Les Yeux Sans Visage...
On the PBS show Soundstage one of my music superheroes was on tonight--Billy Idol. The concert set included a few new songs but was centered around his signature hits from the Eighties: "White Wedding", "Rebel Yell", "Flesh For Fantasy", "Dancing With Myself"...
...and "Eyes Without A Face".
That song was a hit when I was a Junior in High School. My yearbook from that time has no signatures or well-wishes from my classmates...only a doodle of a pair of eyes, without a face, on the front endpapers.
That season, in English class, our assignment was to read the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby, and the novel and the song fit each other. Gatsby's visible life of excess and its hidden emptiness. His scheming towards trying to win back Daisy, and her betrayal of both Gatsby and her unfaithful husband. The violence that leads to Gatsby's final reckoning. And throughout, the loneliness that comes even in a crowd and won't let go. Those who have read the book also know about the eyes without a face.
I don't know if my sister still has my copy of Great Gatsby. She swiped mine after I left High School and I haven't seen it since.
...and "Eyes Without A Face".
That song was a hit when I was a Junior in High School. My yearbook from that time has no signatures or well-wishes from my classmates...only a doodle of a pair of eyes, without a face, on the front endpapers.
That season, in English class, our assignment was to read the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby, and the novel and the song fit each other. Gatsby's visible life of excess and its hidden emptiness. His scheming towards trying to win back Daisy, and her betrayal of both Gatsby and her unfaithful husband. The violence that leads to Gatsby's final reckoning. And throughout, the loneliness that comes even in a crowd and won't let go. Those who have read the book also know about the eyes without a face.
I don't know if my sister still has my copy of Great Gatsby. She swiped mine after I left High School and I haven't seen it since.