#97, April 24, 2006

Salvation à la Mode

We shall take as our text, Jethro Tull's Aqualung, written by the inimitable Ian Anderson:

Sitting on a park bench

eyeing little girls with bad intent.

Snot running down his nose,

greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.

Hey Aqualung.

Drying in the cold sun,

watching as the frilly panties run.

Hey Aqualung.

Feeling like a dead duck,

spitting out pieces of his broken luck.

Oh Aqualung.

Sun streaking cold,


an old man wandering lonely. 


Taking time


the only way he knows.


Leg hurting bad,


as he bends to pick a dog-end, 


he goes down to the bog


and warms his feet.

Feeling alone 


the army's up the road


salvation à la mode

and 
a cup of tea. 


Aqualung my friend


don't you start away uneasy,


you poor old sod,

you see it's only me.




Do you still remember


December's foggy freeze 


when the ice

that 
clings on to your beard

was 
screaming agony?


And you snatched

your rattling last breaths 


with deep-sea-diver sounds,


and the flowers bloomed

like 
madness in the spring.

Aqualung represents the man without history, the tramp, the unsung anti-hero. No history should be written about him, or should it? Is there any history written without him? Is Aqualung Every Man in reality? as potential? as the part of each one of us that cannot be denied? There but for the grace of god go I? There I go anyway? Historians don’t handle these characters well. We don’t want to recognize this as part of History – as a footnote perhaps, but certainly not the central theme (Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, but not Hamlet – tower or otherwise). We are all so respectable, and our ancestors should have such respectability too, or else we will take up someone else and adopt them for our purposes. Beware Aqualung, my friend, don’t you start away uneasy. You poor old sod, mon frère, you see it is only me.