SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP by Mark Lanegan (White Rabbit, 2020)
‘Men Should Weep’ was the title of a 1947 play by Ena Lamont Stewart I saw performed in London in 1982 by Glasgow’s 7:84 theatre company (named from the statistical information that 7% of the people own 84% of the wealth).
I liked the title of this play because it conjured up the image of men weeping en masse . I imagined this as a universal shedding of tears for the patriarchal pain men have inflicted on humankind. Some hope!
Sadly, the macho stereotype is still alive, kicking and oppressing as Mark Lanegan’s relentlessly bleak memoir confirms. Despite the title (a line from his song ‘Fix’ from the solo album ‘Field Songs’) , Lanegan is not much given to weeping or displaying his feelings. It’s therefore a surreal moment when he relates how one huge tear formed after hearing of the death of his friend and mentor Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club. He writes about this with amazement as if it’s going to be submerged in a pool of tears like Alice In Wonderland.
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