a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse - (2007)
E. E. Cummings
for medium voice and piano
a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse
Me whether it's president of the you were say
or a jennelman name misder finger isn't
important whether it's millions of other punks
or just a handful absolutely doesn't....
This text remains under copyright and is therefore not fully reproduced herein.
[ 3 pages, circa 1' 40" ]
E. E. Cummings
This text was published in the anthology, 1 x 1 [One Times One] (1944), and tells of those people so necessary to the workings of the consumer capitalist system -- the salesmen. Among composers who were salesman was American Charles Ives, who spent a career selling insurance. He and friend Julian Myrick formed Ives & Co., which later became Ives & Myrick, a successful insurance agency. In my youth, I too worked in business, and spent close to ten years for the electronics company, Hewlett-Packard, as a salesman in the days before and the beginnings of the personal computing market which is so mainstream today. (One would note that many other poets pursued their art while working in another field of endeavor, such as Stevens' work as a corporate lawyer.)
Therefore this text always amused me, since salesmen must make their "Excuse me," and as Cummings notes it is "immaterial" what is being sold, because the art of selling is in part the art of selling one's self, one's trust and one's persona. Therefore when Cummings makes his list of that which is sold, the list runs the gamut from "hate condoms education snakeoil vac / cuumcleaners terror strawberries democ /ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair." It is not the product, so much as the selling of which he tells a tale. So could we all.
Because he supported himself as a salesman, Ives' 1922 publication of his 114 Songs is noted on the publication page as simply published in Redding, Connecticut -- by Ives himself. A copy of this publication is among my library's little joys. And now to Cummings' view of salesmen.
Set for medium voice, this song is meant to be a jolly joke of a song, set in a music hall style. The repetitive bass line makes little note of the parallel fifths in the upper voices, except for their rhythmic relation as a gesture.
The light syncopation of the vocal line gives evidence to the Americana flavor of Cummings' expression and that sense of commerce which caused French ex-president Jacque Chirac to complain of the "Anglo-Saxon" cut-throat business style. Even so, the joke is that even France relies on salesmen to represent the manufacturers to sellers and sellers to manufacturers, and both the the general public. Ergo, I say, "Razzmatazz!" [... a common word would be ‘ambiguous language’. It also means a flashy action or display intended to bewilder, confuse, or deceive.]
The list which Cummings' generates to tell us of the wide range of products sold becomes much more serious, as it begins with "hate." Certainly the vendors of fear and hate belong to the world of the salesman, as much as if not more than any snake oil salesman of the smallest "honorable" business. Here the simple, measure long bass line breaks its pattern to underlie the parallel chords of the upper voices.
This score will be published in in Fifty-Five Songs, YR1550, in the coming months available from Yelton Rhodes Music, Los Angeles, California
