Marianne Faithful - Now there's a life.

November 6^th – At what cost?

The Baroness Sacher-Masoch has connections through her family name with the descriptive sexual practise first used in the novel, Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and known to us as masochism.

Nico, who has featured here before was part of the beat poet society in her vocal renditions and persona with Velvet Underground. Never did go much on her (nor she on me, I’d guess) but was aware that she was reckoned as a presence in the 60’s/70’s and is still referred to as an iconic performer and role model for the age.

Goethe’s Faust is the apocryphal German tale…come on, keep up… Goethe’s Faust is the apocryphal German tale likened to the blues standard, Crossroads and the English saying;

Be careful what you wish for.

All of us daydream at one time and another about what it would be like to be rich, famous, fast, clever, whatever, and in the most part this is all these thoughts remain; daydreams to keep away the cold winds caused by supposed failure or lack of recognition. How many of you have spent the Lottery millions in your head over the past year? I have: twice this year alone. I often think back to that excellent Play for Today production first screened in 1977, Spend, Spend, Spend about the working-class couple who won the Littlewoods football pools of £152,000 (when £152,000 was probably the equivalent of five million quid now). Made a big impression on me that one (mind you it was co-written by Jack Rosenthal with help from the Viv Nicholson so, what’s not to like) and I refer back to the feel of that drama whenever I get a bit above myself in wishing for things to be better, faster, bigger…

So, how would it be if we were ordinary us but wanted to be the friend of the famous, have luxury a-plenty at regular intervals and be courted as the 25^th most influential man/woman of the century? Let’s say our perfect shoulder-mate Beelzebub came a-knockin’ and laid it all out, says;

My dear, you can have it; I’m gonna make you a star.

That you’d come close a couple of times but wouldn’t actually die until you well into your seventies, guaranteed… But that the things you went through to get there would do for you in the end; cut twenty years off’f your life so death at 78 not 98; what then? Would we be prepared to suffer the slings and arrows for a taste of fame and intermittent fortune? Let’s opt for the end being severe, debilitating, life-threatening drug addiction where the drug was all and a life on the streets was preferable to going without. That you have no course of action open to you apart from denial about the lies and mis-information peddled as truth by newspapers about a single event, to the point where it became what defined you as a person for years. We’d have to balance how much we would gain in celebrity kudos from lost love, lost children, lost health and loss of faith by friends of course, and whether a hit album was worth the extent of the losses. Sit by as the things you suffer, self-inflicted or not, are turned inside out for the amusement of others and be used by music-critics and pseuds as a way of defining your talent in lieu of a very dubious complement; like getting throat cancer and being praised for your;

Husky, smoky vocal abilities.

as though this is the reason you went through it, just so’s they could sit in their living room and not only take their smug, self-satisfied pleasure from the result of your affliction but pass judgement on how good it is…or not; makes it all so worth the while don’tcha think?

As advertised here previously, having been under the influence of a breakdown (twice) in my lifetime, because you are in the centre of this mental twister you really can see nothing but the debris that whirls around you and which it’s impossible to dodge between in order to gain escape. What you become, against all odds and if you do manage to escape, is a survivor; damaged in places but stronger in others. From this position of relative experience (key word here is relative) one can appreciate the journeys made, the plateaus scrambled to and the destinations attained by others and I have to admit that, in the case of Baroness Sacher-Masoch (aka Marianne Faithfull) to have survived her roller-coaster ride of life and, on this day in 2006, having beaten breast cancer too, one has to say, whether her lifestyle, love and music appeal or not it’s hat’s off to a survivor.