Year of the Cat
2006 is the Year of the Dog, in Chinese astrology. Although one of the conditions forecasted is the possibility of more natural disasters, 2006 is supposed to be a very spiritual year, and a generally auspicious one. Except for Dragons, like me. :-) I am one of the signs who is supposed to find it a little challenging.
This does not surprise me, as this year has already begun quite monumentally for me. Those of you who read this blog regularly know what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't, you might want to scroll down and fill yourselves in. Suffice it to say that I have embarked on a whole new life, and am starting to adjust to my new surroundings.
My move, thank God, is over. The majority of the unpacking and lifting and tossing has been done. There is an unbelievable amount of miscellaneous stuff that keeps coming up that makes me suspect I will never be finished and be allowed to just relax, but I just breathe when I feel like screaming. It's so much more tranquil. :-)
I am a music lover. Rock music, mostly, although I pretty much enjoy all types, give or take a few songs I will always loathe. But over the years, I have made many cassettes, from way back when I still had and amassed a record collection, and borrowed from my brothers' much more extensive one. I was listening to one of these tapes on the way home in my car yesterday and one of my all-time favourite songs came on, "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart. I remember first hearing that song when it first came out in the '70s, when I was a very young girl ... developing, forming, brewing. It haunted me then and it still haunts me now, and yesterday it brought me to tears. I suppose it could partly be due to all the turmoil I've been going through lately, but the song has always stirred up deep feelings inside me whenever I've heard it. It's a sad song, melancholy, mellow, mysterious, about a man and a woman who encounter each other in an exotic locale and have a vivid, memorable affair, but the passion and excitement can't prolong it. It's doomed to end even as it's occurring.
I have so many things I want to write about now. I have a feeling this blog is going to take a whole new direction, just like me. Where it, and I, will end up, I don't know. But maybe you'd like to spectate and share a little of the mystery with me.
This does not surprise me, as this year has already begun quite monumentally for me. Those of you who read this blog regularly know what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't, you might want to scroll down and fill yourselves in. Suffice it to say that I have embarked on a whole new life, and am starting to adjust to my new surroundings.
My move, thank God, is over. The majority of the unpacking and lifting and tossing has been done. There is an unbelievable amount of miscellaneous stuff that keeps coming up that makes me suspect I will never be finished and be allowed to just relax, but I just breathe when I feel like screaming. It's so much more tranquil. :-)
I am a music lover. Rock music, mostly, although I pretty much enjoy all types, give or take a few songs I will always loathe. But over the years, I have made many cassettes, from way back when I still had and amassed a record collection, and borrowed from my brothers' much more extensive one. I was listening to one of these tapes on the way home in my car yesterday and one of my all-time favourite songs came on, "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart. I remember first hearing that song when it first came out in the '70s, when I was a very young girl ... developing, forming, brewing. It haunted me then and it still haunts me now, and yesterday it brought me to tears. I suppose it could partly be due to all the turmoil I've been going through lately, but the song has always stirred up deep feelings inside me whenever I've heard it. It's a sad song, melancholy, mellow, mysterious, about a man and a woman who encounter each other in an exotic locale and have a vivid, memorable affair, but the passion and excitement can't prolong it. It's doomed to end even as it's occurring.
I have so many things I want to write about now. I have a feeling this blog is going to take a whole new direction, just like me. Where it, and I, will end up, I don't know. But maybe you'd like to spectate and share a little of the mystery with me.
posted by emily pound at 9:03 AM
6 Comments:
Quickie comment:
I absolutely love Year of the Cat!! In fact there are a scad of Al Stewart songs that really get me going, including Nostradamus and Roads to Moscow. There was a phase where I knew all of his songs. One odd thing about year of the cat is that in the long piano intro it is only in one channel. They screwed up when they were producing the record and apparently no one noticed until it was out. Its odd, even though of course they recorded the piano in one channel, they didn't spread it over the two stereo channels.
Glad your move is mostly done... will come back and comment more later...
Huge
Good ol' Al Stewart. "Time Passages" is great too. His songs are so melancholy and intimate.
I didn't know that about the piano intro. The sax solo does it for me. I've always wondered about the story behind the song. First of all, is he telling us about himself, or someone else? I tend to believe it is an experience he had. Who is the woman? Is she a local in this exotic locale? And where is it? "Year of the Cat" suggests something Oriental, and he mentions the sun and the suggestion of heat, so ... Thailand? And the line that always intrigued me and broke my heart: "You know sometime you're bound to leave her, but for now you're gonna stay ..." Why does he leave her? Is it just a cheap fling? Doesn't seem a cheap fling could inspire such a beautiful, wistful song.
There are some songs you can just listen to over and over and never get tired of them. This is one of them, for me. I must have hit the rewind button on my tape deck about ten times yesterday, and turned up the volume nice and high, all the better to hear that mournful saxophone.
I went back to look at the lyrics, because I remember that it referred to the market in Casablanca in North Africa and I think I'm correct. Here's the first stanza which sets the scene.
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
The Bogart movie is of course Casablanca.. the Peter Lorre reference is to the movie M where he is a child murderer who's captured through the work of the street criminals by his characteristic whistle, which they locate and then find him in that way. One of the great, very early movies by him, in his pre-WWII German career (1931), in that case directed by the legendary Fritz Lang.
The rest of the Year of the Cat song suggests that the singer was on a tour, with a ticket out of the city, but allowed himself to get sucked in by the beautiful mysterious woman who took him deeper and deeper into the city until he had missed his ride out and was going to say.
"Well, morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat"
I don't know why this haunting song effects me as it does.. but every so often when I hear it on the radio(I think my only copy is on an LP and I don't generally have a turntable hooked up to listen to LPs), it transports me back to a different time when I did listen to the song often, imagining why the singer would give up everything to follow this mysterious woman.
In any event I look forward to the new directions your blog will take and the new experiences your life will throw at you.
Okay, I have officially become a song detective. I have another theory now, one that is so much less romantic and therefore disappointing, but I think I may be right. These lyrics (I printed them out after listening to the song AGAIN) :-)
"she doesn't give you time for questions
as she locks up your arm in hers
by the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
there's a hidden door she leads you to"
could it be that this woman is a prostitute in the marketplace? the "no time for questions", the quickly pulling him with her, the "hidden door" near the market stalls?
and:
"she looks at you so coolly
she comes in incense and patchouli"
the "cool" look of a prostitute appraising her gazillionth customer? the "incense and patchouli" for added appeal?
it's heartbreakingly unromantic, but I'm convinced now that al is speaking of a dalliance he had with a prostitute when he was on tour somewhere.
what do you think?
I'm more of a romantic and think that Al Stewart's oeuvre is firmly in the romantic. The portion of the song where he stays, first because he has to and then because he wants to:
"Well, morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on"
"But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat"
Suggest that in fact it can't be a prostitute because if he can't afford a new bus ticket how could he afford to stay long term with a lady of the evening. I think its more of a ethereal attraction to a lady of mystery and beauty. And, he's going to stay until the moons shift and the attraction fades.
The allusions to the hidden door merely create the image of the swirling madness of the North African marketplace with stands and booths and milling people ripe with sights, smells and sounds... which can be exited through a hidden door to a carpeted, quiet oasis.
I've thought about the wonderful wordplay in this song for years and have on occasion wondered about the woman. Any time I've thought she might be a prostitute I've always rejected that as inconsistent with the ending of the song.
So many of Al Stewart's songs have wonderful wordplay and create swirling mental images of glorious romanticism or war or even death. Lord Grenville, On the Border, Roads to Moscow, Terminal Eyes. I may have to go back and add some of these songs to my Ipod.
I guess we'll never really know unless we got to ask Al himself. I think the ending of the song is more consistent with an actual lover, a woman he has chosen to be with, too. I hope so, anyway. :-)
There's a great website called Songfacts, I think the address is www.songfacts.com. If not you can just Google it. It has a whole list of songs you can search and find out "facts" on. I looked up Year of the Cat and all it said was that it was inspired by the film Casablanca, nothing about the woman or anything else. It's a great website anyway, lots of interesting little tidbits there.
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