Last night I was in Cedar City Utah. It’s a smallish town that is about an hour north of the border of Utah and Arizona that straddles I-15. Sorta like a sister city to the explosion currently known as St. George. Up until this point Cedar City has never been more than a quick rest stop for gas or snacks on my travels between Park City, Vegas and Los Angeles. Cedar City is home to SUU (Southern Utah University) and it’s also home to an infamous Shakespeare Festival.
As part of my birthday vacation extravaganza my mom has us here in Cedar City. Thus last night t’was it so that mine eyes ‘n’ ears were thrust into the world of Coriolanus. Nothing like a play where you have no background on it whatsoever. For all the schooling I thought I got on Shakespeare, it turns out I had never heard of this particular piece.
While I don’t attend many plays, I can usually sit through them. However this was a little difficult knowing zero about the characters. Being bombarded with dialogue in old english tongue and slightly poor acoustics and you have a recipe for difficulty. There was so action scenes and with the way they were played out it was like watching a non-animated version of 300. Much less blood too.
The gist of the story is a person – warrior – is off to fight for Rome, comes home loved by all. He gets greedy and is ousted by the people. He seeks out his previous enemy. Goes back to war this time against Rome. His mother intervenes and prevents the war. Finally he is killed by his previous enemies. Thus ends the show. Talk about conflicted and going through a lot of changes…
Hence the reason for today’s song. A classic by a once prolific artist. What better to describe going through Changes than the song that defined it? Admittedly the production isn’t modern, but then most classics at this point really aren’t. A song like this relies much more on the quality of the song itself. I could imagine what this masterpiece would be like if it had been recorded with today’s technology. I’m sure it would have a lot more ear candy. Could it be that that would have made the song fail? We’ll never know.
If you don’t own this song, I think I’d have to send you to Coriolanus’ enemy Aufidius. Don’t be shamed, get it now from that iTunes link above and all will return to right in the world.
(** Disclaimer: If Bowie’s label decides I’m to be cast out for doing a good deed, then I’ll have to slay the audio from the server. The post will remain to show that Shakespeare can really tie a story together. **)