![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLoreena McKennitt, the Manitoba-born "singer, composer, harpist, accordionist and pianist who writes, records and performs world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes[,] is known for her refined, warbling soprano vocals[, and who] has sold more than 13 million records worldwide," is probably best known for her 1997 North American cross-over hit "The Mummer's Dance". I have the CD single somewhere, not here, and I still think it a great song. The Loreena McKennitt song that has the most meaning for me, now, is "The Lady of Shallot", a track from her fourth album, the 1991 The Visit, a combination of her music with the ballad of the same name by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and apparently something of a live favourite.
I heard the live version for the first time in the second half of an English literature review course, introduced by Dr. Gammel a a sort of an aural illustration of one of the great poems of the Romantic era (and inspirations of the Neo-Raphaelites). The Wikipedia article's summary of the ballad's development is concise: the protagonist lives in a pastoral setting on an island on a river leading to the heart of things; the protagonist has been cursed and can never look directly at those things, only their distant reflections, leaving her forever outside the universe of humanity; she sees Lancelot, turns and looks at him, and is cursed; she reacts by leaving her castle and finding a boat and heading downstream; she is then found, dead in her boat but still beautiful to Lancelot. It's a tragic end, but it's also a fulfilling end, one on her own terms. It may even have been a happy end for her; remember the verse that provided the title of that iconic Waterhouse painting.
"I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," Said the Lady of Shalott
So. Someone leaving in desperate isolation on an island just this far from the heart of things, someone who felt condemned to see things only at a distance and never able to approach them directly for fear of catastrophe, someone who ultimately didn't care and did it anyway regardless the cost because it just had to be done. That doesn't resonate at all with any themes of my life, does it?
I like this song, still. It just amuses me to realize how much I identify still with it. :-)
I heard the live version for the first time in the second half of an English literature review course, introduced by Dr. Gammel a a sort of an aural illustration of one of the great poems of the Romantic era (and inspirations of the Neo-Raphaelites). The Wikipedia article's summary of the ballad's development is concise: the protagonist lives in a pastoral setting on an island on a river leading to the heart of things; the protagonist has been cursed and can never look directly at those things, only their distant reflections, leaving her forever outside the universe of humanity; she sees Lancelot, turns and looks at him, and is cursed; she reacts by leaving her castle and finding a boat and heading downstream; she is then found, dead in her boat but still beautiful to Lancelot. It's a tragic end, but it's also a fulfilling end, one on her own terms. It may even have been a happy end for her; remember the verse that provided the title of that iconic Waterhouse painting.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and with lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am, half sick of shadow," she said,
The Lady of Shalott.
"I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," Said the Lady of Shalott
So. Someone leaving in desperate isolation on an island just this far from the heart of things, someone who felt condemned to see things only at a distance and never able to approach them directly for fear of catastrophe, someone who ultimately didn't care and did it anyway regardless the cost because it just had to be done. That doesn't resonate at all with any themes of my life, does it?
I like this song, still. It just amuses me to realize how much I identify still with it. :-)
