Masters Of Art 2024
The magic of semantic ideas divorced from a tune: self-admitted non-poet collates his literary efforts.
Think of Judge Smith is almost a mythical rhapsode – the English auteur could claim the status if cared enough about cultivating the legend that links him to VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR, a band he cofounded ages ago, and HEEBALOB, the ensemble which left but a footnote on the British underground scene. However, superficial matters of fame and fortune never attracted him, unlike the sounds human voices are able to make when shaping a meaning, especially to a melody, and this is what Mr. Smith has toyed with for decades, on records of his own and platters credited to his friends of whom Judge’s old colleague Peter Hammill. Still, married to a melody those vocal sounds get overshadowed by the tune, so it’s only natural for him to want to shed a light on the meaning not refracted through extra inflections; hence, the compendium of chained words usually connected to music – the words now stripped of music.
And the results of his efforts are impressive. There’s no false modesty for Judge, bur he finds it necessary to present a sort of taxonomy for the texts collected here to distinguish lyrics from poems and to draw lines between various configurations these texts got accommodated into, including regular records and so-called songstories. Smith doesn’t demystify any lyrics by telling tales behind the songs, he just roughly describes the albums these songs landed on or formed; nor Judge indicates which came first – music or words – on the numbers he either wrote completely or co-penned with other composers. What Smith cares to create, though, is a tentative narrative emerging even from non-chronological order of verses from the “Democrazy” compilation – the verses that kickstart the tome and that set the tone for all the subsequent pieces. It’s a coincidence, of course, yet the stanzas of “Imperial Zeppelin” – the opening example of the veteran’s oeuvre on offer – seem to acquire a new meaning when placed in the book, and the “It wouldn’t work but what the hell? / Every dice deserves a throw” couplet is filled with the sense of determined recklessness once printed on a paper page.
Such shifting of semantic focus is a rather frequent feature of Smith’s writing, one of the methods in his toolbox where puns and phonetic devices are rarely deployed, while rhymes – when there are rhymes – are often unexpected and, thus, brilliant. Not surprisingly, he returns to linguistic matters on a meta level time after time, with a twist dictated by the “language circuit doesn’t work too good” excuse, so the otherwise romantic “Tell Me You Love Me” will refer to Fortran and the defiant “The Judge Rides Again” – in which he resorts to alliteration to confess: “I look best in a bonnet buzzing with bees” – to Braille. And this is also how his characters, some of them recurrent, come to life to reflect multiple facets of Smith’s own personality – because, ultimately, the author dissects his own personality, as overtly said in “Like A Rock” via the “I need someone else the way I need a comb” jest. And yet, the protagonists of Judge’s songs and stories come from dissimilar walks of life to educate listeners, or readers, by introducing them to Smith’s interests that encompass, alongside lesser subjects, the Imperial Airship Scheme and the Kibbo Kift movement as well as an adventures of Orpheus.
But, bundled together, songs that adhere to meter and thrive in rhyme get incorporated into massive vers libre works, which have their own refrains anyway, to peek from out there and lure the reader, as opposed to the listener who could immediately catch it. This is Smith’s approach: to play with those who consume his words. This is why, running the brief history of England and taking its tagline from Tolkien, “Fighting The Long Defeat” invites Transatlantic echoes via a Joni Mitchell quote. And this is why “So Sure” from the “Towers Open Fire” cycle, where William S. Burroughs and Dylan Thomas make an appearance, explicit and otherwise, elicits the confession of “These days I’m on a different page / I feel reluctant to engage” from Judge.
Furthermore, this may be why Smith wouldn’t provide the reason for omitting his lyrics for Hammill’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” opera (and it might be too late for "Mr. Mckilowatts Dances" to be included) – but their fans must delight in discovering that “Four Pails” which appeared on Peter’s “Skin” in 1986 was concocted as part of Judge’s musical called “The Ascent of Wilberforce III” which debuted five years earlier, and would be immensely interesting to see this piece in its original context. Although the reader can access Smith’s lyrics randomly – thus, the hidden fruits of Judge’s imagination may reveal themselves more readily – and not feel obliged to assess them en masse, it’s quite dangerous to do so with Smith’s concept albums, because it’s too easy to miss the massive layers of interwoven circumstantial events. Yet the sampling of large opuses may make for a purer literary experience. Liberate the passages about clouds from the “Curly’s Airships” libretti, and their beauty should become nigh on unbearable, but consider the rapture a small price for looking into Judge’s attempts to fathom, as “The Climber” suggests, our humanity and our sanity.
It’s a fair price for being prompted to think without judging.
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