That of all the eyes out there
I could see none
As her thoughts pounded hard
Like the pierce of an arrow
But the song it was long
And it had to get done
(Eternal Circle)
Blind Willie McTell had no eyes with which to see that of all the eyes out there he could see none.
But the song it was long
And it had to get done
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Handy Dandy
On Positively 4th Street, envy was what was coming off the person who had it in for the person who was telling us about it. The retaliation was armed with the word “got”, but not the “got” of possessions that we might envy, and certainly not of an enviable self-possession.
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
Handy Dandy, on the other hand, does have a helping hand to lend, or even to give with, but a sinister hand:
He’ll say, “Ya want a gun? I’ll give you one”. She’ll say, “Boy, you talking crazy”
And the world of the scoundrel Handy Dandy is full of things that invite and excite envy, most of them got hold of with the little envy-catcher “got”:
He got an all girl orchestra and when he says “Strike up the band”, they hit it
Handy dandy, he got a stick in his hand and a pocket full of money
He’ll say, “Oh darling, tell me the truth, how much time I got?”
She’ll say, “You got all the time in the world, honey”.
He got that clear crystal fountain
He got that soft silky skin
He got that fortress on the mountain
Handy dandy, he got a basket of flowers and a bag full of sorrow
– at which, at last, we might be tempted to thank our lucky stars that we haven’t got what he’s got, for who would want a bag full of sorrow? Except that the person who’s got a bag full of sorrow isn’t likely to be someone who has a heart full of it, and he’s probably carrying it around in a bag after collecting it or so that he can give it to other people. We might want to think again about all these things that he has got.
Handy Dandy is a sequence of filmy moments, or photo importunities, about the life-and-death styles of the rich and famous. Or infamous. The first thing that we learn about him? “Controversy surrounds him”. The song summons the celebrities (the lavish people before whom we are slavish) about whom we yearn to learn the worst so that we will not be eaten up with envy about their having on the face of it the best, the best of all impossible worlds.
The sin of envy, along with its sibling sin covetousness, is gleefully activated by the gossipy glossies such as People or Hello!, while at the same time these glamorous journalistic evokers know that they would do well to bring home to all us ordinary readers that these extraordinarily affluent famosities are gratifyingly in trouble, in danger, and even, with any luck, in despair. Do you really want to be them? No, or Nope. But the envy is still there all right, skilfully played upon, and the form of lust that is envy may often enjoy itself most as prurience, all prying and clucking.
Handy dandy, controversy surrounds him
He been around the world and back again
Something in the moonlight still hounds him
Handy dandy, just like sugar and candy
The words, the melody, the voicing, all have a swagger to them, an exultation that is partly that of Handy Dandy himself and partly his infecting us with the wish to go along with it. But concessions to us are proffered straightaway, so that we may enjoy safe sexploitation, flirting with the thought of being him in his world, or being with him there, without actually wanting to be. Controversy, eh. Lucky dog, though: “He been around the world and back again”. There’s luxury for you, sheer needlessness, since unless the guy got back again, he wouldn’t have been around the world. An odd way of putting it (unlike, say, He been to the ends of the earth and back again), but having a strong appropriate whiff of redundancy, of extravagance, of a menacing over-insistence: “around the world and back again”. (The world comes back around in “You got all the time in the world, honey”.) But then “around” itself had arrived in the second line of the song by courtesy of “surrounds” four words earlier, and “around” will come back around again in the sound of “hounds him”. (There had been a hint of danger: surrounds him as though cornered.) “Something in the moonlight still hounds him”. That’s nice to know. We wouldn’t want our celebrities to be unhounded. For one thing, this lends them an air of mystery (Something in the moonlight?). For another, it reconciles us to our position and our place (at least we aren’t hounded).
Mystery and detection (and violence) are in the air of the song, so perhaps it isn’t a vacant coincidence that the celebrity hound from the world of mystery and detection did his hounding by moonlight. Within a page and a half of The Hound of the Baskervilles (chapter 2), we meet, first, the hounds “in the moonlight”, and then the “hound of hell”. We hear about the revellers, “some calling for their pistols . . . and some for another flask of wine”. (Handy Dandy: “Ya want a gun?”; “Pour him another brandy”.) We hear of “their crazed minds”, “so crazed with fear”. (Handy Dandy: “you talking crazy”.) “The moon shone clear above them”, “The moon was shining bright” above the “hound of hell”, “shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound”, “the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since”. Plagued the family, and perhaps – since Handy Dandy is something of a gangster (crook? rogue? thug?) – plagued The Family. “Something in the moonlight still hounds him”.
It is his scene. Him he him he he he: so it goes, with other people at his beck-and-call or part of the decor. Handy Dandy is at once so cool and so hot. A shady character. But he has more than a touch of insolent charm, so he may be (in Beckett’s weird phrase) a well-to-do ne’er-do-well. He swaggers well, but he wouldn’t have to be doing this genuinely brave thing if his were not a dangerous world. So, given the incipient violence that is strong in the song, the word “if ” has a way of suggesting “when”: “Handy dandy, if every bone in his body was a-broken he would never admit it”. Phrases that might be innocent in a way, albeit sexually suggestive (“He’ll say, ‘Oh darling, tell me the truth, how much time I got?’”), get darkened as though by dramatic irony: how much time has he got? (Before someone from this sleazy world puts paid to him.) “Okay, boys, I’ll see you tomorrow”. Maybe. They are his last words in the song. Might be his last words.
You’ll say, “What are you afraid of?”
He’ll
