You Gotta Prole With It

There's a scene in George Orwell's 1984 when Winston Smith looks out his window to view a hefty old lady, pegging out nappies on the washing line, singing a doleful, cheap tune:



"It was only an 'opeless fancy,

It passed like an Ipril dye,

But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred,

They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye."

The song is plainly trite, churned out by a machine called a versificator. The all-controlling State uses such lyrics, issued by the Music Department, to keep the proletariat distracted. In the novel, the central character thinks this is a drivelling piece of work. But Winston also concedes that it's actually a rare experience to hear a human singing with apparent spontaneity, soul, even.

I was thinking about this when I saw 'The Family' last Wednesday night. All that wailing and posturing and teenage bile. The apparent hopelessness of the Hughes parents as their carefully tended lives get stretched to the very ends. And then, in a near impossible turnaround, mother and daughter Emily are reconciled for a moment. And what do they do? They sing 'Foundations' by Kate Nash:

"And every time we fight I know it's not right,

every time that you're upset and I smile.

I know I should forget, but I can't."

It's another apparently charmless tune, a product of the music industry that's mainly configured by profit and venality. But the Hughes family understand that if you invest in the music with your heart, then the hopeless fancies become something way more profound.