Marvin 3: Do You Know the Meaning of Being Sanctified?

Almost as an afterthought, Marvin throws down the pop quiz @ the end of "Let's Get It On." We find that quiz @ the end of the first track on a slab that veers off into the deep blue every track. Since the question comes at the beginning, we think all of those blue tracks that follow are the answer, and that Marvin's not kidding us.

Marvin's got four albums too big to contain themselves: What's Going On, Let's Get It On, I Want You, and Here, My Dear. There are days when we find In Our Lifetime and Midnight Love in that crate, too. Each one of them is so high you can't get over it & so low you can't get under it. In pieces and in their total, they are each their own hunk of the tower of babel.

And all of 'em answer after answer to the quiz that's the all about of Marvin: "Do you know the meaning of being sanctified?"

Carpetbagging biographers leap out of the cut to take advantage of the facts of his tawdry life, punishing him for not living like a saint, and then sanctify him as a martyr to this or that. It's like that pitcher of him as a ghost we throw up on the head of this post. He's like brovah Nas dead hip hop in that one. It's the wrong way, the wrong way. When stare at him in this fallen condition, it just lives up to the masochism Marvin lived for in the first place.

The first thing to do when trying to come up w/ the answer to Marvin's quiz is undo yourself from the life, undo yourself from the street, undo yourself from the club, even undo ourself from the game. There's too much of that in every other place you look. Marvin's work makes better sense when you go there.

Then you gotta put on the headset. You'll hear the answer Marvin's got to offer, 'cause he offers it again and again. Like when he says "My body wants it," and says "Help me," in the same overdubbed breath.

Or this one, where he's trying to make math in "Just to Keep You Satisfied,"

Though the many happy times we had
Can never really outweigh the bad
Oh I'll never love nobody like I loved you baby

He keeps it up w/ the scales 'til he gets to this question, which is just another version of the quiz we been riffing on here:

How many hearts, baby...
Have felt their world stand still

Millions never, they never never
And millions never will baby
They never will.

And after he counts up to the millions who will never see what he knows to be salvation, he finally tells us the formula.

Oh, If I should die tonight
Oh baby, though it be far before my time
I won't die blue, sugar yeah
'Cause I've known you.

The all about it. The what we've been looking for. "I won't die blue." The what it means to be sanctified. Jyeah.

In light of that clear unnastanding, here's a clip of sanctified bullets:

• Marvin Gaye, "Let's Get It On"
• Marvin Gaye, "Please Stay"
  
• Marvin Gaye, "If I Should Die Tonight"
• Marvin Gaye, "You Sure Love to Ball"
• Marvin Gaye, "Just to Keep You Satisfied"

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