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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Marvin 2: On Contradiction

In 1983, our hero told Nelson George, "No conflicts are resolved."

But Marvin's life isn't divided at all. The real problem is that it includes everything -- without resolution. Cocaine & prayer & pussy & taxes & Berry & Anna & music w/out writing it & lyrics & hired songwriters & doowop & funk & jazz & soul & interplanetary anger & shootdowns off of the streets. You cannot hear Marvin as segments of opposites. You have to hear all of it at once.

Take on these three, as if they were all done by the same person:

• Marvin Gaye, "You're the Man"
• Marvin Gaye, "Sanctified Lady"
• Marvin Gaye, "Funky Space Reincarnation"

Ain't no resolution here. That's all.

Marvin 1 -- Starting w/ No Destination

Just finished David Ritz's book abt Marvin Gaye, Divided Life. Someone had to tell the story this way: a starbio recipe for Teacake. It's a tasty story. There are morsels of source material, special selections from what must be hour after hour of rolling tape conversation b/t the author and his hero.

But there has to be a another way, too.*

So we'll be waiting on the mail for Mercy, Mercy Me: the Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye by Michael Eric Dyson, hoping that he's found a way to write about someone whose records are greater than the sum of his contradictions.

In the mean time, I'll be starting a string of posts that exploit Marvin's contradictions without trying to resolve them into a narrative. It's 'cause Marvin's all over the place and cannot be confined. All I'll do is leave a small pile of blue stones for him.

Let me drop the first stone, then. Not sure Marvin's on the track, but its in the pile for the reals.

• The Moonglows, "The Ten Commandments of Love"

So come to me when I am lonely
Kiss me when you hold me tight
Treat me sweet and gentle
When we say good night
Oh, how happy we will be if we keep the ten commandments of love

* Just look at John Szwed's book abt Sun Ra, Space is the Place, for another way to cook up a story about a crazy man.

NB: New thread dedicated to capturing Marvin's reach (which is all over the place at once).

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