![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
American Utopia (2020)
Mar. 8th, 2021 10:06 amSpike Lee-directed concert film for a 2019 Broadway performance by David Byrne, backed by a marching/dancing band, mostly percussionists. Everyone’s in grey two-piece suits and barefoot on a mostly bare stage, but it’s the reverse of dreary. The most memorable song was “Bullet,” sung by Byrne next to a single light source:
The bullet went into him
His skin did part in two
Skin that women had touched
The bullet passed on through
The bullet went into him
It went its merry way
Like an old grey dog
On a fox's trail
If someone told me the lyrics to this were a translation of a Lorca poem, or a partisan song from the Spanish Civil War, I wouldn’t be surprised, but the end credits say it’s Byrne (and Brian Eno), and the two songs in the show that are settings (‘I Zimbra”) or covers (“Hell You Talmbout”) he mentions beforehand who wrote originated them (Hugo Ball, Janelle Monae). On the other hand, someone familiar with Dadaist poetry may well have been drawing influence from Lorca as well.
Anyway, good show, good film, made me want to dance awkwardly.
The bullet went into him
His skin did part in two
Skin that women had touched
The bullet passed on through
The bullet went into him
It went its merry way
Like an old grey dog
On a fox's trail
If someone told me the lyrics to this were a translation of a Lorca poem, or a partisan song from the Spanish Civil War, I wouldn’t be surprised, but the end credits say it’s Byrne (and Brian Eno), and the two songs in the show that are settings (‘I Zimbra”) or covers (“Hell You Talmbout”) he mentions beforehand who wrote originated them (Hugo Ball, Janelle Monae). On the other hand, someone familiar with Dadaist poetry may well have been drawing influence from Lorca as well.
Anyway, good show, good film, made me want to dance awkwardly.
