Magic Texts and Belle & Sebastian

Sitting in my office, finishing up a paper proposal (Epinician and Aiginetan Image PR), and drinking my third Full Sail IPA of the night ($6.99 for 6 at H.E.B...not the greatest IPA in the world, but for the price, I'm well-satisfied and pleased by it), suddenly Belle & Sebastian comes across my iTunes with "Write About Love" (mp3). Now maybe I've immersed myself a wee bit too deeply in studying for my Greek lit exam (see forthcoming post on The Social Network and Aristotelian dramatic theory), but I can't help but associate the song with magical texts that we have from Greece (and Rome).

The connection between writing and spells goes rather deeply in classical tradition, as we can see by the recovered curse tablets (some 1600 total, including 220 from Attica) that imprecated the gods that they heal some part of someone's body or give the prayer victory in a court case. We also see the evolution of love curse/song in the Greek poetic tradition (c.f. Theocritus Id. 2 which repeats the line "Magic wheel, draw that man to my house" in reference to the narrator-woman trying to get her beloved to pay more attention to her). If we look at the opening two stanzas of the B&S song, I think that we can see an echo (conscious or unconscious to this ancient idea):
"I know a spell
that would make you well
write about love
it can be in any tense
but it must make sense

I know a trick
forget that you are sick
write about love
it can be in any form
have it to me in the morning"

We can see in the opening stanza that there is some sort of mystic connection between writing and magical cures. If the addressee is to write about her (the respondee to Stuart Murdoch is the wonderful Carey Mulligan) love for a man, her ills are promised to go away by the narrator Murdoch. Writing will take away physical ills (second stanza) and also mental ennui, should the addressee follow the narrator's advice to write about love and thus snare her targeted mate.

Anyhow, that's where I'm taking this song. Love the tune, so dang catchy (and Murdoch's voice is so dreamy).