The dying words of Johnny Cash
November 15th 2006 01:13
I'll pretend you haven't heard this album. Bugger off if you have.
If you haven't, this was Cash's last (released 5 November 2002; he died at the age of 71 on 12 September 2003).
And it really is quite amazing. And you might not realize it at first -- because all you hear are the conventional blues of the country genre, and popular songs reworked tongue-in-cheek into a Cash style (William Shatner's "Has Been" anyone? -- or even Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine).
If you play it for someone, don't expect them to be awestruck.
But awe creeps up on you; you begin to see beyond the conventional; there is something more than the lip-service sentiments of Folsom Prison Blues. It's as if the fact of Cash's death is an interpretational key that makes everything different -- similar, perhaps, to Sylvia Plath's suicide colouring the effects of her poems, or the esoteric meanings that Leo Strauss claims are hidden in Plato.
After all, dying words / last words before execution are valorized in our culture. You are thought to see with special insight, clarity. "Will I regret it on my deathbed?" is considered a good test for proper decisions. And your last words can also hold a special power -- for instance, when in the form of dying blessings or curses or prophecies. (And in the Heath Ledger film "The Order", there is a dark pope who, when he wants to know something, simply hangs a random person and asks them while they're choking.)
Once you start reading American IV as dying words, they become thought-heavy, like a Giacometti sculpture, or a Kubrick movie. Every little thing begins to look intentional and suggestive.
And this sort of effect is something that mainstream music can't capture -- only folk song, bluegrass, oratory. Styles that allow the voice to be heard in its full colour, and that pare things down so what's there is all the more significant (like Hemingway, or "Bang bang, my baby shot me down...).
Once you read the album as dying words, then it's full of the wisdom of old age, and the actual lyrics can disappear, and you see in all the inflections of voice, all the subtle twists of particular words -- you see Cash facing death, and commenting on life, and often with profound humour. The experience becomes, on the one hand, all about the bittersweet poignancy, the truth hard earned; and, on the other, all about the reading of the in between. And you find, as you do read in this fashion, that the interpretative key pays off, and that Cash speaks truth without cliche, and never says exactly what you expect. And then the album becomes awe-inspiring.
-- Even if, factually, Cash never intended this, never saw the album as his last chance, and never attempted to put his whole life into it. After all, one can't make art by trying to make art; the preachy is always second-rate. And at one of Cash's final concerts, it is reported that: "Despite his health issues, he talked of looking forward to the day when he could walk again and toss his wheelchair into the lake near his home."
***
Note 1: There is a Wikipedia article that details the success of this album.
Note 2: On paring down: I remember reworking a play -- the director had the actors speaking a lot more slowly than I expected. So I had to choose a lot more carefully, because the audience would have much more time to contemplate each word. There were certain effects I was barred from, and certain effects I could create more easily.
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles American IV: The Man Comes Around and Johnny Cash.
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Comment by katyzzz
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Interesting but sad article, the section about death was very moving, it's very hard though to tell which are your words and what is represented in the article, but maybe I'm just not concentrating sufficiently.
katyzzz
Comment by Adrienne
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Katy -- basically, anything that's not in quotation marks is my words (though, on reading them now, I'm not proud of them).
Cash might be atypical, incidentally. I mean, old age seems to have brought some sort of wisdom in his case; but one might be skeptical that it generally has this effect.
I don't doubt that I'll come to my dying day, and find I am no wiser.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
In acting (for instance, Stella Adler), there is an idea that you should act with your whole person. There should be twenty "levels" to any monologue. Sure, the most evident might be anger, but as an actor you should also be trying to find in it humour, childishness, playfulness, sexuality, etc. Detail it. It should be so detailed that the audience is fascinated and can't look away.
Anyway, it seems to me that Johnny Cash in his last album sings with his whole person, with twenty levels...
Comment by katyzzz
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katyzzz