You remember the generalization about the eyes ... how they used to look
out, but now look in? Well, listen to this....
I'm feeling blue,
I don't know what to do,
'Cos I love you
And you don't love me.
The above masterpiece is, as far as I am aware, imaginary. But it
represents a sort of reductio ad absurdum of thousands of lyrics
which have been echoing over the post-war world. Nearly all these lyrics
are melancholy, with the profound and primitive melancholy of the negro
swamp, and they are all violently egotistical.
Now this, in the long run, is an influence of far greater evil than one
would be inclined at first to admit. If countless young men, every
night, are to clasp countless young women to their bosoms, and rotate
over countless dancing-floors, muttering "I'm feeling blue ... I
don't know what to do", it is not unreasonable to suppose that they will
subconsciously apply some of the lyric's mournful egotism to themselves.
Anybody who has even a nodding acquaintance with modern psychological
science will be aware of the significance of "conditioning", as applied
to the human temperament. The late M. Coué "conditioned" people into
happiness by making them repeat, over and over again, the phrase "Every
day in every way I grow better and better and better."
The modern lyric-monger exactly reverses M. Coué's doctrine. He makes
the patient repeat "Every night, with all my might, I grow worse and
worse and worse." Of course the "I" of the lyric-writer is an imaginary
"I", but if any man sings "I'm feeling blue", often enough, to a
catchy tune, he will be a superman if he does not eventually apply that
"I" to himself.
But the "blueness" is really beside the point. It is the egotism
of the modern ballad which is the trouble. Even when, as they
occasionally do, the modern lyric-writers discover, to their
astonishment, that they are feeling happy, they make the happiness such
a personal issue that half its tonic value is destroyed. It is not, like
the old ballads, just an outburst of delight, a sudden rapture at the
warmth of the sun, or the song of the birds, or the glint of moonlight
on a sword, or the dew in a woman's eyes. It is not an emotion so sweet
and soaring that self is left behind, like a dull chrysalis, while the
butterfly of the spirit flutters free. No ... the chrysalis is never
left behind, the "I", "I", "I", continues, in a maddening monotone. And
we get this sort of thing....
I want to be happy,
But I can't be happy
Till I've made you happy too.
And that, if you please, is one of the jolliest lyrics of the last
decade! That was a song which made us all smile and set all our feet
dancing!
Even when their tale was woven out of the stuff of tragedy, the old
ballads were not tarnished with such morbid speculations. Read the tale
of the beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green. One shudders to think what a
modern lyric-writer would make of it. We should all be in tears before
the end of the first chorus.