"All the World Is Green"
'Blood Money,' 2002
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An old girlfriend of mine hated "All The World Is Green." I don't think she had any other Tom Waits opinions; I don't think we even spent much time listening to Tom Waits. But she loathed this one song.
Even as I disagree completely, I can kind of see her point. Though ostensibly a waltz - a dance song - it lurches queasily, the marimba and low horn give it a kind of nightmare cabaret feel. It sounds like what the Titanic band might as the ship goes down.
"All the World Is Green" came from a play. Specifically Tom's latest Robert Wilson collaboration, Woyzeck, which became Tom's album Blood Money. Though both it and Alice, his other Wilson soundtrack-turned-album, were released on the same day, the Blood Money songs were new whereas the Alice tunes, as we saw with the title track, were a decade old. Here's how Tom described the difference between the two:
I guess Alice is probably more metaphysical or something, maybe more water, more feminine, maybe. It's like taking the pill. For me at least, you know, or a mushroom or something. And it kind of takes you on a little trip, something like that. Which I like. I guess Blood Money's more earthbound, more carnival, more the slaving meat-wheel that we're all on. More earthbound, yeah. More blood, more earth. So maybe one's a little more dream, one's a little nightmare maybe.
That last bit I think explains why this song fits better onto Blood Money, even though it’s a ballad like so many of the Alice songs, and maybe why my old girlfriend didn't like it too. So much of Blood Money is loud and abrasive. "All The World Is Green" is the opposite: quiet, pretty, tender. But it still feels a bit like a nightmare.
Postscript: In some further installment I'll delve further into Woyzeck, about which I know next to nothing. But if you want a glimpse at how "All the World Is Green" fit into the play, here's a description from Corinne Kessel's book The Words and Music of Tom Waits. Takeaway: It was a duet!
The powerful duet between the characters Woyzeck and Marie in “All the World Is Green” (Blood Money) depicts the undying love and fragile sanity of Woyzeck and the scorned guilt of his unfaithful wife, Marie. Woyzeck professes his love for his beautiful wife, Marie, but his deep-rooted jealousy surfaces throughout the song, along with his search for dignity, both of which come with unthinkable costs. Marie accepts responsibility for her wrongdoings but looks to Woyzeck for understanding and compassion as “The questions begs the answer / Can you forgive me somehow?” As a soldier, Woyzeck was a transient who moved with the military and was a victim of pharmacological and psychological abuse from his commanding officers, as well as being tortured by his flirtatious and unfaithful wife. All he wishes is to subdue his inner demons and turn back time to a time when everything was seemingly lovely; however, his madness foreshadows his actions with the words “It’s a love you’d kill for” and “The dew will settle on our grave.”
I saw Woyzeck at BAM. It was one of Wilson’s shorter works (90 minutes?) from the Buchner play about a military man who goes under cruel experiments and becomes a killer. The original was a hyperealist play but would become one of a handful of works that inspired German Expressionism. True inheritors of Buchner include Kroetz, whose choppy, episodic play Farmyard is brutal.
I enjoyed the Wilson-Waits Woyzeck but much prefer The Black Rider.
The night I saw it, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Jack Black were seated in front of me. As Black and I were dressed the same (black with black leather coat), and were of similar weight and beard, we exchanged an all-knowing nod at each other.
I don't understand the hatred. This is one of my favorite Waits song.