The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #13190 Message #109126
Posted By: Peter T.
27-Aug-99 - 05:41 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Mean Talking Blues (Woody Guthrie)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mean talking blues--Woody Guthrie
Frank, for my two cents worth, what the biographies tend to give are names, dates, and places. Some people need those, but what is really missing and getting lost is the elusive "feel" for things. Things that to the people who were there seem trivial, but contribute to generating a picture in the mind's eye. For example, in biographies you almost never know: how did people stand? (slouched, upright, etc.). Did they always seem tired, alert? How did they talk (fast, slow, slurry, interrupting others). Did they look you in the eye when they talked? Were they good at sharing onstage and off? These are both physical qualities and more expressive qualities that are hard to put into words, but give us the real person, and not the cardboard. And whole lost activities: what was it like to do X in those days.... And so on... There are a hundred of those questions, illuminating details that no one will be able to answer who wasn't there, and all we will have to work with, sometimes, are a few movies and some novels.
I once sat a friend of my father -- both bomber pilots with the RAF during the war -- down with a taperecorder, and I asked him to just live through a whole day, what he ate, what he would have listened to, smells, sounds, the feel of his uniform, what the morning looked like, and so on. It took hours, detours while he explained what some obscure thing was, and then went back. Of all the hours of tape we once did, those were by far the most important and interesting, and irreplaceable.
yours, Peter T.