SONG OF THE WEEK – NOSTRADAMUS

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament starts this week.  I need to get my bracket filled out; and to psyche myself up, I picked Al Stewart’s “Nostradamus” as Song of the Week.

As you probably know, Nostradamus was a 16th Century Frenchman who is famous for publishing hundreds of quatrains in a book entitled Les Propheties (“The Prophecies”).  Nostradamus was born Michel de Nostredame (“Michael of Notre Dame’ – not to be confused with the Hunchback of Notre Dame, who was Quasimodo and not Michael) in 1503.  He initially worked as an apothecary and developed a reputation as a healer.  After his first wife and children died – presumably victims of the plague – he traveled throughout France and Italy, married a rich widow with whom he had six more children and developed an interest in the occult.

The occult was not looked upon as a good thing, especially by the Catholic Church, so to avoid persecution, the prophecies he wrote were intentionally obscure.  In the nearly 500 years since they were written his readers and the popular press have conjectured that he has accurately predicted such things as the London Fire of 1666, Napoleon, Hitler and World War II, the Kennedy assassinations, 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden, etc.

Who knows?  Maybe he did.  Most of his verses are simply too obscure to really know.

Nostradamus died in 1567 from complications of gout.

Skipping forward four centuries brings us to Al Stewart, who was born in Scotland in 1945 and was an influential figure in the British folk music revival of the 1960s.  He seemed to know everyone, perhaps because he was a host at the Les Cousins Folk Club in London where many soon-to-be-famous musicians got their start.  Paul Simon was his roommate for awhile and he knew Yoko Ono before she ever met John Lennon.  He reached that level of influence primarily because he was a fine musician and singer and an excellent songwriter.

His song writing is especially notable for its incorporation of literary and historic references.  For example, his best known song, “Year of the Cat,” mentions a morning from a Bogart movie and Peter Lorre contemplating a crime.  He wrote about the French revolution in “Charlotte Corday” and the escape of the last Shah of Iran during the Iranian Revolution in “Shah of Shahs.”  His “Sirens of Titan” is based on Kurt Vonnegut’s novel of the same name.

The historical bent to his writing is perhaps most obvious in Stewart’s 1973 album, Past, Present and Future.  In the liner notes, he states that he originally intended the album to have a song for each decade of the 20th Century.  It didn’t quite work out that way, but there are songs based on the life of Admiral Lord Fisher (“Old Admirals”); Warren G. Harding and his scandals (“Warren Harding”); Hitler’s purge of political opponents, known as “The Night of the Long Knives” (“The Last Day of June 1934”); the German defeat in Russia and Stalin’s subsequent gulags (“Roads to Moscow”) and British politics following the Second World War (“Post World War Two Blues”).

There was a major flaw in Al Stewart’s concept.  The 20th Century still had several decades to go in 1973.  He neatly solved that problem by finishing the album with “Nostradamus” – a look back at prophecies supposedly fulfilled and forward to the future events that may have been included in Nostradamus’s prophesies.

Stewart’s interpretations of those prophecies were based on the work of an English Scholar named Erika Cheetham, who published The Prophecies of Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow in 1965.  Many years ago, after hearing this song, I was initially quite impressed with Cheetham’s work.  I am not so impressed any more.  I won’t go into detail, but will simply say that her translation is not always accurate and her interpretations seem more geared toward selling books in the mid-1960s than really trying to understand what Nostradamus had written. (The same problems with trying to interpret the quatrains as applying to contemporary events may be seen in the images that are part of the YouTube video embedded below.)

One final comment and then I will quit.  This a long song – nearly 10 minutes.  There is a guitar break that is a good show of Stewart’s musicianship, but it could have been shortened.  The last two minutes or so are a semi-operatic vocalization (without words – so that the same as humming?) by a fine singer named Krysia Kocjan.  Perhaps that could have been shortened, too; though I think it gives the song a mystical quality that fits perfectly.

Now, on to basketball . . . .

Nostradamus
By Al Stewart

In the east the wind is blowing the boats across the sea
And their sails will fill the morning and their cries ring out to me

Oh, the more it changes, the more it stays the same
And the hand just re-arranges the players in the game

Oh, I had a dream
It seemed I stood alone
And the veil of all the years
Goes sinking from my eyes like a stone

A king shall fall and put to death by the English parliament shall be
Fire and plague to London come in the year of six and twenties three
An emperor of France shall rise who will be born near Italy
His rule cost his empire dear, Napoloron his name shall be

From Castile does Franco come and the Government driven out shall be
An English king seeks divorce, and from his throne cast down is he
One named Hister shall become a captain of Greater Germanie
No law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall be

Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me
Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me

In the new lands of America three brothers now shall come to power
Two alone are born to rule but all must die before their hour
Two great men yet brothers not make the north united stand
Its power be seen to grow, and fear possess the eastern lands

Three leagues from the gates of Rome a Pope named Pol is doomed to die
A great wall that divides a city at this time is cast aside
These are the signs I bring to you
to show you when the time is nigh

Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me

Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me

© AL STEWART

19 thoughts on “SONG OF THE WEEK – NOSTRADAMUS

  1. Well, we’ll always have Duke… Good old Nostradamus, he’s the only guy in the universe that proves there is such a thing as 20/20 foresight. The fault it appears is neither in ourselves nor our stars (nor our ISP or outdated software drivers, which I have long suspected) but is in our poor translation skills.

    • And I assume that by the other side you mean Wisconsin. I had no idea that Nostradamus was a Wisconsonian… uhh… Wisconsonite… hmmmm… Wisconsonthien? No, wait, I got it! Wisconsonant! But then, why does he use vowels, too? Or is it about the consonant accuracy of his predictions? But if that’s it, wouldn’t constant be the better word? But what if it’s a deliberate oraclic jumbulation of lingoistic expressem that scambles the snapsies of the, uh, brain! and preduces a kinda…
      Oh, never mind. Go Duke!

      • Well, Duke won, so we both called that one. But I for one can’t really take it as a victory, sort of a bad taste left over from some questionable officiating… Not so much fun when that happens. So it goes.

        • That’s what officials are for – officiating questionably. Fans are for questioning. Anyway, it was just a game. I think the kids had fun, and that is what counts.

  2. The whole phrenology by way of laundry incompetency tactic was a total misadventure due to stupidity on my part. I had to knuckle bump myself, Lenore just took one look at what I’d done, laughed, grabbed me by both ears and kissed me really hard. Said she liked big and stupid sometimes. Go figure. After I did the rap version of the old English sailor salute (knuckling the forehead) there was enough sparkly, flashing light to realize that I’d already filled out my bracket and I was stuck with what I have.

    So now I’m shifting over to arcane methods to direct outcomes in favor of my (remaining) bracket choices. I am starting with my version of psychokinetic manipulation, a home-brewed practice incorporating the mind-meld techniques of Crocodile Dundee and Spock with corporeal realignment energies involving lots of screaming at the TV.

    My SMU bracket is closed down except for Gonzaga in this round until the final four, but I have Duke there.

    I’ve got Kentucky, Maryland, Notre Dame, Kansas, Wisconsin (migration time for the Ducks), North Carolina, Georgia State, nobody, Villanova, Louisville, Oklahoma, Virginia, Duke, Georgetown, nobody, and Gonzaga.

    I am 25-7 at this point, may have omitted counting Maryland’s win in my first reported standings. Are you 26-6 or are we even? Next!

      • I don’t recommend it. Try the laundry thing – at least there’s the promise of a kiss there. Although if it turns out to lead to phrenology instead, well, there you are.

        • OK, so now that the 2nd or 3rd (however you want to count it) tournament round is over, I have 9 teams that made it to the Sweet 16. That is not great, but it is not bad for me. Clearly the most important game now is Kentucky and West Virginia on Thursday to see if Nostradamus was correct.

          • Nostradamus is batting better than I am. I split the Sweet 16 (8-8) so am at 33-15 to date.
            I have 8 teams left in the Sweet 16, 4 in the Elite 8, NOBODY from the West and Midwest in the Final Four (and therefore the Championship). In the East and South I do have Duke and Louisville in the FF, and Duke to take it all.
            I’m going to go listen to Madeleine Peyroux now.

          • West Virginia lost. Nostradamus has lost a prospective believer. Busted brackets are everywhere, the time of mourning is pervasive, and the Wildcats rule the Midwest. But not the East. Yet. I’m 36-20, and Duke is my last team standing in the Final Four. So it goes.

          • Ecclesiastes tells us that “the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.” Still, that is the way one should make picks for these basketball brackets. You would think Nostradamus would have known that.

            I went against Nostradamus and picked Kentucky. I have 5 teams left in the Elite Eight (Kentucky, Duke, Notre Dame, Wisconsin and Gonzaga), but only two – Kentucky and Duke – that I picked to reach the Final Four. I do have both of those winning, though, and playing for the championship – with Duke as the ultimate winner.

          • I just received a psychic message from Nostradamus – from the other side. I quote:

            “What part of ‘Aemathien’ did you not understand? Count the letters. Now count the letters in ‘Wisconsin.’ How could you look at that number of letters and come up with ‘West Virginia’? And ‘Ponant’? That clearly means THE West (opposite of Levant), and not West Virginia. Of the teams in the Final Four which came from the farthest West – and had the same number of letters as ‘Aemathien’? I don’t see how this could be made any more obvious.”

            Au temps du dueil que le felin monarque,
            Guerroyera le ieune Aemathien:
            Gaule bransler perecliter la barque,
            Tenter Phossens au Ponant entretien.

  3. I’m 11-5 after the first 16 games! I’ll do my hand jive victory dance and winner-winner-chicken-dinner chant while there’s still time. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I owe it all to my peerless translation of Nostradamus, rendered by a technique I call collandering, which strains the juice right out of it. Collandering is not to be confused with collating because collandering is confused enough. Here’s how it works:

    I take the original, run it through an online translator and render it into American, which is not to be confused with English because American is also confused enough. Then I re-render the results into German, send those results through a Macedonian translator – this stage of the process is called Macerating, or Greecing Up – and then force-strain that product through an English translator.

    The resulting pablum is glopped onto the top of a stump in the Oregon Cascades, garnished with a handful of small dog bones, pillow feathers, and toad jam. Don’t ask. I then carefully examine the resultant amoeba and poke at it with a small stick until the chakras in my spinal column begin to prefer not to be bent over and my eyes water and burn. When I stand up, sometime during the Popping of the Vertebrae and the sudden Bright Flash, but before the THUD, I can see it All.

    An alternate to the stick method, called the Crepe Maker, employs a Number 16 35 lb. Roustabout Tent-Stake Mallet. The resulting pancake is then held up next to the sun, revealing the portents within just before the optic nerve expires. I don’t use this method because the sun rarely shines in the winter here, and it eventually involves Laundry. I’ve been told by good authority I’m not good at Laundry. Did you know there is actually a cold water wash? But I digress.

    Today I pick W. VA, Maryland, Wichita St., Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon – GO DUCKS! – Northern Iowa, Louisville – GO LOUIS! – Providence, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Virginia, Duke, St. Johns, Iowa, and Gonzaga.

    • Your previous comment interpreting Nostradamus illustrates some of the problems that we in the 21st Century face when trying to make sense of this seer. For instance, back in the 16th Century did folks consider Macedonians to be more Hellenic or Slavic. If Hellenic, you may be on your way to a good bracket. If Slavic, who knows?

      Anyway, I am 12-4 after the first day. Most of my choices were made through muscle testing and other techniques from kinesiology and similar pseudosciences. For today, I have picked: West Virginia, Maryland, Wichita State, Kansas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma State (sorry, Oregon tested weak), Northern Iowa, Louisville, Providence, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Virginia, Duke, San Diego State, Iowa and Gonzaga.

      So it seems that muscle testing gives a result pretty close to your procedurfe – and it does not involve doing laundry.

      • St. Johns vs San Diego State and the Ducks are our difference makers then. Here we go. Maybe I’ll get back to even with you, although invoking the ephemera of kinesiology does give you an advantage. I think I’ll go do a load of laundry. Delicates, I think, because the result will give me enough knuckle bumps on my head to take an accurate phrenology reading for the next round.

        • I see that your laundry-based approach has proved just as effective as kinesiology in making predictions. Now we are getting to the point in the tournament at which muscle testing has proven somewhat ineffective in the past. We will see what happens this year as that approach has left me the following picks for the upcoming round:

          Kentucky, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Kansas, Wisconsin, Arkansas, nobody (it was once Baylor), Arizona, Duke, Utah, nobody again (it was SMU),Gonzaga, Villanova, N. Iowa, still another nobody (formerly Providence) and Michigan State.

  4. You are proving to be a superb discographer, Louis. And once in awhile the songs and/or artists you’ve chosen evoke the past in poignant ways here.

    It’s a wonder how deeply embedded in memory music becomes. In 1979 and 1980 I found myself completely unmoored from what I had thought was the certain ground of my life. I became homeless, and while living on the beach in southern Oregon I remember hearing a radio playing Al Stewart’s “Time Passages” in the late night, drifting down the beach to where I lay next to the embers of my campfire under my sole possession, a wool blanket I’d found in a dumpster. He caught it all, perfectly. Now I can say that I’m so very glad there wasn’t a ticket available on the last train home in that particular night, but I do recall the anguish felt then, realizing there wasn’t one and yet desiring against all reason that there were.

    Good luck with your bracket, BTW. Your picks?

    “It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
    All round the day was goin’ down slow
    Night like a river beginning to flow
    I felt the beat of my mind go
    Drifting into time passages
    Years go falling in the fading light
    Time passages
    Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight…”

    “Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
    The years run too short and the days too fast
    The things you lean on, are the things that don’t last
    Well it’s just now and then, my line gets cast into these
    Time passages
    There’s something back here that you left behind
    Oh, time passages
    Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight…”

    “Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
    Don’t know why you should feel
    That there’s something to learn
    It’s just a game that you play…”

    “Well the picture is changing, now you’re part of a crowd
    They’re laughing at something, and the music’s loud
    A girl comes towards you, you once used to know
    You reach out your hand, but you’re all alone…
    in these Time passages
    I know you’re in there, you’re just out of sight
    Oh, time passages
    Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight…”
    Al Stewart – Time Passages, 1978

    • I would like to make an appropriate reply to your excellent comment, but I think I need to say something more about Nostradamus’s predictions. In preparing to make basketball bracket selections I came across Quatrain 58 in Century 10, which reads:

      Au temps du dueil que le felin monarque,
      Guerroyera le ieune Aemathien:
      Gaule bransler perecliter la barque,
      Tenter Phossens au Ponant entretien.

      I think this is the most clear thing Nostradamus ever wrote about this year’s NCAA tournament. Roughly translated, it says:

      “It is at the time of mourning when the feline monarch makes war against the young Aemathien: Gaul shutters causing danger to the ship and the Phossens seek to interview Ponant.”

      I could take time to explain some of the more obscure references, but I don’t think that is necessary. It would be hard to see how Nostradamus could say more clearly that the No. 1 ranked Kentucky Wildcats (the “feline monarch”) will lose to West Virginia in the Sweet 16 round, thereby busting everyone’s brackets (a “time of mourning”).

      I find that hard to believe, but if it happens I will certainly become a believer in Mr. Nostradamus’s prophetic abilities.

      • OK, so my French isn’t that good, but I’ve got this!

        “At the time of mourning cats rule,
        Young Macedonian language is to go to war,
        Gaul to get rid of the bark,
        Try interview Phossens Ponant.”

        Obviously the Kentucky Wildcats are going to be responsible for a lot of mourning.

        William and Mary, home of the first Greek (Macedonian) fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, will be spittin’ mad after the Tribe loses to the Tulsa Hurricane in the first round of the NIT. In retaliation, W&M will use their standing in the secret societies to declare the Oklahoma Presbyterian campus an open, 24/7 power-party zone. Tulsa later wishes it had been nuked instead.

        Persons of French descent who attend the tournament games this year will no longer bark, they will just flick their teeth at everybody more. But they will continue to meewww.

        Phossens is obviously a too-much-wine, mush-mouth version of the Phoenicians of Marseilles and Ponant is equally obviously the Atlantic 10. So obviously it is sooo obvious that we’re in sail – which if it’s an epic one will involve a fleece of some sort.

        So we need to ask the VCU Moutons (Rams) of the Atlantic 10 who they think is going win.

        Unfortunately the word “try” is the operative word here. They will ultimately tell us to butt out and then butt us out, we will not have the answer, we will have to speculate with no solid basis available to us from our usual speculative, general, and cryptic trusted and informed source, and trust to luck.

        Good Luck!

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