The Sarah Lawrence Vashti Bunyan Symposium
The Sarah Lawrence Vashti Bunyan Symposium
More songs by Vashti Bunyan
I'd Like to Walk Around in Your Mind Some Day
by Vashti Bunyan
I'd like to walk around in your mind someday
I'd like to walk all over the things you say to me
I'd like to run and jump on your solitude
I'd like to rearrange your attitude to me
You say you just want peace and you'd never hurt anyone
You see the end before the beginning has ever begun
I would disturb your easy tranquility
I'd turn away the sad impossibility of your smile
I'd sit there in the sun of the things I like about you
I'd sing my songs and find out just what they mean to you
But most of all I'd like you to be unaware
And I'd just wander away
Trailing palm leaves behind me
So you don't even know that I've been there
The name "Vashti" has ancient Persian and Hebrew roots, commonly interpreted as meaning "beautiful," "best," or "desired". It appears in the Old Testament as a Persian queen.
Vashti Bunyan is not a stage name, but rather the birth name of the English singer-songwriter, who was born Jennifer Vashti Bunyan in 1945.
Didn't her musical work live up to the name, "Vashti"?
I'm interested in how these words empower her.
"Walk Around in Your Mind..", especially the last line, "So you don't even know that I've been there", conjures (in me) the Mona Lisa. Why? The calm, neutrality of both her singing and her words? The content of her lyrics is ambiguous and veiled in abstraction?
And for me, words are always a reflection of how we relate to our brains and our cannibalization by words. Singing the words unwords them, moving them to a different part of ourselves and removing the threat they pose.
The Mona Lisa's expression is famously interpreted as enigmatic. Her subtle smile is often interpreted as being less than straightforward. Like DaVinci, I'm a male, so this may be an explicitly male reaction. I could imagine that the beautiful, the best, the desired would be amused in a complicated way in my interest in her.
More than any American folksinger, she reminds me of Molly Drake. I'll put Molly Drake's "I Remember" below.
Here is what is known about her life and the origins of her name:
Named After a Boat and a Queen: Vashti was born in South Tyneside to John and Helen Bunyan. She was told she was named after a boat that belonged to her father. The name "Vashti" was also a nickname for her mother, which was inspired by the Old Testament Persian Queen Vashti.
A Family Connection to "Rebellion": Her grandfather nicknamed her mother "Vashti" because he thought she was stubborn and rebellious, much like the Queen who refused to show her beauty to King Ahasuerus's guests. Bunyan has embraced this, stating she likes to see it as the "dark-eyed rebellion of a spirited young woman".
Denial of Literary Descent: Despite having the surname Bunyan, she has denied being a descendant of John Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrim's Progress.
A "Wayward" Life: Her career mirrors the rebellious, independent nature of her namesake. After being scouted by The Rolling Stones' manager in the 1960s, she abandoned the traditional music industry path. Instead, she undertook a,,horse-drawn journey to the Scottish Highlands to join a commune, a "pilgrimage" that inspired her debut album, Just Another Diamond Day.
"Disobedient" Career Path: Just as Queen Vashti was banished for disobedience, Vashti Bunyan was effectively "banished" from the music industry after her 1970 album failed to sell, only to be rediscovered 30 years later.
The Guardian
In summary, the name was a family, given name, but it proved to be a fitting,almost prophetic, title for an artist who operated outside the mainstream, and who later referred to her life as Wayward.
(American Blues Scene)
"I remember", by Molly Drake gets more specific about problems. The language reminds me of AA Milne (Winnie the Pooh).
"I remember"
by Molly Drake
We tramped the open moorland in the rainy April weather
And came upon the little inn that we had found together
The landlord gave us toast and tea and stopped to share a joke
And I remember firelight
I remember firelight
I remember firelight
And you remember smoke
We ran about the meadow grass with all the harebells bending
And shaking in the summer wind a summer never-ending
We wandered to the little stream among the river flats
And I remember willow trees
I remember willow trees
I remember willow trees
And you remember gnats
We strolled the Spanish marketplace at 90 in the shade
With all the fruit and vegetables so temptingly arrayed
And we can share a memory as every lover must
And I remember oranges
I remember oranges
I remember oranges
And you remember dust
The autumn leaves are tumbling down and winter's almost here
But through the spring and summertime we laughed away the year
And now we can be grateful for the gift of memory
For I remember having fun
Two happy hearts that beat as one
When I had thought that we were "we"
But we were "you and me".
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone
Folk music is often transparent. The singer does not react too emotioanlly to the words. And the words avoid melodrama over the situations. Transparency: let the situations speak for themselves, calmly. The result can be devastating without the words or the singer getting overly excited. Folk music can be *cool*. Dave Brubeck pioneered "cool jazz", after hot jazz was a thing for a while.
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone gets animated, right? And the words provoke a response.
More than the previous examples, WHACG is about the dynamics of a relationship of a specific time and place. What if the Marilyn Monroe character in Arthur Miller's *The Misfits* wrote a poem about the Clark Gable Character? I'm thinking it might go something like Paula Cole's song. It's not out of the question that Paula Cole was thinking of *The Misfits* explcitily, although certain dynamics are turned upside down. Marilyn Monroe doesn't have the stomach for the cowboy stuff. The men are wrangling horses and she's concerned for the horses' safety.
One, two, three, four
Oh, you get me ready in your '56 Chevy
Why don't we go sit down in the shade?
Take shelter on my front porch
The dandelion sun scorching
Like a glass of cold lemonade
I will do the laundry
If you pay all the bills
Where is my John Wayne?
Where is my prairie song
Where is my happy ending?
Where have all the cowboys gone
Why don't you stay the evening?
Kick back and watch the TV
And I'll fix a little something to eat
Oh, I know your back hurts from working on the tractor
How do you take your coffee my sweet?
I will raise the children
If you pay all the bills
Where is my John Wayne?
Where is my prairie song?
Where is my happy ending?
Where have all the cowboys gone?
I am wearing my new dress tonight
But you don't, but you don't even notice me
Say our goodbyes
Say our goodbyes
Say our goodbyes
We finally sell the Chevy when we had another baby
And you took that job in Tennessee
You made friends at the farm
You'd join them at the bar almost every single day of the week
I will wash the dishes
While you go have a beer
Where is my John Wayne?
Where is my prairie song?
Where is my happy ending?
Where have all the cowboys gone?
Where is my Marlboro Man?
Where is his shiny gun?
Where is my lonely ranger?
Where have all the cowboys gone?
Where have all the cowboys gone?
Where have all the cowboys gone?
Yippy-yi, yippy-yay, yippy-yi, yippy-yay
Yippy-yi, yippy-yay, yippy-yi, yippy-yay
Yippy-yi, yippy-yay, yippy-yi, yippy-yay
Yippy-yi, yippy-yay, ya-ya-ya, yay, ya-ya-yay
Suggest other comparisons.
A few semesters ago, we covered both "Ashes and Diamonds" -- Joan Baez's words about a relationship (with Bob Dylan).
And Dylan's "Don't Think Twice'.
William Anderson
I compose, play plucked instruments, run ensembles, produce concerts, and advocate for new music, I soaked up contemporary American music for 30 years, working directly with composers from all over the map. In the last 20 years I began composing works that draw on that experience, with a particular concern for finding a coherent way to make reconciling musics that were sealed off from one another. How to make embarrassingly simple and charming music work with the most complex musical modalities? Tipping in this direction has made me aware of the dangers of grasping too firmly onto any one notion.
I've come to Macherey's vision that our shadow (what we're *not*) is radiantly present in our work. So it's perfectly reasonable to *love everything*. We're imbricated. --
**The true necessity of the text manifests itself in the fact that not a word of it can be changed and nothing can be added, even though it appears at each moment as though a new topic could be chosen, an alternative narrative selected. But it is precisely this ceaseless shadowy presence of other possible phrases which could be pronounced, this ineradicable sense that things could have been other than they are, which enforces the constraining necessity of the text we actually have before us.**--Macherey