A Waltz & Ramble with Matilda & Tom

It was a viewing of the 1959 movie On the Beach the other evening that set me on a Waltzing Matilda ramble. The old song features frequently in the movie's soundtrack, presumably because the film adaptation of Nevil Shute's famous novel On the Beach is set around Melborne, Australia. Time: the aftermath of a nuclear World War III, in 1964, just 5 years after the movie's release. In 2013 we might tend to feel quite smug that such a disaster was averted, and has been kept at arm's length ever since. A 2006 re-interpretation of the novel, made for TV, might wipe out any feelings of smugness though - haven't seen that version yet.



When the movie was first released the fear and possibility of a nuclear conflagration was very much alive in people's minds, the film would have packed far more of an uneasily sharp edge, back then. In black and white, it's a low key affair, considering the subject matter. Nevil Shute (more about him in an archived post HERE) projected that legendary "stiff upper lip" style well, and though he and the movie's director, Stanley Kramer disagreed about certain aspects of the adaptation, the movie in general manages to retain the general atmosphere of the novel. There's no mass paranoia, just a quiet and rather eerie acceptance of the situation, with a determination to carry on for as long as feasible. Waltzing Matilda, with its air of serene melancholy fits right in, even though the song was really written about an itinerant worker who steals a sheep, and chooses to commit suicide rather than being caught by the police - far cry from nuclear annihilation!

All through the movie I kept remembering another song in which the Waltzing Matilda melody is used....Tom Waits' Tom Traubert's Blues. The song became popular in the UK in the 1970s after Rod Stewart sang a version of it - but his doesn't pack nearly the same punch of the original, which is the only song of Tom Waits that I truly enjoy. Oddly, my husband hadn't ever heard it before, it must have tanked on the US market. If I were making an apocalyptic movie in 2013 I'd choose Tom Waits' song as suitable accompaniment to (gods forbid, but they probably won't) the last days of humanity on Earth.

Tom Traubert's Blues lends itself to a variety of interpretations, but according to Waits it was written about "a friend of a friend who had died in prison", with references to alcoholism, lost love, and a general feel the "skid row" lifestyle. I used to think the song was about a soldier in the Vietnam war. The lyrics are capable of bending and blending themselves to encourage a variety of interpretations.



Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did
I got what I paid for now
See you tomorrow; hey, Frank, can I borrow
A couple of bucks from you to go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda?
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me

I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And I'm tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English and everything's broken
And my Stacy's are soaking wet to go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me

Now the dogs are barking
And the taxi cabs parking
A lot they can do for me
I begged you to stab me
You tore my shirt open
And I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's, I staggered
You buried the dagger
In your silhouette window light to go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me

Now I've lost my St Christopher now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinamen and the cold-blooded signs
And the girls down by the striptease shows go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me

No, I don't want your sympathy
The fugitives say that the streets aren't for dreaming now
Manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories
They want a piece of the action anyhow, go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me

And you can ask any sailor and the keys from the jailer
And the old men in wheelchairs know
That Matilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred
And she follows wherever you may go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on
An old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers
The night watchman flame keepers
And goodnight, Matilda, too.



Tom Waits is one of nature's true oddballs. I did a post about his natal chart in 2009 - extract below:
Tom Waits, born 7 December 1949 at 7:25 am in Pomona, California. (Astrodatabank).
This singer, songwriter, composer and occasional actor doesn't immediately strike me as a Sun/Mercury Sagittarian with Sagittarius rising. His demeanor, his broken-down, hard-lived-in crackly voice, and the unrelenting melancholia seeping through his songs seems far too downbeat for bright and breezy, extravagant Sagittarius.





Neptune (creativity) sextile Sun is a helpful link for a song writer/composer. Jupiter, his Sun's ruler is in Aquarius conjoined with Venus, planet of the arts . Perhaps an Aquarian penchant for the unusual and unexpected is playing into the picture via his stage persona. Aquarius can be sensed in some of his more socially concerned lyrics.

Mars conjunct Saturn (a difficult combination of two planets often seen as having negative connotations) in Virgo form a challenging square (90*) aspect to Tom's natal Mercury, planet of communication. This Mars/Saturn link could well account for his draw towards the downbeat of life. His natal Moon in sensitive, moody Cancer just five degrees from Uranus, planet of the unexpected and rebellious echoes the peculiarly dismal impression Tom Waits projects.

The best way I can think of to describe Tom Waits' singing, to anybody who hasn't heard it, is "like the sadder, darker side of Louis Armstrong". Unexpected!

Involuntary Prophets ?

Mentioning James Michener and Nevil Shute yesterday called to mind a post of mine from 2 years ago. (My oh my, 2 years! Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself?) I'm re-posting a slightly adjusted version,'cos I still find the subject intriguing.



ACCIDENTAL PROPHETS(First posted 10 December 2006).

James Michener seemed to have amazing foresight. Several of his novels featuring a particular country, in depth, were each followed some years later by the same countries coming into prominence on the world stage. In a long interview here: , he said

"I think that some of us have a deep seated sensitive antennae about what is going to happen. And somebody the other day, a fine professor, made an introduction of me, which I had not thought about, but which I had thought about a great deal since. At that time, in the world, there were about a half dozen trouble spots: the Near East, the Jewish-Arab relationships, South Africa, revolution in Poland, the emergence of Japan, the absorption in the United States of two outlying territories like Hawaii and Alaska and four or five other things. And he pointed out that I had written full-length books about all these areas before they came into prominence. And I did! There they are. Look at the dates. Now this cannot be because I was exceptionally brilliant. I am not brilliant. I'm something else. I don't know what the word would be, but it isn't brilliant."

Nevil Shute, author of one of my favourite books "A Town Like Alice", wrote a couple of novels which later seemed to have been prophetic. "No Highway" published in 1948 dealt with what might happen due to metal fatigue in aircraft. His ideas came close to fact with the Comet disasters of the 1950s. Another novel,"What Happened to the Corbetts" also published as "Ordeal" was written just before the start of WorldWar2. It tells how badly aerial bombing affected a town similar to Southampton, in the south of England, and how the bombing of civilians became a major part of the war. British people of a certain age will have no trouble recognising this as fact! His novel "On the Beach", a story of the world ending as a result of the explosion of atomic bombs, thankfully has not yet proved prophetic. It could still be "pending" however, should people forget the warning bells it rang! Shute also touched on a slightly supernatural theme in a novel called "Round the Bend" in which an aircraft mechanic becomes the mystical leader of a religious movement.

Seeing a slight correspondence between Michener and Shute, I searched around for other instances of novels which, without purporting to be science fiction, portray events which later came to pass in real life.

American author Morgan Robertson produced an early example in his story "Futility". He told of a ship called Titan which sank in a way eerily similar to The Titanic, 14 years later. When this book was written there were no ships of such enormous size being built. Robertson also appeared to be crystal-gazing when he later(1914) wrote a book called "Beyond the Spectrum". In this book, he described a war in the future, fought using aircraft which dropped "sun bombs" on their targets. These were powerful enough for a single bomb to destroy a city. When this book was written, aeroplanes were small, flimsy, and unreliable machines capable of carrying one person. Nuclear weapons were still unimagined. Robertson's war began in the month of December, as did the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the USA into WW2.

Michener was born 1907, Shute 1899 and Robertson 1861.

There are, of course, common sense explanations for the authors' apparent ability to see into the future, these men were not deliberately trying to predict events, as far as we know.

Michener didn't foresee actual events, but was drawn or inspired to write about countries which later came to prominence for one reason or another. He was widely travelled, highly intelligent, politically minded and had lived in all the countries he wrote about. Common sense would say that he was "putting two and two together" with a bit of Aquarian intuition.

Shute was a skilled aeronautical engineer as well as novelist. He had technical knowledge more than sufficient to foresee possible outcomes where the area of his expertise was involved. "An accident waiting to happen", in the case of metal fatigue, and some extrapolation of known facts in the case of aerial warfare ?

Robertson was the son of a ship's captain and spent some time as a cabin boy himself, so the sea was "in his blood", he had no doubt heard some tall tales from the old salts he must have encountered. These, with a little embroidery, might have helped him to invent his ship Titan. His "Beyond the Spectrum" published in 1914 is harder to explain.

Those are explanations for the skeptics. Someone more open-minded, and sensitive to peculiar coincidences like these, might see a different explanation.

Novelists and short story writers continually tap into vast resources of imagination. For hours at a time, on a regular basis, their minds are "elsewhere", concentrating outside of the mundane. Isn't this akin to meditation? Could it be that as they concentrate so intently in realms of the imaginary, coloured with knowledge stored in their memory banks, they somehow inadvertently seep through a time barrier or into another dimension?

Any correspondences in the natal charts of these three writers?

Morgan Robertson born 30 September 1861 Oswego, New York
Nevil Shute born 17 January 1899, Ealing, England
James Michener born 3 February 1907, New York

1. All 3 writers have Sun and Mercury in the same sign (not uncommon.)

2. In Robertson's case Neptune opposes Sun. Shute and Michener both have Neptune and Sun inconjunct(quincunx).

So....Neptune's aspects to the Sun may well be significant, especially as Mercury (writers' planet) shares the same sign as Sun in the three charts.

More detail:
Robertson: Sun at 7 Libra/Neptune at 00Aries (Aries Point) opposition
Shute: Sun at 27 Capricorn/Neptune at 22 Gemini- inconjunct (quincunx)
Michener: Sun at 14 Aquarius/Neptune at 10 Cancer-inconjunct(quincunx)

Neptune represents imagination and mysticism. Maybe the push-pull of an opposition, or friction from a quincunx aspect Neptune/Sun can push aside the "veil" of present reality. When individuals with such aspects engage in activities needing acute and long-term concentration, it could be that their visions become more than simple imagination. An interesting subject for research.

Morgan Robertson, the writer with Sun and Neptune in opposition, dispayed the most surprising ability of the three authors, but the other two do exhibit lesser, or more explainable, examples though still remarkable.

Perhaps the best explanation, for now, is that intense concentration of a mind with certain Neptune/Sun energies in-built, and knowledge in specific fields, gained from experience, can result in reasonably accurate prognostication. It sounds reasonable enough to me!