a tumid, pop-culture / literary excursus

I have sometimes claimed that Will Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) is a post-Christian version of John Donne. I stand by this claim, vague as it is. What I mean, in essence, is that their corpora are thematically similar (i.e. the concerns and tone of their work are similar). They are eaten up with God and eros. Oldham, though, being post-Christian, has been apropriately described as "God-haunted." I don't think he's a Christian. But I think he asks the right questions.

Compare Donne's poem "Break of Day" with the lyrics of Oldham's song of the same name:

Donne:

'TIS true, 'tis day ; what though it be?
O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye ;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
O ! that's the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

And here by comparison / contrast, is Oldham:

I know the sun's about to come up
I close my eyes anyway
My mouth is dry and the sheets are cold
And will be still come break of day

You called me up just to surprise me
To hear my voice, see what I'd say
I only whispered then hung up
Whispered "wait til break of day"

[Chorus:]
At break of day I'm ending all of it
And so don't say you've had a ball
Dawn is mine, but I will share it
With whatever bird will wear it
On her body bare and pink
Now what do you think of break of day

I locked my door, I should unlock it
What if you should come this way
And in and have a drink and dancing
Dancing till the break of day

And then to bed we'd dance towards
And tiredly kiss and roll in hay
But waking in the evening I see
You left after break of day

At break of day I'm ending all of it
And so don't say you've had a ball
Dawn is mine, but I will share it
With whatever bird will wear it
On her body bare and pink
Now what do you think of break of day

[Chorus x2]

I hate myself when I'm alone
It's just with you I feel okay
And so tomorrow you'll feel sorrow
When I am gone at break of day

Very different in a sense. But the subtext is similar. In both, the speaker discusses the pain of separation that comes in the morning, as contrasted with a nightful (to coin a phrase) of lovemaking.

Donne is a Christian, and in his poem, it is the lover who is the agent of the leaving, causing the speaker pain ("wilt thou therefore rise from me?"). In contrast, Oldham (the post-Christian) begins in a state of confused separation. The sheets are cold, and the lover (presumably) calls on the telephone: a connection postponed by the speaker who "whispered 'wait till break of day.'"

It is "business" that Donne identifies as the fifth column within love:

He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

The speaker in the Donne poem, moreover, is probably feminine:

...I loved my heart and honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

The speaker of the Oldham song is, by contrast, masculine. And it is he that is the agent behind the separation that obtains between the speaker and the lover throughout the song. It is he that postpones the telephonic connection at the beginning, as the sun is about to come up: "wait til break of day." (There is, moreover, in the Oldham song the ominous declaration that at the break of day the speaker is "ending all of it." Does he mean he is ending relationship(s), or his life?) And it is the speaker who, in the end of the Oldham song who says that he hates himself when he is alone. This hatred is reversed when he says "Its just with you I feel okay." But the feeling okay is again reversed in the final two lines of the song:

And so tomorrow you'll feel sorrow
When I am gone at break of day

Lastly (for the moment), and most tellingly, there is the Oldham song "The Risen Lord." Salvation is kind of worked out in the Oldhamesque, at the end of that song:

Lo ! I am flesh, and the blood that races
Is me in the narrows of my wrists.
Lo, I see fear in the twisted faces
Of men, they clench fear in their fists !

Lo ! on the other side of the grave
I have conquered the fear of death,
But the fear of life is still here ; I am brave
Yet I fear my own breath.

Now I must conquer the fear of life,
The knock of the blood in my wrists,
The breath that rushes through my nose, the strife
Of desires in the loins' dark twists.

What do you want, wild loins ? and what
Do you want, warm heart ? and what
Wide eyes and wondering spirit ? – not
Death, no not death for your lot !

They ask, and they must be answered ; they
Are, and they shall, to the end.
Lo! there is woman, and her way is a strange way,
I must follow also her trend.