Sylvia Plath

There hasn't been much music in the attic lately. Hasn't been much of anything, though I'm still reading and listening. (The attic is now, strictly speaking, a library. I've become a Luddite, and my only access to the net is now an iPad, which I take to the library for their wi fi. I sit here scribbling away privately like some latter day Jane Austin, with people coming in and out. It's a small library, just two small rooms, here at Blackheath.)

This week I went to see Ryan Adams at the Sydney Opera House, and the experience was sublime. Two hours of rapture. I have his latest album, 'Live at Carnegie Hall', and I suspected that at one point he would sit down at the piano and sing 'Sylvia Plath.'

I wish I had a Sylvia Plath
Busted tooth and a smile
And cigarette ashes in her drink
The kind that goes out and then sleeps
for a week
The kind that goes out on her
To give me a reason, for well, I dunno

Chorus:
And maybe she'd take me to France
Or maybe to Spain and she'd ask me to
dance
In a mansion on the top of a hill
She'd ash on the carpets
And slip me a pill
Then she'd get me pretty loaded on gin
And maybe she'd give me a bath
How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath

And she and I would sleep on a boat
And swim in the sea without clothes
With rain falling fast on the sea
While she was swimming she'd be
winking at me
Telling me it would be okay
Out on the horizon and fading away
And I'd swim to the boat and I'd laugh
I gotta get me a Sylvia Plath.

(Repeat chorus)

I wish I had a Sylvia Plath

It's better with the music ...

You'll find it on the album titled 'gold' and other of his albums