Elvis Costello and Colored Furniture

There are surprises. Some are festive and wonderful which are usually mutual. Some are sneak-attacks (in which case only the target experiences the “surprise”), and then there's the kind that lives in the inversion layer between unpleasant memories and serendipity. Fate, that bitch, loves those.

I love Elvis Costello. I love him more than half the trailer parks in the South love Elvis Presley. I love Elvis Costello (real name Declan Patrick MacManus) because his thoughts—at least the ones that end up in his published music—go to situational emotion and specific reaction that others rarely go and I discover empathy more than coincidentally frequently in what comes from him.

He recorded a concert in Memphis a couple of years ago, accompanied vocally on some songs by the astoundingly talented Emmylou Harris. One may wonder why it's worth watching an “intimate venue” concert on blu-ray instead of regular old DVD, but I'm a geek and blu-ray discs usually pack superior sound formats (like uncompressed PCM) and so I got from netflix:

“Club Date: Live in Memphis” (Eagle Vision USA)

I'm watching this disc right now; a few minutes ago he did a more allegretto rendition of “The Blue Chair” than had originally appeared on Blood & Chocolate. Tempo can sometimes change everything. The original was forlorn and self-pitying. The version on this blu-ray disc was all resignation and distance, with only the lyrics tugging it back into pain. The lyrics, with homo-specific gender word-changes (I get tired of translating from hetero-specific every time I listen to love songs):

Blue Chair

Now it's just you and me, my blue friend
And you say that it's you that he's thinking of
And our affair must end
But if it's you that he's thinking of
I think my broken heart might mend

[Chorus:]
Now it's my turn to talk and your turn to think
Your turn to buy and my turn to drink
Your turn to cry and my turn to sink down in the Blue Chair
Down in the Blue Chair

Now I've made up my mind I've made my mistake
And I know that he cries for you
When he's barely awake
Well he's going to bend your mind
Well I hope it don't break

[Chorus]

Down in the Blue Chair
We can watch our troubles rise
Like smoke into the air
And drift up to the ceiling
Down in the Blue Chair
You can feel just like a boy or a man
And next minute you can find yourself kneeling
Down in the Blue Chair
They're boasting of loving the daylights right out of him in the small hours
Down in the Blue Chair
You say that your love lasts forever when you know the night is just hours

And still I want him right now
Not any minute, hour or day
And wherever he is tonight
I want him anyway
I suppose he never said to you,
“You were just in the way”

[Chorus]

Down in the Blue Chair
Down in the blue
Blue becomes you
Down in the Blue Chair

Forlornness and self-pity about the failed relationship had given way to resignation and (some measure of) distance a while back, with words between us sometimes tugging me back into the pain, and so Blue Chair is one of those perfect fits that no one but Elvis does for me.

Music is theosophy for agnostics, the attempts at attainment of that something which has arisen from nothing.

Technorati Tags: blue chair, elvis costello, theosophy, emmylou harris, god of biscuits