Memory

Friend M is preparing for the office xmas party, they have planned a 10 minute version of Cats. As I talked to her about it, I remembered listening to the soundtrack of the London cast's version way way back. Songs flooded back to mind, and I could recall some lyrics. My favorite part is not Memory, but the Naming of the Cats. And as the entire play is based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and other poems by TS Eliot, I did a Google search and came across the poems online. Here are my favorite bits:

THE NAMING OF CATS
The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
..."
and the last stanza goes

"But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name."

I sincerely believe this, just try to call a cat and see if they'll listen to you. Honestly. Like banging your head against a brick wall....

Sorry.

So, along the lines of the research, I found that Memory is not in the list of Eliot's poems from
OLD POSSUM..., but taken from "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and "Preludes":

(snippets)
"8Every street lamp that I pass

9Beats like a fatalistic drum,

10And through the spaces of the dark

11Midnight shakes the memory

12As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

13Half-past one,

14The street lamp sputtered,

15The street lamp muttered,

50"Regard the moon,

51La lune ne garde aucune rancune,

52She winks a feeble eye,

53She smiles into corners.

54She smoothes the hair of the grass.

55The moon has lost her memory.

56A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

57Her hand twists a paper rose,

58That smells of dust and old Cologne,

59She is alone

60With all the old nocturnal smells

61That cross and cross across her brain."

62The reminiscence comes

63Of sunless dry geraniums

64And dust in crevices,

65Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

66And female smells in shuttered rooms,

67And cigarettes in corridors

68And cocktail smells in bars."

- Rhapsody on a Windy Night


I

1The winter evening settles down

2With smell of steaks in passageways.

3Six o'clock.

4The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

5And now a gusty shower wraps

6The grimy scraps

7Of withered leaves about your feet

8And newspapers from vacant lots;

9The showers beat

10On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

11And at the corner of the street

12A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

13And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

14The morning comes to consciousness

15Of faint stale smells of beer

16From the sawdust-trampled street

17With all its muddy feet that press

18To early coffee-stands.

19With the other masquerades

20That time resumes,

21One thinks of all the hands

22That are raising dingy shades

23In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

24You tossed a blanket from the bed,

25You lay upon your back, and waited;

26You dozed, and watched the night revealing

27The thousand sordid images

28Of which your soul was constituted;

29They flickered against the ceiling.

30And when all the world came back

31And the light crept up between the shutters

32And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,

33You had such a vision of the street

34As the street hardly understands;

35Sitting along the bed's edge, where

36You curled the papers from your hair,

37Or clasped the yellow soles of feet

38In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

39His soul stretched tight across the skies

40That fade behind a city block,

41Or trampled by insistent feet

42At four and five and six o'clock;

43And short square fingers stuffing pipes,

44And evening newspapers, and eyes

45Assured of certain certainties,

46The conscience of a blackened street

47Impatient to assume the world.

48I am moved by fancies that are curled

49Around these images, and cling:

50The notion of some infinitely gentle

51Infinitely suffering thing.

52Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;

53The worlds revolve like ancient women

54Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
- PRELUDES


Cats and Phantom... don't make my personal list of favorite musicals of all time, but Cats has an advantage over Phantom - I like cats (chortle), and the songs are poetic. Phantom has always come off as a B-rated gothic horror to me. And don't bring up Sarah Brightman, yoiks.

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