The writing’s on the wall

By now many people will have seen the new Bond film, Spectre, and heard its haunting theme tune, The writing’s on the wall, sung by Sam Smith.
Many of Smith’s classic tracks (and the videos promoting them) focus on love, loss and death. Here he skillfully weaves the Bond iconography into that mix, with references to running, shooting, broken glass and facing the storm.

His lyrics also touch on the interior life that has emerged in recent Bond films – that of the hero’s essential loneliness. Faced with repeated loss and betrayal, Craig’s Bond has barricaded his emotions behind cold coping mechanisms. Yet Smith’s lyrics point to the plot development that casts doubt on Bond’s ability – or desire -  to keep functioning as he previously has (see the film if you want to know more!):


I want to feel love, run through my blood
Tell me is this where I give it all up?
For you I have to risk it all
Cause the writing's on the wall.

The last line of the chorus is highlighted in the promo vid when, in a clip from the film, Bond sees his name scrawled on a deserted building. But take away that immediate context (as anyone listening to an audio recording would experience) and what does this well-known phrase actually mean?

A prophecy of judgement

The saying is popularly used to allude to any dire warning of the end of something. Smith’s Catholic background means that he would probably be familiar with the origins of the phrase:

• In the Old Testament book of Daniel, arrogant Persian king Belshazzar gives a feast where he drinks from sacred Jewish vessels. Then he sees a mysterious finger writing on the wall what amounts to a judgement on the king. He is frightened, and with good reason, for later that night he dies.
• Check out the original story at Daniel 5:3-6; Daniel 5:25-30

No wonder the audience shares Bond’s trepidation when we see his name in dripping red figures above an arrow to follow – given the context of the film’s story, the song lyric and its biblical origins, we fear that this is an invitation for Bond to meet his doom.

Check out the video below and enjoy:

Cover versions

Why do recording artists do cover versions? It’s not like they are going to get lots of money from copyright fees – in fact they will usually have to pay the original authors, or their publishers, substantial amounts!

What they gain however is the pleasure of familiarity with the material, as well as being able to showcase their talents by putting a distinctive twist on their interpretation of the lyrics and mood. We listen to a cover version because we already like that type of song, but then appreciate the way the artist has enhanced the original.

Poets are the same. They often take well-known poetic styles and show how versatile they can be within that genre:

• Shakespeare wrote 150 versions of a sonnet
• More recently, Michael Symmons Roberts played around with the constraints of 15 line poems, creating 150 new verses in Drysalter.

Alternatively, poets can lead us from familiarity into new styles, just like someone wanting to listen to The House of the Rising Sun can end up encountering a folk, blues, rock, punk, dance or dubstep version of the classic folk ballad.

Keats’ experiments

John Keats (1795-1821) did not have a wealthy background or fine education, but immersed himself in books wherever he could lay his hands on them. As he developed into one of the most significant of the Romantic poets (before his premature death aged 24) he experimented with the different genres of poetry he came across. If we are to appreciate the talent he applied to each form, we need to get familiar with his starting materials.

Quatrains

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Keats takes the traditional quatrain verse form of a ballad (see last month’s blog) and plays against our expectations of a neatly tied up unit of sense by leaving the story sparse and unresolved. Check out here the familiar version of the quatrain.

Spenserian stanza

Just as today we are still influenced by poetry which, like Keats’, was written 200 years earlier, so Keats had a huge admiration for Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, published 200 years before he was born. Keats used Spenser’s verse form (the Spenserian stanza) as a way of paying homage in his own narrative poem, The Eve of St Agnes.

Ottava rima

In another long, dramatic poem, Isabella: or The Pot of Basil, Keats works within the Italian verse form known as ottava rima, which was brought to England in the Renaissance. His contemporary Romantic, Lord Byron, used the tight format to highlight his satiric tone (see Ottava rima, whereas in Keats’ work we almost forget the restraints of rhyme etc. as the story sweeps us along.

La Belle Dame, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes – they are all, in one sense, cover versions of an existing format. It is how Keats – or any other poet - adapts them that demonstrates real talent.