need to slap us with a "meaning" ... since we're gonna develop our own anyway!

 

If this was a college paper, you would get nailed for the generalities, btw ... be aware of that.

 

Now let's see if you can re-write this, after all that ... this is good enough to be a rough draft for a senior in college!