By The Landlord
“There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
“It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.” – Guy de Maupassant
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.” – Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Ding dong! Knock knock. Who, indeed, is there? It all might begin with a doorbell, or a gentle rat-a-tat, a rapping or banging, and whether casual or gentle, to frantic, urgent or violent, we, like a startled cat, or a barking dog, might have expected nothing or no one until that very moment, but suddenly experience the triggering of ancient flight-or-fight instincts from that surprise visit.
The unexpected encounter or chance meeting could also be in another place, in a bar, or a hotel, on a road, or public transport. It might begin as casual, polite, relaxed, but then become flirtatious, sexual, or aggressive, or flit between any of those.
But wherever the caller, the visitor or the stranger, and however it starts, and to whoever it happens, this is an event of drama, a classic plot trigger a pivotal moment, and for the purposes of encounters at the door, or within our own Bar, a profound lyrical line in a key moment or entire narrative of a song, where they, and the person they encounter, may bring about something new to each other, some news good or bad, a change in atmosphere, mood and emotion, and perspective that rings, and stirs change.
This week then it’s all about songs that capture that moment of a surprise encounter, wherever it is, doorstep or elsewhere, and wherever it might lead – to romance, tragedy, comedy, death, or new life. Perhaps it is profoundly life-changing, or brief, and fleeting.
“History is often the tale of small moments – chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence – that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that triggers a hurricane,” says the American novelist Scott Anderson.
So who could it be, suddenly coming into our lives? Is it perhaps someone who knows more than we realise, someone who will set off a chain of events? Could it be a friendly face, or sinister figure? Might it be someone like the mysterious Inspector Goole, who talks about a tragic death as he visits the well-off Birling family, stoking many a mysterious and sinister fire into the lives of all in J.B. Priestley's famous play, An Inspector Calls?
Or could it be a troop of voracious, pushy dwarves and a tall wizard, who one by one disturb the comfortable life and cozy home of Bilbo Baggins of the Shire at the beginning of The Hobbit, to spark a series of fantastical adventures? Or could it be a scruffy but stylishly foppish Johnny Marr, guitar in hand, coming to deliver inspiration, to stir up the depressed talents of mopey, grumpy Stephen Patrick Morrissey at number 384 Kings Road, Stretford, Manchester one day in May 1982 and begin an short, but extraordinary writing partnership?
384 Kings Road, Stretford, where Johnny Marr paid a chance visit to Morrissey – his bedroom front right
A few years earlier, a 17-year-old Morrissey in the same bedroom, waiting for someone to visit, wearing a Ramones Gabba Gabba Hey T-shirt
Music’s history turns on so many chance meetings. How might pop music sound now had Jerry Leiber not met Mike Stoller, Hal David not met Burt Bacharach, Carole King put together with Gerry Goffin, Eddie and Brian Holland not ended up in a room with Lamont Dozier, Mick Jagger not met Keith Richards and ended up sharing a house with him to listen to blues and jazz through the winter of 1963, or indeed McCartney not met Lennon? Music is all about chance encounters, people and elements put together. It’s the very definition of creativity.
The eccentric pianist Glenn Gould didn’t rate the Beatles, but had a novel way of describing their work: “Theirs [the Beatles] is a happy, cocky, belligerently resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism... In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulged amateurishness of the musical material, though closely rivalled by the indifference of the performing style, is actually surpassed only by the ineptitude of the studio production method. Strawberry Fields suggests a chance encounter at a mountain wedding between Claudio Monteverdi and a jug band.” How very fortuitous.
But away from the home or workplace trains are fantastic venues for the profound and surprise meeting, and none more than the beautiful, low-key, stiff upper lip tragedy of Brief Encounter, where an affair begins with Celia Johnson getting a bit of grit in her eye, with doctor Trevor Howard coming to her aid. Let’s visit it again:
There is also the brilliantly written scene where Janet Leigh meets Frank Sinatra on the train in The Manchurian candidate, but not all train chance encounters are romantic. Chance encounters are also something to be wary of. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 Strangers On A Train, a promising young tennis player ends up chatting to a charming, but disarming psychopath. The psychopath talks about the theoretical scenario that because they each want to "get rid" of someone, they should "exchange" murders, and that way neither will be caught. The psychopath commits the first murder, then tries to force the tennis player to complete the bargain.
The brilliant Polish film-maker Krzysztof Kieślowski, known for his Dekalog, The Double Life of Veronique and the Three Colors trilogy has also knocked on our door, and sums up the attraction of surprise encounters both in life, and film: “I like chance meetings – life is full of them. Everyday, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know. At this moment, in this cafe, we're sitting next to strangers. Everyone will get up, leave, and go on their own way. And they'll never meet again. And if they do, they won't realise that it's not for the first time.”
Surprise meetings aren’t always down to chance, according to one character in Haruki Murkami’s book Kafka on the Shore: “Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
Writer and film-maker Simon Pegg has also randomly turned up to express how the sheer chance element of meeting people can make you quite anxious on what we might be missing: “If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love affairs are lost to chance?”
Arthur Koestler is also here, and turns this topic to a deeper level: "Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which-miraculously, it seems-merge into a significant event. It provides the neatest paradigm of the bisociation of previously separate contexts, engineered by fate. Coincidences are puns of destiny. In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot; in the coincidental happening, two strings of events are knitted together by invisible hands."
Accidental tourist: David Bowie as The Man Who Fell To Earth
When it comes to encounters by visitors from further afield, the most striking are not even of this world, but from outer space. But how might we perceive them, and they perceive us. There is a big wide open choice of songs, films, and books on this scenario. How might they by chance meet up. Could they look like David Bowie in THe Man Who Fell To Earth, or semi-insect like figures in the South African District 9? Or might they look like huge spindly hands and communicate with us via inky squiggles such as in the circular time-themed film, Arrival?
Arrival …
Two rather out-there writers have also come knocking at the Song Bar door this week to give their perspective on alien visits.
"After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager,’” says William S. Burroughs.
"If an alien visitor were to hover a few hundred yards above the planet, it could be forgiven for thinking that cars were the dominant life form, and that human beings were a kind of ambulatory fuel cell: injected when the car wished to move off, and ejected when they were spent,” adds Heathcote Williams.
But whether the ultimate surprise visitors resemble E.T., giant robots, or little green men, perhaps it’s time to wrap up the intro on a musical note. Steven Spielberg’s 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind is tame by comparison to so many alien visit films that have since come out, somehow still resonates with a memorable tune. In that final scene which is also surely an enormous advertising campaign for Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses as the bright spaceship lands, is all about a musical communication system. In begins with a simple five-note melody …
So then, it’s now time to add more close encounters to make some more music. Knocking at the manager’s door and now taking pride of place behind the beer pumps, I’m delighted to welcome back this week’s guest guru, the ever resourceful and sociable Suzi! Place your songs about chance meetings, surprise encounters and the like in comments below in time for last orders at 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published next week. You never know you you might meet next, or who is at the door …
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