P.S. (17 page)

 

I think with that sigh right there . . . Yip is my guest here. This was a comment made by Yip Harburg when I was working on
Hard Times.
I was visiting his apartment in New York about ten years ago. It’s funny . . . Here you are now. We heard the chorus of “Brother, Can You Spare
a Dime?” and then your comments. There are about three or four aspects involved. First the idea—we’ll come to the young in a moment—that song was not a beggar’s song.

 

It was trying to expound, really, a social theory, that theory that our whole system of capitalism and free enterprise is based on a rather illogical and unscientific groundwork: that we each exploit each other, we each get as much out of the wealth of the world that our ruthlessness, and our chutzpah, and ability to step over others, gives us permission to enjoy. And most people who don’t have that kind of power are left penniless, even though they do most of the producing.

Writing is life. Writing should be social awareness. And one thing that I deplore about the writing today is that instead of social awareness, it’s social complaint; it’s self-pity; it’s bewailing the fact that things are bad, rather than exposing what’s bad about them.

I was brought up at a time when we all had a background of history, and political science, and we knew that the world was constructed on certain lines that had to be reformed. And there was a great reform movement on. I mean, the movement during Roosevelt’s time was formidable. We knew what we were after. We knew that we could have Social Security, which we didn’t have. We knew that we could have Medicaid for the poor. We knew we could have unemployment insurance. We fought for it.

 

 

That’s right. Well, Cole Porter belonged to a so-called smart set. He was born into great inheritances, in fact, four inheritances. He had a chateau in Venice, he had one in France, and he was living a different kind of life, and it was a very interesting kind of life. It was the kind of life we all aspired to. It was the kind of life where “I Get a Kick Out of You.” . . . It was a champagne-bubble feeling in the air.

 

 

Right, and I’m sure he would have given the fellow a half a dollar.

 

Yeah, given him a half a buck! That’s right. So that was his hallmark as, you know, “You’re the tops, you’re the Coliseum,” is his. An example of yours, from that marvelous musical
Finian’s.
I’ll ask you what you had in mind in
Finian’s
and what comes out on the stage, too. “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich.” This is witty, it’s funny, of course, the turn of a phrase; at the same time, what a comment. Why don’t we hear part of this.

 

This is what I am missing, Studs, in today’s writing, and what I deplore, and why I will always be against it. I have no communication with it. Because when you lose humor, you’re in disaster area. Show me a Hitler and I’ll show you no humor. Show
me a fascist state and there is no humor. Show me a democratic state . . . We were noted for our Mark Twains, our Franklin Roosevelts, or Lincolns. All the great guys who had humor and gave us a sense of humor. Now, a song like “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich” is profound. In fact it took Shaw, Bernard Shaw, a whole play,
Pygmalion
, to make the same point. Where he took a flower girl from the street and had a bet with Higgins that he could, with a little money, educate this girl and give her an accent so that she would not be distinguishable from anybody at Buckingham Palace. In other words, when the idle poor become the idle rich, you take on the same coloration as the rich and the cultured.

 

 

Now we’re getting into the technique of using profound political ideas in an entertaining and titillating way. And this is another thing I miss in today’s lyric writing. I don’t find the playful, the adroit, the ingenious use of phrase. So that people can laugh and think at the same time, and be left with meaning. And not be clobbered over the head, you know, with sledgehammer phrases. Because people run from polemics but they don’t run from laughter.

 

 

That’s always the most subtle way of getting an idea across. The subtle way is through what Churchill called “the soft underbelly of the soul,” you see. And naturally, I mean, that kind
of a subliminal and subtle thing doesn’t arouse people, doesn’t make them angry. It makes them listen, it makes them laugh, and it makes them swallow the gilded and sugared pill.

 

You know, one of your hallmarks is the use of the same word, the same word assuming a different meaning. A classic would be from
Finian’s Rainbow:
the leprechaun, Og , suddenly realizes he’s like Cherubino in
The Marriage of Figaro.
Hey, he’s got that feeling for that girl—girls. And here, “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love.” If ever there were a classic case of using one word in fifty different ways . . . “When I’m not facing the face I fancy, I fancy the face I face.”

 

Well, this is the art of songwriting, of taking a great idea and expanding it, but expanding it with surprise and twinkle, so that the audience is waiting to see, well, now, how is he gonna top this? How is he gonna make this point again? But you keep topping it, and topping it, and topping it. So the reason they’re titillated is because they love the play on words; they’re fascinated with it. And what they are absorbing is also an identification with the terror of becoming mortal.

You remember, this song was written for a leprechaun who was becoming mortal and began having the sex feeling, the sex urge. That’s a terrifying thing for a growing person. It’s one of the hardships of becoming mortal, of feeling naturally that it’s a beautiful and lovely thing, sex, and that his nature tells him so. But his society and his church tell him otherwise, say it’s immoral; it’s indecent. And the conflict that the poor human being who is growing up is in, if it’s stated in human terms, becomes a very laughable thing. And if we can laugh at the idea, we will learn how to cope with it.

In other words, whatever follies we have, whatever problems
we have, if we don’t feel bitter about them, and get mad and argue about them, but see them as follies and know how to laugh at them, the solution will come quicker and more peacefully. And this applies to almost everything in life, whether it’s war, whether it’s the conference table right now going on between Russia and America. Imagine if we had Mark Twain on this side and if they had Bernard Shaw on their side how fast there would be peace in this world, through humor. But we haven’t.

 

 

Yes, but to become human is very inhuman most of the time.

 

Another aspect, and yet related, of Yip Harburg’s giftedness, is his rhymes. We’re talking about what is the nature of rhyme in verse, in contrast to lyric for a song.
At This Point in Rhyme.
He’ll be reading from
that. And the other—perhaps you can ask for it and maybe they can reissue that—
Rhymes for the Irreverent.
So the subject of verse and you. And on this very subject of the human heart and human frailties.

You hold in your hand
At This Point in Rhyme.
Why not try a few of them, we’ll talk about them, and I’ll try a few from your other book,
Rhymes for the Irreverent.

 

All right. Well, of course, you know that I’m always fascinated with satire, with making points that I like to laugh out of existence; for example, our attitude toward money, and how we worship it. Here’s a poem called “Heavenly Vaults.”

Here’s my little tirade against the songs I hear today, and it’s called “Music on the Rocks.”

 

Yes. They could be put to music by the kind of music you have today, that is three chords and—I can make up any song that you hear on the spur of the moment, instant music. To do what they call folk music, I can take any one of these things and do it. But I couldn’t do what Arlen or Gershwin or Porter did with music, I mean, to write a melody with ingenious metric involvements, and to fit words to them. You can take any one of these songs like the one I just read.

 

 

It wouldn’t be it. I can do this. [Sings in mock folk style] Oh, where banks all look like temples / And temples look like banks / Where does one count his blessings? / Oh, where does one offer thanks? I can do that with any song.

 

 

But I would have to get a tune like [Sings] Da-di-da-da-di / Dum-da-di-dum-da-di-dum / Da-di-dum-da-dum . . .

 

 

That’s a powerful, beautiful song. Or you take a thing like “Over the Rainbow,” which Harold wrote. “Over the Rainbow,” when you consider it, it’s a theme for a symphony. Listen to this: [Sings] Bum-bum-bum-da-da-da-dum / Bum-da-da-dum
. . . You can write a symphony around that, but you can’t write a symphony around the folk song.

 

 

That’s right, because we had to work for sound and for the emotion of the tune. For example, given a tune, which was written first, like [He sings] da-di-da-da-di-da . . . I couldn’t use consonants. I couldn’t say, “Say, bud.” It wouldn’t sing. I had to use open vowels. And look, [Sings] Somewhere
over
the rainbow . . . The
o
comes right underneath. And comes right into the thing, and that was an important part of the writing. So on top of the playfulness of words, on top of the meaning and the poetry, the sound had an importance in it. Today you don’t have to worry about that at all; there is no songwriting.

 

 

Yes, we were well versed in all the French forms, the ballad, the triolet, the rondo, the villanelle, the sonnet. And these were highly disciplined. You never were permitted to use an oracular rhyme, or a tonal rhyme like home and tone. There is no rhyming today, and there’s no poetry today.

 

 

Let’s say lack of education. I don’t know what the youngsters are learning in school today. I think they’re learning how to photograph; they’re learning how to cook; they’re learning how to put wires together to make a radio set. But the humanities are out. Nobody knows who Longfellow was anymore. I asked some kids about, you know, “The Village Blacksmith.” They don’t even know that.