Subject: (urth) Frank Black

From: Seth Lombardi <sethlombardi at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 21:30:19 +0000

Here's a possible GW pop music connection:
(on the subject of music from a few posts back)
Anyone listen to Frank Black? Former lead singer of the Pixies? This guy has 
a strong science fiction flavor: some of his songs paint melancholy 
post-apocalyptic or extraterrestrial landscapes with great skill. He also 
has an obsession with Ray Bradbury, even going as far as to name an album 
after him (The Cult of Ray).
Anyway, I got his newest, Dog in Sand a few months back. I was dumbstruck by 
one song that, well. . . it reminds me a LOT of the BOTNS. Mainly because it 
has the word "pelagic" in it. It's hard to believe a sci-fi freak pop music 
star could pick that word randomly. Anyway, here are the lyrics. I had to 
find them on the web as I do not have the album of the liner notes with me, 
and it does not designate the chorus or which parts are repeated. I highly 
recommend you get this album or anything else by him.

You know, now that I think about it...tell me this isn't a love song to an 
Undine!! :)

The Swimmer

in the wake of his chariot
you swam toward the latitudes
leaving for happier times
florida far behind
trying your best you were
ignoring the rescuers
you'd gone so very long
you were so very strong
the scene was so tragic
but that was the magic
will you never drown?
will you learn to use
some forgotten part some forgotten part?
are you going down where the ballyhoos and the tritons are?
you were so incredible
finding all the edible
prize of the sea
prize of the sea
in the wake of his chariot
he swam toward the latitudes
leaving for happier times
florida far behind
in the division pelagic
you where choragic

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 22:30:24 +0000

"Seth Lombardi" <sethlombardi at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Anyone listen to Frank Black
[...]

>star could pick that word randomly. 
[...]

Frank Black certainly may be a Gene Wolfe fan, but even if he has never read
Wolfe, his use of "pelagic" could hardly be considered random. The song you
quote (I have omitted the lyrics from my quote of you message, above) refers
to the mid-ocean. To quote Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, pelagic
means:

"of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea : OCEANIC"

So Frank Black was merely using an uncommon word appropriately. Since Gene Wolfe
has practically made a career out of this, Black may have been imitating him,
but I find it far from certain, especially since the rest of the song doesn't
seem, to me at least, to have much resonance with TBotNS.

William Ansley

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