For almost 25 years, John Andrew Fredrick and a revolving cast of characters have been issuing records as the Black Watch. The California-based indie-rock institution is back with 11th album Led Zeppelin Five (Powertool), and it’s the first LP to feature the rock-solid lineup of Fredrick, guitarist Steven Schayer (ex-Chills), bassist Chris Rackford and drummer Rick Woodard. When Fredrick isn’t busy writing and recording songs, he’s teaching English at the University of California, so we thought he’d a be a natural choice to guest edit the MAGNET website. Fredrick, with some assistance from Schayer, will be doing exactly that all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Fredrick.
Fredrick: Had I but one day to live, I’d spend it—in-between lovemakings, of course—reading Shelley and listening to the Beatles, mostly Revolver and Rubber Soul and The White Album and Pepper in mono. This poem is my paradigm for lyric-writing, pretentious as that may sound. I like lyrics (and Shelley was a much stronger lyricist—that super-musical quality of his kills me—than he was a dramatic/epic poet, the thing he really-really wanted more than anything to be) that are by turns plain and ornate, plaintive and calmly declarative. Listen to this:
“The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon’s transparent might
The breath of the moist earth is light
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight
The winds, the birds, the Ocean-floods;
The City’s voice itself is soft, like Solitude’s.”
Note the iambic accents, the way assonance here propels the breathless-yet-cool rhythm. Each touch (you can feel the scratch of the poet’s nib or quill) urges forward the oneness; the caesuras make all one and one all. And this is Shelley’s major theme: the one-allness, the all-oneness. And that’s what I try to do, lyric-ing. Show how all experience is sorta a one-allness. And, of course, I fail. Every work of art, I often think, is a failure of sorts. Maybe that’s why one keeps making art: to try and mitigate the flunk that preceded it. “Fail Beautifully” is a bumper sticker I’d like to make. But I wouldn’t stick it on my ’92 Volvo. The fact that I have a grand, old, old-old Swedish car kinda already announces that here in L.A., I dare say. Land of the you-are-your-car. I will try and try but never write lines as beauteous, as quietly thunderous as these:
“Alas, I have nor hope nor health
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned;
Nor fame nor power nor love nor leisure
Others I see whom these surround
Smiling they live and call life pleasure:
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.”
How plangently Shelley builds up his state of mind—and with what a lack, miraculously, of self-pity. For dejection doesn’t always portmanteau feeling sorry for oneself. Oxymoronically speaking, it’s more like an ecstasy of despair. Ever felt high on hopelessness? Jesus, have I not? Shelley pulls this off via his masterly way with syntax. “Smiling they live” doesn’t sound straight, so to speak, but it’s how we view the happy few whom in our noble despair we don’t necessarily want to envy, but can’t help but notice their grins because we know we ourselves ain’t exactly beaming just-the-now. Keats’s lushness (and sexiness) seduces the college-aged; get a little more experience, and you see and feel that Shelley, the much more profound writer, was not just sage but pained beyond his tender years. Here he’s only 26. My God.
