Send us a song that features a book, author, fictional character, or other literary reference and we'll try to post it on the blog. Be sure to read the Ground Rules first!
The peripatetic hero of Homer's The Odyssey keeps wandering into these pages--first in Suzanne Vega's Calypso, then in Cream's Tales of Brave Ulysses. Now he turns up in Home At Last, from Steely Dan's 1977 album Aja. "The central metaphor was taken from Ulysses' big problem--you know, trying to get back home," says Donald Fagen in the Making of Aja video, describing the song as "a little blues about Ulysses." A reference to the Greek wine retsina adds some local color, and, as in the Cream song, there is an allusion to the Siren episode of The Odyssey, in which the hero has himself tied to the ship's mast to resist being lured to shipwreck by the song of the Sirens: Well the danger on the rocks is surely past/Still I remain tied to the mast/Could it be that I have found my home at last/Home at last. Perhaps it should be called Homer at Last.
In the context of Suzanne Vega's song, from her 1987 album Solitude Standing, Calypso refers to the sea nymph of Greek myth. In Homer's The Odyssey, Calypso falls in love with the hero, Odysseus, and imprisons him on her island for seven years, until the gods convince her to let him go. Vega depicts Calypso awaiting their final dawn together, when Odysseus will depart forever: Now today/Come morning light/He sails away/After one last night/I let him go.
Don Henley/Drivin' With Your Eyes Closed
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Drivin’ With Your Eyes Closed, from Don Henley's 1984 album Building the
Perfect Beast, mentions two 19th century French poet...
Smoke Signals: Secret Notes From Inside Conclave
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From The Huffington Post: According to Italian media reports, a diary has
surfaced written by an anonymous cardinal who participated in the recent
Vatican ...
keeps wandering into these pages--first in Suzanne Vega's Calypso, then in Cream's Tales of Brave Ulysses. Now he turns up in Home At Last
, from Steely Dan's 1977 album Aja
. "The central metaphor was taken from Ulysses' big problem--you know, trying to get back home," says Donald Fagen in the Making of Aja video, describing the song as "a little blues about Ulysses." A reference to the Greek wine retsina adds some local color, and, as in the Cream song, there is an allusion to the Siren episode of The Odyssey, in which the hero has himself tied to the ship's mast to resist being lured to shipwreck by the song of the Sirens: Well the danger on the rocks is surely past/Still I remain tied to the mast/Could it be that I have found my home at last/Home at last. Perhaps it should be called Homer at Last.
