I was looking for something else, came across the words to this great old tune. It can be thought of as just a funny little song, but I think it has real substance to it. Particularly the final few lines.
*
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Harry McClintock
One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, “Boys, I’m not turning
I’m headed for a land that’s far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we’ll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There’s a land that’s fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I’m bound to go
Where there ain’t no snow
Where the rain don’t fall
The winds don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There’s a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain’t no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I’m bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
Isn’t this a wobbly song? It’s on the soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ wonderful movie O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?
But yes, it is a lovely (and funny) vision of utopia … Not just the final lines either, which are the most directly political, but the “cigarette trees” and “lemonade springs” (could that be a reference to Fourier? - I dunno …)
Comment by Barry — November 10, 2006 @ 10:45 pm
hi Barry,
I hadn’t caught the Fourier resonance, that’s pretty cool. I think it is a wobbly song, by ‘Haywire Mac’ McClintock. I think it was a pretty big hit at one point actually.
cheers,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 11, 2006 @ 3:01 am
Even if there is no direct connection, there is an invisible thread through time and thought. The world will be so perfect even the water, even sea water, will be sweet. It reminds me of Francis Bacon too, who in his utopian work believed fruits would taste sweeter.
I’m not surprised to learn it was a big hit. There’s utopian longing all around us, even - especially - in the pop charts!
(Sorry, am immersed right now in all things Ernst Bloch related. Am putting together something on Bloch, hope and the contemporary world. His writings are hard work, but very beautiful. Hannah Arendt wrote of Walter Benjamin that he was a philosopher who was able to think poetically, but I reckon this could apply to Bloch too. Mind, Arendt would have disagreed, she disliked all the other Frankfurters, expecially Adorno and Marcuse. It may shed some light on Adorno’s comment about there being “no poetry after Auschwitz”. Any ideas?)
Comment by Barry — November 12, 2006 @ 8:58 am