VLVL2 (12) The worms of song & the death of "justice"

[Terrance]

Now why Frenesi wanna go an Play wit Death like that? 
She ain no little kid no moe. 

"Oh, fuck, Howie,"  she was suddenly furious, "little kid games." VL.235

These kids are just playing around. 




You know, when children are about ten years old,  they enter a period in
which the outward material facts about Death seem extraordinarily funny.
They ask each other; "You gonna be buried or burned" They have catch
phrases; It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they
carry you off in," They have mock laments;

Poor old Peggy's dead
She died last night in bed.
We put her in a coffin
And she fell right through the bottom
Poor old Peggy's dead. 

Little Willie's dead, 
Jam him in the coffin,
For you don't get the chance
Of a funeral often. 

They inscribe their names on the covers of their books:

When I am dead and in my grave, and all my bones are rotten, 
This little book will tell my name, when I am quite forgotten. 

And certain songs, like Whyte-Melville's "Wrap me up in my tarpaulin
jacket,' Montrose's "Clementine" (In the corner of the churchyard where
the myrtle boughs entwine, grow the rosies in their posies fertilized by
Clementine"), and the popular song "When I die don't bury me at all,
just pickle my bones in alcohol," become an obsession, chorused over and
over again, and apparently giving endless pleasure. 

With the greatest good humor they chant "The infirmary Blues,": 

Whenever you see the hearse go by
And think to yourself you're gonna die, 
Be merry, my friends, be merry. 

They put you in a big white shirt
And cover you over with tons of dirt, 
Be merry my friends, be merry. 

They put you in a long-shaped box
And cover you over with tons of rocks, 
Be merry my friends, be merry. 

The worms crawl out and the worms crawl in, 
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin, 
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout, 
Be merry my friends, be merry. 

Your eyes fall in and your hair falls out,
And your brain comes tumbling down your snout, 
Be merry my friends, be merry. 

      --Version from boy, 13, Coydon. 

Children make up and pass on rhymes, riddles, jokes, strange beliefs,
rites and customs, 
about everything in their little worlds and most everything in the great
big world too. War is a popular subject. So is Death. Birth. Children
have deep respect for honor, truth, friendship, justice. 

But what about those in positions of authority? 



No matter with what awe a boy may privately regard the police, his vocal
attitude is one of amiable derision. In juvenile song the upholder of
the law has the worst of every encounter. 


Kids will be kids. 

Did you dig the writing on the wall? 
Off the Pig
Ho lives
Vive Ché
Viet Cong
Power to the People

 --Indiana University, 1969

Sex & Death & Rock & Roll

Wooopie, they all wanna Die. 




 




Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
> (p. 238)
> 
> Frenesi, our best window into the hearts of men, and
> what lurks there, is on the case. From the "air-conditioned
> hour without a name" to a judge's chambers "somewhere
> inside the rusticated grandiosity of an Indiana court-house
> -not too far from Brock Vond's old hometown," still chasin'
> that ever elusive stipend, it seems, she has stumbled upon
> a prevailing trend: wormies, grown large.
> 
> The meaning of this rather elaborate and somewhat humorous
> "gag" escaped me on previous reads, but I think it's beginning
> to make some sense. My attention had been focused on Weed's
> side of the equation, on whose snout the miniscule worms were
> "already playing a few preliminary hands." It now occurs to me
> that the other side of the equation- the court-house and the
> judge's chambers- are equally in play. Moreover, the setting of
> Frenesi's (and the reader's) awakening as to the origin of those
> "phrases" is given human scale. Thus the motel scene becomes
> a foreshadowing of a fate that both Weed and Brock will be
> sharing. What's good for the leader of the "Marxist mini-state"
> is good for fascism on a larger scale. As below, so above.
> 
> What makes this bit even more interesting, from a technical
> point of view, is that the foreshadowing of Brock's demise is
> supplied in a nested flashback, really quite subtle, and not so
> apparent as Weed's impending demise, on which our attention
> has been focused.
> 
> respectfully