The canonical version of the latter song is of course the one by Leo Moracchioli and Mary Spender:
Mary, dressed all in black, playing a black banjo, and addressed at the beginning of the video with something just one consonant shy of "Hail Mary," is a possible tie-in with the Black Madonna theme. Bill has tied the Black Madonna to the spider-demon Ungoliant, though, so it's perhaps worth noting that I've posted ("Spider's oil and walking the line") about how spiders -- and specifically a "Mama" spider -- do not tolerate banjo music:
When I was living in what is now Hell Hollow Wilderness Area in Ohio, I had a persistent fantasy that there were giant jumping spiders living in the woods on the far side of Paine Creek, and that, being cursed with voicelessness themselves, they would sometimes bring humans to their nocturnal soirées to perform. A pure-voiced girl in a white gown would sing, and I would accompany her on a recorder. (This was not my instrument of choice, but spiders are fastidious about music, and they had a strict rule: Mama don't 'low no banjo pickin' round here.)
What spiders do like is recorder music. Interestingly, Bill just brought that instrument up in a comment on "Bananas and blow":
Some visualize the Pied Piper's pipe as a duct flute, also known as a recorder. I like that theory given the reference to "records" on Stones, and the recorders who put them there, in my story and the magical and resonant sound that are meant to come from them.
It would fit Bill's story much better if the Mama spider liked banjos and hated recorders, so I suppose he'll leave some comment to the effect of "There you go inverting things again." Take it up with the sync fairies, Bill.
Given the "Bananas and Blow" context, it's noteworthy that that verb appears twice in the lyrics of "Sultans of Swing":
A band is blowing Dixie, double four time
and
Uh, but the horns they blowin' that sound
12 comments:
The blue butterfly in my comment on "Spider's oil and walking the line" has more meaning now.
You've written before about your experience with and knowledge of spiders, so I will trust your expertise.
And it fits my story fairly well to hear that Mama Spiders are attracted to Recorders. That is kind of the idea, actually. Ungoliant's relationship with Light was one of attraction and gluttony, strangely. She desired to consume the light, even as a Being of ultimate darkness. Which is one reason why Melkor was able to rope her in on infiltrating Valinor and destroying the Trees, with the promise that she could drink up all the light of the Trees and eat all of the gems of the Elves. She even desired the Silmarils, but failed to get them, but almost killing Melkor in her rage to have them before he barely escaped. In my story, these Elvish "jewels of light" also symbolically represent Stones, and the stories or Light contained on or associated with them.
WIth that stolen light, Ungoliant would weave her own darkness. I alluded to this yesterday in the "Spider's Light" word play for the Reliant. It is probably a forerunner to the GAC's treatment of the Book of the Lamb. She and her group will consume that book as well, and from it spin their own webs.
So, hearing about a Mama Spider that really "likes" or is drawn to recorder music would make sense. I have no objection to this.
And I am sure you are familiar enough with the Piper's story to realize that both rats and children were drawn to what he was playing. The first group to their destruction, and the latter is up for interpretation, but I subscribe to something like paradise. So, I don't think trying to parse out instrument type for certain groups is necessarily a winning angle or interpretation here. All manner of Beings were drawn to the Piper's tune, I am not sure why spiders wouldn't be.
Banjo, however, is an interesting instrument for Black Mary in the video, irrespective of spider instrument preference. Someone who plays the banjo can be called a "picker", and that is exactly what Black Mary does to open your video - she picks her banjo. So Black Mary is a Picker. Besides being used to refer to a banjo player, that term is specifically used for someone who steals things (which might also include names and titles). Given my commentary above on Ungoliant stealing Light, this would fit.
What I mean is that Mary seems to symbolize Ungoliant but plays the one instrument mama spiders can’t stand. I guess it sort of works if banjos symbolize theft (kind of a strained reading imo), since even thieves forbid others to steal from them.
That was Ungoliant's relationship with Light. She both desired it and hated it above anything else, so imagery of Black Mary playing the one instrument she can't stand would fit this, I would think.
The banjo itself wasn't meant to symbolize theft. Just the fact that she was a Picker.
Also, I don't mean to gainsay your spider knowledge, but going along with the Picker theme and strings, it does look like spiders really do enjoy picking at strings like a guitar or banjo. In fact, one could say they are nature's banjo pickers. Perhaps Ohio spiders are different, but there are several links that I found just now that write about spiders picking at the strings of their webs - to my imagination, much like a banjo player picking at strings, and thus a pretty good fit for Black Mary her instrument. I mean, both webs and banjos consist of strings.
Here is a quote from NPR and its associated link (the embedded video even has the title "Spiders tune their web like a guitar"):
"And sometimes the spider will even play the web to create vibrations and interpret the results. 'The spider can actually pluck or bounce the silk strings, ' says Mortimer, "and it can monitor the echoes that come back so it can locate objects."
https://www.npr.org/2014/06/10/319179807/spiders-tune-in-to-webs-music-to-size-up-meals-and-mates
Strings, and their vibrations, are apparently how spiders understand what is going on in their web.
Are those characters on Leo's shirt Chinese or another language?
Chinese. You could translate it as something like “an (over)abundance of blessings” or, less literally, as “my cup runneth over.”
It’s simplified Commie Chinese, btw, not the traditional characters used in Taiwan.
Got it. That makes sense, I think. Sounds like a fortunate person.
Also, I think the "riff" comment might be relevant in the context of addressing Black Mary. Etymonline says it might have been the shortened form of "riffle". Riffle refers to choppy or rough waters.
It is Ungoliant who presides over and rules the waters, per Nephi's vision. In Enoch's vision of the last days and the day of judgment, he saw the waters becoming "troubled" (a reference probably specifically to dirty/ filthy, but also probably including the roughness of those waters). D&C 88 captures Joseph's "Tree of Paradise" vision, and says this about the waters in the day of judgment:
"For after your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground and shall not be able to stand.
And also cometh the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of tempests, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds.
And all things shall be in commotion; and surely, men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people."
Seas with waves heaving beyond their bounds would be riffled or riffed waters. To support this connection, two verses later, Ungoliant herself is mentioned:
"And another angel shall sound his trump, saying: That great church, the mother of abominations, that made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, that persecuteth the saints of God, that shed their blood—she who sitteth upon many waters, and upon the islands of the sea—behold, she is the tares of the earth; she is bound in bundles; her bands are made strong, no man can loose them; therefore, she is ready to be burned. And he shall sound his trump both long and loud, and all nations shall hear it."
I see. That's helpful. I should have known there are many versions of the script and characters.
The air horn will sound again, my friend, both long and loud.
Wiki notes similarities between "Sultans of Swing" and another Dire Straits song, "Lady Writer". The lady is "on the TV / Talking about the Virgin Mary", possibly referring to one Marina Warner, whom wrote a book about Mary (and followed it with one about Saint Joan).
youtube.com/watch?v=-QMBELh1zyo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Warner
I would imagine so.
In the tale I pieced together from the 2020 events, I placed the Three Disciples in Salt Lake City on their way to Idaho to get the Stone, using their powers over the Earth to make a surgical earthquake strike to remove the trumpet (an air horn, I guess?) from the grasp of the angel sitting on top of the SLC temple.
Perhaps a symbolic strike at Ungoliant herself, and message that any air horns won't be in her possession, or at least the ones that matter. I just remembered right now the image of the spider I very clearly saw in the Mormon tabernacle pipes on the cover of my hymnal. Organ pipes are also wind instruments, and thus connected to things that blow, I guess.
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