Speaking of endings and beginnings, this is the end of my work here as well. Three years ago, I started reading Moby-Dick and writing the songs recorded and written about throughout this blog. In the course of those three years I got married, had a baby, changed jobs, began to learn a new instrument, and undergone as many other of the smaller changes life presents us with in the course of time. I’ve learned a lot in the process as well, as a songwriter, as a musician, as a recorder of music, as a reader, as a writer, and as a person. That learning has made my ending here something of a beginning, too — I’ve already started working on my next two projects. Thanks to all for listening, reading, and commenting — it’s been fun.

Epilogue

Now but clipped of wing,
I circle ’round an empty scene
As if cradled in descent
By solitude.

Dirge of wandering,
Buoyed by a lost belief,
Irrevocable as all
Eternal vows.

There’s always a peace that lives between the punished
And the punisher, therein lies the defeat.

In the desert marked,
A signal to the world of sharks
That a punished man must live
To tell the tale.

Oh, the many morbid things
That the Fates obliquely sing
To the poets
Through a man come tumbling down.

You can call me Ishmael,
May the muse speak through me well
As I sing to you
The world’s most principle song.

And how
He
Looms in the middle of it all
Spectacularly.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 24, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea July 26, 2011

Though I recognize the choice may be incidental, I couldn’t help but to ask myself: if only a matter of race, why did the mates send Tashtego up the mast and not Queequeg or Daggoo? Do we as readers see in this choice a stereotype of the Native American as elemental? Perhaps, but we should also remember Stubb’s words one chapter prior: “What’s the mighty difference between holding a mast’s lightning-rod in a storm, and standing close by a mast that hasn’t got any lightning rod at all in a storm?” Maybe our race-attuned modern minds should recognize “Midnight Aloft” as a racially problematic presentation of Native Americans, but also look deeper into what might be Ishmael’s intention in including such a strange chapter — offering a vivid illustration of how Ahab’s supposedly great act of defiance is regularly performed as an unpleasant but routine and endured assignment in the life of a sailor.

Chapter 122: Midnight Aloft — Thunder and Lightning

Um, um, um.
Um, um, um.
Every snowflake in the winter,
Every lightning bolt in spring,
Every gift the Earth is given,
Is given unto me. (Given unto me!)

Um, um, um.
Um, um, um.
At the bottom of the order,
Every dangerous task in need
Is given unto me. (Given unto me!)

The sky, undone,
Overthrown,
Daggers flashing off and on.

And I sway,
Dearly clung
To the lightning rod.

Um, um, um.
Um, um, um.
When the white man touched the metal,
That would bring the lightning nigh,
Well, you thought the man defiant
And crazy, by and by. (Crazy, by and by!)

But you sent me to the rigging,
Climbing to the sky! (Climbing to the sky!)

Um, um, um.
Um, um, um.

(c) and (p) 2009 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea July 30, 2009
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea June 19, 2010

I spent the first part of my trip at a wedding. Being happily married myself, weddings these days often make me think about the difficult and confusing relationships of our college and post-college years. I wrote the following song about a friend. She had broken up with her sort-of-mean boyfriend, and jumped right into another relationship with a guy she knew was kind of a jerk, and being aware of her misstep and taking it anyway was a confusing moment for her. I never knew what to tell her because I wasn’t doing anything more intelligent with my love life at the time. Here’s to happier days.

Bigger, Brighter Eyes

Take me for my advice,
And I never had any twice,
And I roll right through the out of sight –
Take me, for any vice.

Nothing to idolize –
Dogs prancing through summer skies,
And you left your Bambi for bigger, brighter eyes;
Best in show: the Poodle prize.

Did you compromise?

(c) and (p) 2002 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea Winter 2002
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea Spring 2007

Now imagine you visit your grandmother, buried in a cemetery. You presume her body lays out under the headstone. Does it matter? Would her grave mean less to you if her body were absent? Why? Would you find comfort in seeing or touching her remains? Are you comforted as much by her interment, the knowledge of death contained, as her memorial?

Why do we isolate ourselves in grief, mimicking death rather than enacting life in society? Why fear the dead awakened, rather than welcoming a chance for reunion? What closure do we find in ceremony and memorial? What comfort do we find in solitude?

Death leaves us with questions.

Chapter 7: The Chapel

So you say, when we pass away,
Our bodies go into the Earth
And never come to be
Another happy memory.
And our souls will live forever
In the mountains of the heavens,
Making memories.

And what a relief, choosing to grieve for death instead of absence.
You’ll no longer share threads of a common tapestry,
But the story goes on.

It gave you pause, made you hesitate
To give the last permission,
For the moments in between,
Could change your course away from me.
And those moments last forever,
And you had them in the absence
Of my memory.

And what a relief, choosing to grieve for death instead of absence.
You’ll no longer share threads of a common tapestry,
But the story goes on.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea September 23, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea August 19, 2009

Starbuck begs this, the million dollar question, pretty early in Moby-Dick. Ahab’s answer is simple and engrossing, but not entirely sane. Ahab sees all earthly objects as physical representations of the objects’ creator. Moby-Dick may not be God, but God made Moby-Dick, and the act of creating a being of “outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it,” betrays the strength and malice of the creator. Ahab can’t attack God directly, but he can attack the results of God’s flaws, which bring pain into the world.

Excepting the mates, the entire crew sides with Ahab enthusiastically, with little clue as to why. In fact, the crew themselves seem surprised at the vigor of their own assent. Ahab calls the men together for an excessively dramatized show of passion and suffering, at one point shouting “with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose.” He makes a cause of his revenge for all mankind, who “give no reasons for the torrid life they feel.” And then Ahab brings his show to a climax with supposedly ancient custom and ritual that could feel very important unless you remember it’s not.

Giving purpose to the pain of his own loss, Ahab gives the crew a similar diversion. Hard-toiled years alone at sea, away from a wife and children, monotonous horizon in all directions — I can understand the need for a story, an adventure, a secret ceremony. It’s a shame Ahab’s was the only offer.

Chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck

All visible things
Are but a sculpted mask
Held before the visage
Of some unspeakable truth,
Nothing known but for our suffering.

I’ll strike at the mask,
Never mind it agent
or principal.

And I’d fight the sun
If it aimed at any pride
In all my Earthly bounty;
Scattering, every ember shared
For eternity.

The knots in my mind
Tighten ’round a critical
Density,
And furrow into my brow
With an irresistible gravity.

Now pass the cup
And we’ll ration out
The victory.

And I’d fight the sun
If it aimed at any pride
In all my Earthly bounty;
Scattering, every ember shared
For eternity.

And I’d fight the sun
If it aimed at any pride
In all my Earthly bounty;
Scattering, every ember shared
For eternity.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 20, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea May 16, 2009
Fiddle track written and performed by Molly Foresta

Macbeth is not stupid, however, nor is Ahab. In “The Whale Watch,” Fedallah prophesies Ahab’s death, and Ahab interprets those prophesies as telling of Ahab’s immortality. Ahab hears what he wants to hear, and in so doing, loses a chance to avoid his death.

“The Whale Watch” serves as a reminder to recognize perspective in our analysis of the day to day. It can be tempting to force all events into our desired interpretation, but that temptation likely leads to a distorted picture. Certainly no picture of the world can avoid all distortion, but perhaps the more perspectives contributing to a picture, the closer to truth that picture gets.

Chapter 117: The Whale Watch

Haven’t you read Macbeth, old man?
Though the prophecy promised you’ll never die
It’s gonna be bad.

‘Til Burnham Wood comes to Dunsinane,
And nothing but hemp can kill you –
Ahab, you’re fucking insane.

You hear what you want
Whenever you want it.
You do what you should
Whenever you choose.

Everybody heard Fedallah say:
You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die.
And Fedallah knows what he’s telling you:
You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die.

Neither coffin nor hearse can be thine –
It’s a civilized comfort to be buried inside
That your nature denied.

We can’t even call it irony –
He told you that you’ll die when the Pequod sinks
And he said it plainly.

You hear what you want
Whenever you want it.
You do what you should
Whenever you choose.

Everybody heard Fedallah say:
You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die.
And Fedallah knows what he’s telling you:
You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die.

Haven’t you read Macbeth, old man?
Though the prophecy promised you’ll never die
It’s gonna be bad.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 19, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea April 5, 2009

Ishmael also struggles with the restrictions of his culture’s imposed morality early in Moby-Dick as he tries to understand and accept Queequeg as a dear friend. Queequeg worships idols; Ishmael identifies as a Presbyterian. Queequeg’s people eat dead enemy soldiers after a battle; Ishmael’s people prefer to leave dead enemies unconsumed. Impressively, Ishmael challenges his own beliefs several times in the course of the book, and particularly in Chapter 17, “The Ramadan.” Forced by his faith in his friend’s goodness, Ishmael steps over countless moral lines he previously drew in the sand until, upon realizing that Queequeg has to do the same for Ishmael, he has to let it be. In the end, the two friends come together to share an exceptionally big breakfast “so that the landlady should not make much profit by reason of [Queequeg's] Ramadan.”*

Clearly, neither Ishmael nor Queequeg come from cultures with so obviously wrong norms as the peeling of faces off, but I think both situations beg the same worthy question: In the absence of God and ethnocentrism, where does our sense of morality come from? And can we consider that moral sense absolute?

I have yet to find a satisfying answer to these questions. For now, and most likely for always, I’ll have to stick by my faith that most people want to be good, and do good for others. Perhaps that striving alone — forcing the recognition and consideration of the needs, wants, and feelings of others — forms our moral sense, or perhaps that humanistic striving serves as a higher calling, beyond the simple act of following a set of rules.

*Ishmael refers to Queequeg’s fast as a Ramadan, not to be confused with the Muslim holiday.

Chapter 17: The Ramadan

No suicides here,
And no smoking in the parlor, dear.
He’s locked himself inside –
I’m shut out ’til the rising tide.

The keyhole affords
No better view than half the floor –
He’s nowhere to be seen
Beyond his weapon in the corner leaning.

Queequeg prays (sit alone in the cold for your Ramadan
With Yojo on your head) to the god who gives him voice;
It’s the choice of every man.

Queequeg prays (sit alone in the cold for your Ramadan
With Yojo on your head); oh, who am I to say
That my Christian faith’s the only way.

I burst into the room –
Shuttered like a bud to bloom,
My best friend remains
In the piety of pagan names.

I tell him when he wakes,
Religion needn’t cause him pain.
He smiles back at me,
In friendship, never condescension.

Queequeg prays (sit alone in the cold for your Ramadan
With Yojo on your head) to the god who gives him voice;
It’s the choice of every man.

Queequeg prays (sit alone in the cold for your Ramadan
With Yojo on your head); oh, who am I to say
That my Christian faith’s the only way.

Queequeg prays.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 15, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea March 15, 2009

This blog is the result of a collision. I am a teacher. I have summers off. I set two small tasks for myself this past summer. 1) I wanted to try and write a song per day through both months of summer. 2) I wanted to read Moby Dick. As I read Moby Dick and wrote my songs, the tasks slowly merged. Every now and then, a chapter of Moby Dick would inspire a song. By August, I had finished the book and was writing ninety percent of my songs about various chapters.

I set a new task for the year — write a song per day, one song for every chapter of the book.  My soon to be wife had the brilliant idea to present these songs as a blog.  I can record about one song in a week, and I’ll post them here as I finish them.

We’ll start with “Chapter 1: Loomings,” and end with “Epilogue,” but otherwise not follow any particular order through the book. Melville in many ways was the first modernist and the first post-modernist, so I think he’d approve. I hope you all enjoy.

Expect regular posts every Sunday from here on out.

Chapter 1: Loomings

Oh, the many morbid things
That the Fates obliquely sing
To the poets
Through a man come tumbling down.

You can call me Ishmael,
May the Muse speak through me well
As I sing to you
The world’s most principal song.

And were you
Lost in your deepest thoughts
Where need you be
But the ocean?
And so my story goes.

As a wounded Narcissus
The ocean gives to us
A reflection
An inflection of the deep.

And were you
Lost in your deepest thoughts
Where need you be
But the ocean?
And so my story goes.

And how
He
Looms
In the middle
Of it all
Spectacularly.

[instrumental]

And were you
Lost in your deepest thoughts
Where need you be
But the ocean?
And so my story goes.

And how
He
Looms
In the middle
Of it all
Spectacularly.

(c) and (p) 2008 Patrick Shea
Words and music written by Patrick Shea August 1, 2008
All parts performed, arranged, and recorded by Patrick Shea August 5, 2008