David Mitchell - Black Swan Green lyrics

“So. Do I learn today your true name, or do I still give hospitality to a stranger who hides behind a ridiculous pseudonym?” Hangman was even stopping me from saying “Sorry.” I got so het up and desperate and angry I blurted out “Sorry!” anyway, but so loud it sounded really rude. “Your elegant apology does not answer my question.” I mumbled, “Jason Taylor” and wanted to cry. “Jay Who? Pronounce it clearly! My ears are as old as me! I do not have microphones hidden to collect every little word!” I hated my name. “Jason Taylor.” Flavorless as chewed receipts. “If you are an ‘Adolf Coffin,' or a ‘Pius Broomhead,' I comprehend. But why hide ‘Jason Taylor' under an inaccessible symbolist and a Latin American revolutionary?” My huh? must've shown. “Eliot! T. S.! Bolivar! Simón!” “ ‘Eliot Bolivar' just sounded more ... poetic.” “What is more poetic than ‘Jason,' an Hellenic hero? Who foundationed European literature if not the ancient Greeks? Not Eliot's coterie of thiefs of graves, I a**ure you! And what is a poet if he is not a tailor of words? Poets and tailors join what nobody else can join. Poets and tailors conceal their craft in their craft. No, I do not accept your answer. I believe the truth is, you use your pseudonym because your poetry is a shameful secret. I am correct?” “ ‘Shameful' isn't the exact word, exactly.” “Oh, so what is the exact word, exactly?” “Writing poetry's”—I looked around the solarium, but Madame Crommelynck's got a tractor beam —”sort of ... gay.” “ ‘Gay'? A merry activity?” This was hopeless. “Writing poems is ... what creeps and poofters do.” “So you are one of these ‘creeps'?” “No.” “Then you are a ‘poof-ter', whatever one is?” “No!” “Then your logic is eluding me.” “If you're dad's a famous composer and your mum's an aristocrat, you can do things that you can't do if your dad works at Greenland Supermarkets and if you go to a comprehensive school. Poetry's one of those things.” “Aha! Truth! You are afraid the hairy barbarians will not accept you in their tribe if you write poetry.” “That's more or less it, yeah . . .” “More? Or less? Which is the exact word, exactly?” (She's a pain sometimes.) “That's it. Exactly.” “And you wish to become an hairy barbarian?” “I'm a kid. I'm thirteen. You said it's a miserable age, being thirteen, and you're right. If you don't fit in, they make your life a misery. Like Floyd Chaceley or Nicholas Briar.” “Now you are talking like a real poet.” “I don't understand it when you say stuff like that!” (Mum'd've gone, Don't talk to me in that tone of voice!) “I mean”—Madame Crommelynck almost looked pleased — “you are entirely of your words.” “What does that mean?” “You are being quintessentially truthful.” “Anyone can be truthful.” “About superficialities, Jason, yes, is easy. About pain, no, is not. So you want a double life. One Jason Taylor who seeks approval of hairy barbarians. Another Jason Taylor is Eliot Bolivar, who seeks approval of the literary world.” “Is that so impossible?” “If you wish to be a versifier,” she answered, whirlpooling her wine, “very possible. If you are a true artist” — she schwurked wine round her mouth — “absolutely never. If you are not truthful to the world about who and what you are, your art will stink of falsenesses.” I had no answer for that. “Nobody knows of your poems? A teacher? A confidant?” “Only you, actually.” Madame Crommelynck's eyes've got this glint. It's nothing to do with outside light. “You hide your poetry from your lover?” “No,” I said. “I, uh, don't.” “Don't hide your poetry or don't have a lover?” “I don't have a girlfriend.” Quick as a chess-clock thumper, she said, “You prefer boys?” I still can't believe she said that. (Yes I can.) “I'm normal!” Her drumming fingers on the pile of parish magazines said, Normal? “I do like this one girl, actually,” I blurted out, to prove it. “Dawn Madden. But she's already got a boyfriend.” “Oho? And the boyfriend of Dawn Madden, he is a poet or a barbarian?” (She loved how she'd tricked Dawn Madden's name out of me.) “Ross Wilcox's a prat, not a poet. But if you're going to suggest that I write a poem to Dawn Madden, no way. I'd be the village laughingstock.” “Absolutely, if you compose derivative verses of cupids and cliché, Miss Madden will remain with her ‘prat' and you will justly earn derision. But if a poem is beauty and truth, your Miss Madden will treasure your words more than money, more than certificates. Even when she is as old as I. Especially when she is as old as I.” “But.” I ducked the subject. “Don't heaps of artists use pseudonyms?” “Who?” “Um . . .” Only Cliff Richard and Sid Vicious came to mind. A phone started ringing. “True poetry is truth. Truth is not popular, so poetry also is not.” “But ... truth about what?” “Oh, the life, the d**h, the heart, memory, time, cats, fear. Anything.” (The butler didn't seem to be answering the phone either.) “Truth is everywhere, like seeds of trees; even deceits contain elements of truth. But the eye is clouded by the quotidian, by prejudice, by worryings, scandal, predation, pa**ion, ennui, and, worst, television. Despicable machine. Television was here in my solarium. When I arrived. I throwed it in the cellar. It was watching me. A poet throws all but truth in the cellar. Jason. There is a matter?” “Er ... your phone's ringing.” “I know a phone is ringing! It can go to the hell! I am talking to you!” (My parents'd run into a burning asbestos mine if they thought there was a phone ringing for them.) “0ne week before, we agreed ‘What is beauty?' is a question unanswerable, yes? So today, a greater mystery. If an art is true, if an art is free of falseness, it is, a priori, beautiful.” I tried to digest that. (The phone finally gave up.) “Your best poem in here”—she rifled through the parish magazines — “is your ‘Hangman.' It has pieces of truth of your speech impediment, I am right?” A familiar shame burnt from my neck, but I nodded. Only in my poems, I realized, do I get to say exactly what I want. “Of course I am right. If ‘Jason Taylor' was the name here, and not ‘Eliot Bolivar Ph.D., OBE., R.I.P., B.B.C.' ” — she biffed the page with “Hangman” on it — “the truth will make the greatest mortification with the hairy barbarians of Black Swan Green, yes?” “I might as well hang myself.” “Pfff! Eliot Bolivar, he can hang. You, you must write. If you still fear to publish in your name, is better not to publish. But poetry is more resilient than you think. For many years I a**isted for Amnesty International.” (Julia 's often on about them.) “Poets survive in gulags, in detention blocks, in torture chambers. [ . . . ] So believe me. Comprehensive schools are not so infernal.”