Transported by a Dream

“Hearing Ryan Adams’ album Heartbreaker was a seminal point for this part of my career. I just fell in love with him and that record. And I had the great fortune of doing Songs From the West Coast with producer Pat Leonard. He got my idea and simplified the record, and made me work with other musicians. I have to say that one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I’ve not fallen out, but I’ve drifted away from Pat. I feel very ungrateful to Pat that I didn’t make another record with him. We were so close on that record, he shifted me so much in the direction that I wanted to go. Original Sin is one of the best songs I’ve ever written.”

Elton John

The music video for the song Original Sin (David LaChapelle, 2001) featured Elizabeth Taylor and Mandy Moore. It also featured John playing the father of Moore’s character and the husband of Taylor’s character. Moore was the centre of the video, who plays a huge Elton John fan from the 1970s who is transported by a dream (à la The Wizard of Oz) to one of his concerts, where she socializes with various celebrities of the period (Bette Midler, Sonny Bono and Cher, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, etc.) played by look-alikes. Then at the end she wakes up and Elton’s character asks, “Who is this Elton John, anyway?” It also has more of an upbeat dance mix to the music.

It is the third and last single extracted from the album Songs from the West Coast (reported back to the origins of the musical career of Elton and the period of the seventies). This is a slow song with the melody sweet and melancholy and based on Elton’s piano playing, as well as Rusty Anderson on guitars and keyboards producer Patrick Leonard.

Related photographs posted on The Genealogy of Style’s Facebook page:

Jul 22

A Mourning Poem for Lincoln

Walt Whitman’s notes for a revision of “O Captain! My Captain!”, 1865.

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!O the bleeding drops of red,Where on the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!This arm beneath your head;It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!But I, with mournful tread,Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman

Robin Williams as Professor John Keating surrounded by his pupils in Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989)

Professor Keating: “O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It’s from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating, or if you’re slightly more daring, O Captain my Captain.”