Costello Catholic References

Pretty self-explanatory
E*C*RIDER
Posts: 53
Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Oxford, UK

Post by E*C*RIDER »

johnfoyle wrote: Just reminded of a GOOD ONE : .. . .
Phew, just the ONE?!! God Gawd. Jeez, even.



Now, i realise the Catholic Church is on the verge of suspending belief on the whole 'limbo' thing and that won't help ye of little faith among us who don't yet have the necessary soul-saving enterprise underway. Yes, we ain't all got time to offer up serving down at the St.Vincent de Paul store or even a weekend to help Caritas dig a water-well.

So, do this instead. Listen and/or sing the below beautiful tune from EC's "North" album a couple of times and then give "Il Sogno" a spin...



... ... ... Answer me, if you see the end in sight
I'm just a s o u l who's lost in l i m b o
Neither bad or good
I'd spare you now if i could
One more teardrop
Then i'll wake up
Tell me when did i stop d r e a m i n g ? ... ... ...




...as in, "the d re am", baby.
And have a heavenly weekend. Or maybe just one helluva good time!
"...i feel almost possessed,
so long as i don't lose this glorious distress..."
User avatar
Mr. Average
Posts: 2031
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2003 12:22 pm
Location: Orange County, Californication

Post by Mr. Average »

Maranatha
"The smarter mysteries are hidden in the light" - Jean Giono (1895-1970)
User avatar
Otis Westinghouse
Posts: 8856
Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
Location: The theatre of dreams

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Curiously ambiguous response, though I suspect you are both celebrating the advent of the Lord, and cursing us heathens:

1382, from Gk. maranatha, untranslated Sem. word in the Bible (I Cor. xvi.22), where it follows Gk. anathema, and therefore has been taken as part of a phrase and used as "a curse." Usually assumed to be from Aramaic maran atha "Our Lord has come," which would make the common usage erroneous (cf. OED entry), but possibly it is a false transliteration of Heb. mohoram atta "you are put under the ban," which would make more sense in the context.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
User avatar
bambooneedle
Posts: 4533
Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 4:02 pm
Location: a few thousand miles south east of Zanzibar

Post by bambooneedle »

laughingcrow wrote:
bambooneedle wrote: Becoming an official representative of any organized religion is something I would consider a highly questionable act in all cases.
Free wine, adoring public, nice threads, free house, all the nuns you can eat - sounds like a good laugh...especially if you get put in the exorcism squad as well!
I imagine a lot of 'em do treat it as that much of a joke, which wouldn't be surprising as people act so overly solemn and serious, and pathetically dwarfed by the assumed authority of it so much of the time... Yet, so much about churches is designed to make people feel that way.
johnfoyle
Posts: 14852
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:37 pm
Location: Dublin , Ireland

Post by johnfoyle »

In a July 1996 interview with Hot Press ( Dublin) Elvis says

( extract - scanned from cutting from print edition)

Some of the most exquisite songs on All This Useless Beauty appear to be floodlit with Catholic guilt. It takes different guises. An Old Testament phrase here, a reminder of how the sky is said to darken on Good Friday there. I could elaborate, but Elvis starts to look at me like I’m another German theory-meister. With a headshake and a smirk, he warns against taking his words at face value.

“A song like ‘Complicated Shadows’ was written in this semi-Biblical language because it was written for Johnny Cash,” he attests. “I could imagine him intoning these things with great gravity. But it’s not indicative of a particular frame of mind on my part. The private language of the songs is often different from the public language of the songs. It’s just the way I write. That Catholic thing is there in my head somewhere. And it’s far from vague. I can’t get it out, even with bleach.

“With Distorted Angel’ I was really thinking about children. Not child abuse but about children being made to feel guilty about a very innocent curiosity about their body. I didn’t want to write one of those greatly tortured Catholic songs. I don’t feel that way about it. It’s more of a hazy memory and it’s confused with a slightly erotic memory. The image of the distorted angel seems to fit it. As a kid, I remember being shown those holy pictures with a white-sheeted, strange, blonde person invisibly lurking in my room. I still find it quite spooky.

“I call ‘Poor Fractured Atlas’ an ‘epistle’ because it rhymes with ‘pistol in a kind of way that I like. It doesn’t really rhyme but it does when I sing it. I can make most words rhyme. I can make ‘mopin” and ‘Chopin’ rhyme. People say I often make clunky rhymes, but there’s humour in a bad rhyme. People often miss the point of humour in a bad rhyme.”

What are Elvis Costello’s religious beliefs? “None,” he sighs. “None that are formed into any coherent philosophy. I just have feelings of ease and unease about different things. I wouldn’t say that I can express it, really. I don’t feel the need to go to services of any kind. I go to funerals. I went to a wedding recently. I do all those landmark things that people tend to do in the sight of something, you don’t know what.

“You go to funerals to support people, to show to the living that you’re thinking about them and trying to help. Not necessarily because you believe in anything.”


Elvis is a fervent believer in the purgative powers of music, both in times of immediate grief and in those more difficult ensuing times when grief gives way to something empty and unnamable but no less distressing. At the aforementioned Meltdown Festival, he performed with an American gospel choir a version of ' That Day Is Done’, the song co written with Paul McCartney about the death of Costello’s grandmother. It was, he says, oddly exhilarating experience.

“That was a rare song among the ones we wrote which had a lot of personal detail in it,” Elvis explains. “It was about my grandmother’s funeral. After I had written ‘Veronica’ about her, this song was about not being able to attend her funeral, It was a very sad song to write. And Paul was very good about helping me to write this thing which was really bugging me and in making what I think is a very beautiful song out of it. He made a great record of it but I always wanted to cut it.

“To do it with these gospel guys was the right way for me to do it. It added a gravity to it, without it being maudlin. When they sing it, because they believe in this stuff which I don’t believe, it lifts you up to sing with them. They believe so much, and you’re standing among them, all singing together, it’s just fantastic. You are borne up by their belief.

“I have no problem listening to religious music of any kind, provided it isn’t actually oppressing me. Or nobody’s singing, like, ' Kill the woman!’, and there are quite a few religious songs which have that kind of tone. Debussy wrote Le Martyre De Saint Sebastien’ and he wasn’t a believer. He was inspired by the intensity of the poet’s words, and set those words very beautifully to music.

“That has happened quite a lot in the history of music, It’s not like I’m being post-modern about it or detached from it. I’m completely emotional when singing it because it is about spiritual things.

The gospel singers believe a coded thing, if you like. They believe their code, their doctrine, and I don’t. But I’m completely in sympathy with them on the ground of music which is the language that we do share. And the idiom that that song was written is a sort of gospel idiom, even though it’s not saying a gospel thing. It’s an experience, which is what the best music should be.”
johnfoyle
Posts: 14852
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:37 pm
Location: Dublin , Ireland

Post by johnfoyle »

Considering the many references in The Sharpest Thorn , this thread deserves to be revived to give them a bit of context.
johnfoyle
Posts: 14852
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:37 pm
Location: Dublin , Ireland

Post by johnfoyle »

I e-mailed the poster on listerv who commented last November on Catholic references in Elvis' songs. I sked what she thought of the references in the Elvis' new songs on River In Reverse. I got this answer today -

Hi John,

Thanks for remembering my November post on EC's vast number of Catholic references in his work. I only scratched the surface, but the new
album River in Reverse adds a veritable treasure trove of new ones!

I wanted to wait to hear the whole album (in context) before
commenting, and now I've had my Japanese import copy for a few days. Seems on fitting (it's Sunday), to comment, so here goes . . .

THE SHARPEST THORN

One of Costello's most outwardly 'Catholic' songs ever!
Fellow Catholics may know that St. Rita of Cascia received a unique
form of the Stigmata - the sharpest thorn from Our Lord's 'Crown of
Thorns'Â
User avatar
King Hoarse
Posts: 1450
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2004 11:32 pm
Location: Malmö, Sweden

Post by King Hoarse »

johnfoyle wrote: Seems on fitting (it's Sunday), to comment, so here goes . . .
It's also Ascension Day, I believe!
What this world needs is more silly men.
johnfoyle
Posts: 14852
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:37 pm
Location: Dublin , Ireland

Post by johnfoyle »

'Lorcan'

Interesting choice...........inspired by this ,maybe?

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09091b.htm

St Laurence O'Toole, Patron Saint of Dublin.


(LORCAN UA TUATHAIL; also spelled Laurence O'Toole)

Confessor, born about 1128, in the present County Kildare; died 14 November, 1180, at Eu in Normandy; canonized in 1225 by Honorius III.

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintl61.htm
johnfoyle
Posts: 14852
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:37 pm
Location: Dublin , Ireland

Re: Costello Catholic References

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.trunkworthy.com/elvis-costel ... -atheists/

Elvis Costello Song of the Week: A Gospel Song for Atheists
Post Reply