Soooo...
when I came across Pamela Dean's retelling of this well known tale I grabbed it. I love it for all the reasons most people hate it. It quotes everyone that was ever anyone in English Literature [as does Eliot too & also why I like him!] & then it starts in on The Ancient Greeks. It is like having a prolonged after lecture discussion & depending on your mood, or who you happen to be reading yourself, reveals hidden delights at each re~reading.
It is also beautifully written, one of those delightful books that is deceptively easy to read yet deeper than it first appears. Yet despite this, & my love of fantastical fiction, I have never read another Pamela Dean. I may rectify this in the near future ~ but then again, I may not. Is there a moral obligation to not support someone with such a peculiar moral compass? Which I do not want to discuss!
I was checking recently that I had remembered right, from when I first did my research on Pamela Dean, because I have just re~read Tam Lin [an easy reread when babysitting when a book is constantly being picked up & put down again & you really don't want to get caught with a new book full of suspense at just the wrong moment] & Tam Lin has become, apparently, one of those strange cult books. I have grown cautious.
And Amazon, being the rather peculiar on~line place it is, decided to suggest all these other fantasy authors that I, apparently, am just dying to read. Uh~huh. In the process I stumbled across Seanan McGuire. With a name like that & the information that she also wrote filk music how could I resist?
I had no idea what filk music was. Even after an afternoon listening to it [because it is gorgeous] I am not sure I am any wiser. It seems to be folk music only with themes more along the lines of horror, anime, cartoons, steampunk...not my sort of thing @ all.
I always have trouble understanding the lyrics because so often the music over~rides the vocals so having decided I really liked the music I decided I needed to understand what I was actually listening to. Here is Wicked Girls [& here are the lyrics if you need them]. I was not ok with the lyrics, not once I'd read them through properly & absorbed the implication but DearGina
[lyrics]I actually found deeply disturbing ~ more because nothing is specifically stated than anything else.
What is surprising, or maybe not, is that I have never come across this before. Folk music for me is not what came out of the '60's, or the political stuff before it, nor even the medieval ballads. It is those old Irish & Scots songs in mournful Gaelic & minor keys that are as old as the countries they originated in. Tam Lin was old before it was ever written down & there are numerous versions. Steeleye Span & Fairport Convention both covered it but it's roots are deep in Celtic mythology.
I have been known to spend a lot of time on you tube being haunted by the old Celtic songs but I have also noticed something because, you know, Enya...there has been a resurgence of pagan music & now it seems to have circled back to that something much, much darker @ its core. At its heart there is a self destructive streak that reminds me of Invictus [William Ernest Henley] whose closing lines so remind me of Lucifer's I wills:
...I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
And that is what I heard in Wicked Girls ~ the arrogant assertion of self will. Dear Gina is even darker.
Now it is not the themes that I am finding disturbing. Alexander Pope declared in his An Essay on Man:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man....
though I don't agree with him at all. Rather the proper study of mankind is God. Just the same God is pretty blunt about where unregenerate mankind takes itself. The difference lies in the attitude & basic premise of the author. God never glorifies sin ~ especially pride. There is a subtle crossing of a line here where what is being portrayed as brave, courageous, , glorious is quite simply defiance for defiance sake & where that leads is nowhere good.
I expect it has always been there in popular music but as I never really was into popular I must have missed most of it. As I said, what I like is folk. What attracted me in the filk was the folk sound. Sadly I don't think I will be returning. Horror has always been a no go zone for me & I have zero interest in defying my creator ~ @ least to that extent.
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