Poem 236

A song I wrote for my theatre adaptation of The Great Gatsby – a song by this title is mentioned in the novel as being a sensation at one of Gatsby’s parties so I thought it would be fun to write it and use it as a song and dance number to spark Nick Carraway’s and Jordan Baker’s mutual attraction …

… extemporising from the title F. Scott Fitzgerald had supplied, I threw together some historic couples, giving the sexual politics a roaring twenties flapper spin in which the women hold the advantage …

… flappers were all about a new female brashness and independence, emancipation sexually financially morally and the three key (supposedly) romantic relationships in The Great Gatsby all show the women running rings around the men – the whole story could be typified as ‘slow boys lose fast girls’ so I was pleased that the lyrics were not only smart and comedic but also spoke to that theme …

… I worked a lot on the words for this, revisiting it many times to get it succinct tight but developing the springboard idea and bringing it home, channelling the voice and attitude of the Jazz Age but also making it timeless enough to appeal to a modern audience, celebrating youthful female energy but with shadows and undercurrents of the amoral callousness that is the whole point of the book …

… Michael Nicholas Williams wrote the music for this and immediately knew what I was going for …

… sometimes the parts of something come together so smoothly and obviously that it’s a spiritual experience, you feel you’re just standing by watching it happen … needing a middle-eight that was a complete break in rhythm and tone I co-opted Fitzgerald’s epigraph to the novel – the ‘gold hat’ lines that were his own in-joke, supposedly written by Amory Blaine, his character from This Side Of Paradise – they work brilliantly here …

( I like the way I’ve combined apple stories of Adam and Newton, hot apple strudel as a sexual metaphor and Gabriel’s horn similarly, don’t lose your head chiming with the Salome reference, possess the pizzazz (check me out Cole Porter), rhyming Eden/needing (followed by squeezing/sleeping/peeping), all my rhymes on jazz (including American accent on fast and last) culminating in passionate/jazz in it, the Shakespeare reference (‘what light from yonder window breaks’) and reversal of Napoleon’s ‘not tonight Josephine’, the way the truncated line after run even faster accelerates the pace of the chase (at this point in the play Jordan is literally leading Nick a merry dance) and how the line will bobs outlast curls exemplifies the stylistic dilemmas and upheavals of the age as distilled in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story Bernice Bobs Her Hair …
… yes, more going on in here than you thought … )

A Jazz History Of The World

When Eve said to Adam 
				         man bite that thing
he heard the beat of angel wings
he ate to the core shouted 
                                                give me more
but was knocked out cold 
by Newton’s First Law   
                                        gravity

Eve’s leaves had all fallen
the tree was bare
in Eden she was needing
more hugging and squeezing
Adam kept sleeping
Devil was peeping
as down came Gabe 
with that horn he has
for hot apple strudel
and to play some jazz

what sass! 
                    what class! 
slow boys lose fast girls
it’s a jazz history of the world

that flash! 
                   that dash! 
though it can’t last girls
it’s a jazz history of the world


Romeo spied Juliet and said 
                                                    what light
Josephine told Napoleon 
                                              yes tonight
Scheherazade 
spun Arabian tales
Salome danced the Dance 
of the Seven Veils
though the name of the game is 
don’t lose your head
despite best laid plans 
a man’s in a jam
outflanked and outran 
since time began
he’s got to stay on his toes, 
possess the pizzazz
run even faster 
just to catch
                       that sass!
                                         that class! 
slow boys lose fast girls
in the jazz history of the world

that flash! 
                   that dash! 
though it can’t last girls
it’s a jazz history of the world

			    so wear the gold hat if that will move her
                              if you can bounce high bounce for her too
                              till she cry 
 			                       lover! gold-hatted 
			    high-bouncing lover
                              I must
			                have 
			                          you


what sass! 
                    what class! 
slow boys lose fast girls
it’s a jazz -
	               the rest of history well that’s a mystery
                        but it’ll be passionate if it has jazz in it

that flash! 
                   that dash! 
slow boys lose fast -
                                          will bobs outlast curls?
                                          learn from the past girls
it’s a jazz history 
of the world