J. O'Barr's The Crow: "Borrowings" from Catholic Boy

Ran into this while on CatholicBoy.com while I was at it, interesting morning reading that felt worth sharing.

I don’t want this blog to have too many of my personal feelings on things to be honest, but this is something that has the capacity to be pretty controversial, I wanted to clarify my own intent on sharing. Honestly, I love The Crow as well, though not as much as I love Jim. This is one of those situations where my impulse is to look to the original author to see their feeling on it. CB.com has always been as trustworthy and unofficially official as one can get online with Jim, so when they say “Carroll says he’s a little flattered, and at most he would like a credit in the book”, I believe them. It seems a very Jim sentiment. I feel something I learned from reading Jim’s work is that when questioning if a violation has taken place, giving that person’s feelings on it undivided attention first should be the top priority. (It’s actually one of the few misgivings I have on the film The Basketball Dairies, that they didn’t seem to do more of that.)

Under that light, the personal feeling I have from it is sort of an author-as-fan giving a referential wink to an audience through the pages that only those who are also fans would give, though tainted and bittersweet because of the lack of crediting as he managed to do for others.

For those who don’t want to go offsite, I’m posting the article (presumably written by Cassie Carter) in a read-more below:

Posted on April 6, 2013 with 1 note

Plays: 2

The Jim Carroll Band - Wicked Gravity

This is… I have a hard time picking favorite songs, but this just might be my personal favorite TJCB track. Lyrics are courtesy CatholicBoy.com, which is always a great place to go for Jim stuff.

The gravity here is just sick for revenge
It’s like my lungs are filled with chains…
The sky seems so low,
It hasn’t moved this slow
Since the virgins went dancing for the rain

You know the stars in the night
They’re like the holes in the cave
Like the ceiling of a bombed-out church
But gravity blocks my screams
It’s like an enemy’s dreams
My guardians quit
They quit before they started their search

I want a world without gravity
It could be just what I need
I’d watch the stars move close
I’d watch the earth recede

I wanna drift above the borders against my will
I wanna sleep where the angels don’t pass
But now my lips are blue
Gravity does it to you
It’s like they’re pressed against a mirrored glass

I want my will and capability to meet inside the region
Where this gravity don’t mean a thing
It’s where the angels break through…
It’s where they bring it to you
It’s where silence can teach me to sing

I want a world without gravity
It could be just what I need
I’d watch the stars move close
I’d watch the earth recede

I wanna lay beneath these sheets and never turn blue
I wanna hold you, hold you tight but never touch
I want some pure, pure white; hey, we can nod all night
We can do it without thinking too much

I want the dilettantes and parvenues to choke on my wrists
They think the pearls I wear are pills
I want their gravity to shatter… but it really doesn’t matter
I got something in my eye that kills!

I want a world without gravity
It could be just what I need
I’d watch the stars move close
I’d watch the earth recede

Wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked gravity…