andymorley's pomes | ADVICE TO NEWLY-WEDS

(see below for art credits)

A wedding day, Though blithe and gay, Sometimes must have a price to pay... By the gate, A little late, An uninvited guest may wait... Sweaty Betty, Liked confetti, Made her feel all moist and wetty, Prowling round The graveyard ground Carefully not to be found... People saw A single lady, Middle aged but nothing shady, Never guessed, Dressed in her best, What they would learn if she confessed... Those she watched wed, Then went to bed, Saw awful things inside their heads... A cloying smell, The reeks of hell, For Betty came to bed as well. A Succubus Cum Incubus, Never one to make a fuss Whatever gender, On a bender, Wedding nights were her agenda... The groom she sucked, Up through her duct, His todger and his soul she plucked, The bride with lust, She'd fill and thrust, Until like a balloon she bust. Then next day morn, The awful dawn, Would find two corpses all forlorn Not having mated They were fated Never to be consummated. So if you marry, Never tarry, Don't wait for any threshold carry... Never care, Just do it there, Lest Betty come to take her share. Round the back. Or in a shack, Or lying on a plastic mac, But don't delay, In making hay, Or Betty might just come to stay... Andy Morley - poem written March 18th 2004

Sweaty Betty... a kind of transgendered night-time demon with sexually aggressive tendencies... And some important advice to newly-weds on how to avoid her attentions...

But first the credits for the art... The header and sidebar are made up of images taken from a magnificent work by Cornelis Van Haarlem (1562-1638) called The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis. ( 1593, Oil on canvas, Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem)

The digitised image is sampled here by kind permission of The Art Renewal Centre, which is a remarkable resource on the Internet, just as the work in question is a remarkable painting. I'd also like to say at the outset that my approach to this depiction of an assembly of gods welcoming a mortal is essentially a sacrilegious one. The gods are merely the idealisation of human form, as indeed are most characters in literary fiction. And in this painting, they most definitely wear a human guise. So my interpretation of it is based on the assumption that it's an aspirational view of the human condition.

It is of a Wedding that is verging on a Bacchanalian orgy. Weddings are strange and fraught affairs, where the private world of sexual relations between a couple is formalised and paraded, although in a stylised way, with symbolic gestures centring on such emblems of sexuality as the bride's garter. The painting by Cornelis takes this rather lugubrious aspect of the wedding ceremony and pushes it all the way to its limits and beyond, bringing it to a place that is far from lugubrious, strangely beautiful and is a celebration of human (see comment above) sexuality which one can identify with instantly as an abstraction of the human experience but which distils it in a way that is completely and utterly unique. And no, I haven't personally participated in anything quite like the particular event that he depicts.

The footer image, which follows below, is displayed courtesy of Sheldon Brown. I like this photograph which to me, encapsulates the stability and normality of a couple who have negotiated all the pitfalls that lie on the route to marriage, and continue their journey through life on the wonderfully eccentric but also very appropriate vehicle of a tandem bicycle. (Shades of Daisy Daisy)

And yet... this photograph also has a hint of otherness about it which complements the poem. See how the wind that blows her veil appears as if it were no natural wind... A photographer's contrivance to allow her face to be seen..? Or is it..? What might seem clichéd composition in another such photograph works strangely well here. Likewise the period costume with trousers tucked into red socks, and the modern bicycle handlebars. Somehow, these little touches which in theory might pull in different directions actually all conspire to create an effect which is... unique and special. Note also the bride's bare left leg and garter. It is an example of that formalised sexuality of the wedding ceremony which in this instance complements well her evident innocence and respectability.

This second image makes a very nice contrast with the first picture - The heroic and almost debauched in contrast with the ordinary and respectable. And yet both pictures share an element of otherness and hints of human grandeur which led me to choose them to complement the poem.

The poem of course cuts across all that. It is a raunchy, rollicking affair - the darkness of the demonaic posession is of course purely the stuff of fantasy and hob-goblin fairytale. But maybe not quite...

It was only when I put this page together that I realised the poem is somewhat ironic. Very few people these days undertake to get married without having first sampled Venus' delights. Any that do run the risk of finding themselves locked into a relationship where the sexual side may not work. But so many of the older generation had their youthful activites constrained in a way that people today find hard to imagine. Many of those people, now approaching the end of their lives, have spent the whole of their existence in a relationship devoid of those supposed nuptial comforts. Perhaps Betty stands as a metaphor for the terrors of a joyless marriage..? And has the present generation escaped Betty's attentions entirely..? Possibly not...

Andy Morley April 18th 2007

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