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Wednesday, April 15, 2009
HELP ME LIFT YOU UP
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Miss America
Koch : 1988
[Buy It]
THINK ABOUT YOUR TROUBLES
Harry Nilsson
The Point!
RCA : 1971
[Buy It]
HELP ME
Van Morrison
It's Too Late To Stop Now
Warner Bros. : 1974
[Buy It]
HELPING HAND
Fats Domino
1962
Available on: Out of New Orleans
Bear Family : 1993
[Buy It]
HELPING HAND (A THOUSAND MILES AWAY FROM HOME)
Snooks Eaglin
New Orleans Street Singer
Smithsonian Folkways : 1959
[Buy It]
'CAUSE I LOST MY HELPING HAND
Little Miss Cornshucks
1951
Available on: 1947-1951
Classics R&B : 2003
[Buy It]
MISTER, WOULD YOU PLEASE HELP MY PONY?
Ween
Chocolate and Cheese
Elektra : 1994
[Buy It]
The other night I had a dream. It was about the Somali pirates, which means that it probably wasn't about them at all. In the dream I was at home, watching the news. Most of the shots were aerial, footage of the captured boat and the captain with a gun to his head. A few of the shots seemed to be from the vantage of the boat; they showed helicopters with cameras bolted to their doors, zipping by in the afternoon sky. That was how the dream went: shot of boat, shot of sky, shot of boat, shot of sky. It started exciting, because it was a pirate dream -- avast, ye mateys! -- but it got boring fast.
Then after a while I noticed something in the background. It was a friend of mine. She was not on the boat. She was in the water, about fifty yards behind the boat, in a tiny white ring of a life preserver, the kind you see in movies. The air was perfectly clear, and I could see her expression. She looked peaceful. In real life, this friend is going through a series of intense experiences, some personal, some professional, some financial, some emotional. I wouldn't say I'm worried about her, exactly, because she's smart and capable and lands on her feet like a cat, but I have occasional twinges of worry, because I don't like her to be sad. Those occasional twinges displease me because I don't know what they're asking me, or even telling me, to do. Sometimes I give advice. Sometimes I back off and offer a sympathetic ear. Sometimes I tell her that if anyone crosses her during this difficult time I'm going to knock 'em out. But it's not an easy time for her, I don't think, and to be, on top of everything else, stranded in the ocean with only a bright white LifeSaver around her, well, that was just too much. She needed my help. In the dream, I called her and she answered. "Hi," she said.
"Hi?" I said. It seemed insufficiently dramatic. "I'm watching on TV and you're in the ocean behind the pirates. Are you okay?"
"Fine," she said. "The water's nice." She seemed unconcerned, like she was certain someone was on the way to rescue her.
"Okay," I said. I started to hang up, but something stopped me. "Wait a second," I said. "How come you're talking to me on the phone now, but in the picture onscreen, you're not on the phone?"
"Don't know," she said. "Maybe it's file footage." She coughed. "Did I just cough onscreen?"
"You're not even holding the phone," I said. "Anyway, I wanted to see how you are."
"Well, I have to go," she said. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine." At times, she has sounded under the weather when she has said these kinds of things, or under the gun. This time she sounded calm and confident. "Talk to you later." I hung up the phone and watched her on TV, there in the middle of the ocean. Her expression shifted -- to boredom, to anger, a flicker of fear, then to something I didn't recognize.
She had told me not to worry about her, but I did. I worried even after I hung up. I called the real-life friend and told her about the dream friend. At first, she didn't believe me. "Is that dream some kind of code?" she said.
"Dreams are always some kind of code," I said, as condescendingly as possible.
"You know what I mean," she said. "Did you really dream it, or are you just pretending as a way of telling me that you think I'm making a mistake about something?"
"Are you making a mistake about something?" I said, still condescending.
"Well, I have to go," she said. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine." Again, calm and confident. "Talk to you later."
We hung up uneasily. Or rather, I was uneasy. Telling me not to worry once, in a dream, was fine. It might have been some kind of code. But telling me not to worry twice, once in real life, was too much. I could take a hint. I wouldn't worry, which meant I wouldn't help. Instead, I went to listen to music, and specifically to songs about help. I listened to "Help!" and "Help Me, Rhonda" and "With a Little Help From My Friends." As forms of counsel regarding advice and assistance, they seemed pat, like songs you've heard hundreds of times. I dug deeper, through Elton John's "Yell Help" and Hasil Adkins' "Can't Help It Blues," until I reached Mary Margaret O'Hara's "Help Me Lift You Up." Mary Margaret O'Hara is often at the deepest reaches of any question. This song is deceptively simple, which means that it can lose its way among some of the knottier, deceptively complex songs on her "Miss America" album. When you separate it from the rest of the class, though, it excels, not only as a song about friendship and help, but as a song about dreams:I have a dream
It's very clear
You're all around
But never near As life preservers go, it's more substantial than my friend's simple white ring but also darker. The chorus, "Help me lift you up," is many things at once, a statement of mutual need, a paradox, a plea. It's selfless but not entirely so. The argument, at least of that one phrase, is that you'll never get lifted without my lift, but that I can't lift you unless you're not just letting me, but helping me. I need to lift you to feel lifted myself, and I need your help. That complex, co-extensive process can unfold over the course of a lifetime--it can nurture two people in parallel or even in intersection--but it has to begin somewhere: with a phone call, say.
And so I was determined not to call my friend. Why should I? I had offered assistance and my offer had been received but not embraced, not once but twice. That was fine. I could take a pair of hints. Still, I went through the morning in a little bit of a haze. The air wasn't perfectly clear. What was my role as a friend, exactly? Should I challenge her? Should I let time pass? Should I joke? Should I call? It wasn't my problem, really: if the emotional circumstances tanked, if the professional circumstances derailed, it wasn't my tank or my train. Maybe the best thing I could do was to let her think about her own troubles. In Harry Nilsson's "Think About Your Troubles," this leads, via a convoluted marine metaphor, to a renewed perspective.Sit down at the breakfast table
Think about your troubles
Pour yourself a cup of tea
Then think about the bubbles
You can take your teardrops
And drop 'em in a teacup
Take them down to the riverside
And throw them over the side
To be swept up by a current
Then taken to the ocean
To be eaten by some fishes
Who were eaten by some fishes
And swallowed by a whale
Who grew so old
He decomposed
He died and left his body
To the bottom of the ocean But I had my own marine metaphor, and it left me with my friend floating in a life preserver in the middle of a heartless expanse. Maybe it was unfair to leave her with her own troubles. Maybe this was one of those rare cases where rushing in was advisable. Thinking about it too much was proving unhelpful, so I left the house and went for a walk in my neighborhood. People were talking about the Somali pirates, though no one mentioned seeing my friend on the news. A new store was opening in my neighborhood. There were apples on a table. "Want one?" a woman said. "Help yourself."
The next day, I was done with the apples. There was a core in the garbage and another one in the sink. My friend was still helping herself, or at the very least hadn't asked for my help. I was curious about her situation but not curious enough to do anything about it; I was all around but never near. And so the songs kept coming: Liz Phair's "Help Me Mary," the Lyres' "Help Me Ann," Stevie Wonder's "Heaven Help Us All." I settled, this time, on Van Morrison's "Help Me," which is a live cover of a Sonny Boy Williamson song. There's a tension built into the center of the song: Morrison is asking for help, but he sounds so vital that it's hard to imagine that he needs it. And in fact, he's not asking for help so much as offering an entry-level (if you know what I mean) position that he means to fill one way or another:You got to help me
I can't do it all by myself
You got to help me, baby
I can't do it all by myself
You know if you don't help me darling
I'll have to find myself somebody else Other songs are more honest in their abjection, like Fats Domino's "Helping Hand":I'm a thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
A thousand miles away from home, waiting for a train
Nobody seems to want me or give me a helping hand
I nevermore will roam again if I ever get home again That's where my friend was in my dream, a thousand miles away from everything. She bobbed on the surface of the water and while she'd answer the phone if you called, she wouldn't call you. The song, which was adapted from Jimmie Rodgers' "Waiting on a Train," was also recorded by Snooks Eaglin, whose version is sadder than Domino's and, paradoxically, less desperate. Eaglin seems aware enough of his confusion and loneliness that there's a good chance he'll grab onto whoever reaches out to help. Little Miss Cornshucks (the stage name of the R&B singer Mildred Cummings) demonstrates this principle even more sharply with "'Cause I Lost My Helping Hand"; she's so deep in the well that it seems certain someone will pull her out.
But certainty's a funny business. Once, long ago, as a kid, I was walking with a friend -- a different friend -- and came upon a dead dog on the side of the road. There was something shocking about the sight, and it wasn't the fact of it. Dogs die. Sometimes they are violent deaths. Sometimes they are peaceful. What was shocking about this dog was that he was neither. He had an expression that I would only recognize much later in life. He was waiting for help that never came. I thought about the dog's expression while I tried to remember my friend's expression in the dream, the final one that came after boredom and anger and fear. She floated on the water and wanted...what? nothing? a chance to make her own mistakes? time to prove that they were not mistakes? a fair shake in the sea of possibilities without interference from, say, me? I was available for help but also happy not to help. The dog's expression was branded on my brain. My friend was out there in the ocean. I had woken up from my dream but that didn't mean it wasn't also true.Labels: ben, blues, pop
posted by Ben
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