Interior Lulu

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com:Steve Hogarth wrote the complicated lyric, which introduces us to a 'funny little girl' who can't quite carry-off her bohemian pretentions. The focus moves to Hogarth himself, and his realisation and guilt that by writing from personal experience, you empower your work only to cheapen the memory or the emotion which inspired it.

"One day, you'll have exhausted everything that you are. Everything that was ever precious to you will have gone, to be redefined in verse 2 of some song or other, and then what are you gonna do, when you run out of life to write about?"

The song ends with Steve standing on Primrose Hill, staring down and over London, pondering empty conversation 'What a waste of lips,' and the observation that we now spend our lives staring into screens - computers, TV's, car windows. 'What a waste of eyes'.

'Louise Brooks'
Mark Kelly located the following site, http://www.pandorasbox.com from which the following biography was adapted.

"Louise Brooks is a 20th century icon. Her hair is her trademark. Her distinct Dutch bob framed a face of astonishing beauty. Fair skinned and freckled, Brooks appeared on film as something almost luminous. Her sleek black hair - the famous 'black helmet' - defined a face both inviting and enigmatic. Hers was a 'face that the camera loved.'

"Ironically, Louise Brooks is perhaps least remembered for what she was - a gifted actress. Between 1925 and 1938, she appeared in 24 films. Early on, she worked with directors Malcom St. Clair, Eddie Sutherland, William Wellman and Howard Hawks in films such as It's the Old Army Game (with W.C. Fields, 1926), The Show-off (with Ford Sterling & Lois Wilson, 1926), Love Em & Leave Em (with Evelyn Brent, 1926), Beggars of Life (with Wallace Beery & Richard Arlen, 1928), A Girl in Every Port (with Victor McLaglen, 1928), and The Canary Murder Case (with William Powell & Jean Arthur, 1929).

"Brooks' accomplishments did not go unheralded. During the late 1920's, the one-time Denishawn dancer and Ziegfeld girl inspired both the long running comic strip Dixie Dugan, as well as the stage play Show Girl. In 1927, according to biographer Barry Paris, Louise Brooks was the fourth most written about actress (in terms of major magazine articles) after Clara Bow, Joan Crawford and Colleen Moore.

"Brooks' career in Hollywood is overshadowed by what is certainly her best-known role, as 'Lulu' in the classic German film, Pandora's Box (1929). Under the direction of G. W. Pabst, Brooks' subtle, erotically charged style of acting emerged. Upon its release, Pandora's Box largely failed in Germany and was barely reviewed in the United States. Brooks' style was so natural that critics complained she either couldn't or didn't act. Today, Pandora's Box is considered a landmark of the silent cinema.

"Brooks made two other films in Europe - Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), again with Pabst, and Prix de Beaute (1930), an early French sound film (based on a story by Pabst & Rene Clair). With the promise of work in Europe, Brooks had quit Paramount in an act of defiance. Upon her return to the United States, she found herself relegated to supporting roles in B-grade films. Her keen intelligence, rebellious nature and self-destructive streak all contributed to her exile from Hollywood - and what might have been one of the great careers in film history. Brooks' last movie was Overland Stage Raiders (1938), a western serial with John Wayne.

"After years of obscurity and near poverty, a new Louise Brooks began to emerge - that of author. Throughout the '50s, '60s and '70s, her thoughtful essays appeared in magazines like Sight and Sound, Film Culture, and Focus on Film. Once derided as a brainy show-girl, Brooks' second career as an insightful writer took shape. In 1982, a bestselling and widely reviewed collection of her work appeared under the title Lulu in Hollywood.

"In the years since her death, numerous cinematic, literary, musical, cartoon and dramatic homage have been paid the actress. Brooks' reputation has come full circle. A woman of remarkable endurance, Louise Brooks has become a magnet of meaning - a 20th century icon."

Max Rael added some more details on Pandora's Box, the film in which Brooks plays Lulu: "One of Louise Brooks' most famous rolls was that of Lulu in the 1929 film Pandora's Box charting the fall of a young woman possessed with a fatal combination of overpowering sexuality and complete innocence. Playwright Frank Wedekind described his most famous character this way: "Lulu is not a real character but the personification of primitive sexuality who inspires evil unaware. She plays a purely passive role."

The IMDB says: "Lulu, the protagonist of Pandora's Box portrayed by Louise Brooks, lives beyond the constraints of time. She was radiant, outrageous - an icon of modernity that seemed to transcend all time and place. She challenged sexual conventions, and became a screen seductress like no other - not through the traditional devices of the femme fatale, but rather through her bold, kittenish innocence.

"This portrayal of innocence is largely what makes her performance both powerful and unique. She's outrageously excessive and provocative, but because she engenders such sympathy, we cannot fail to identify with her. In a sense, she seduces us as she seduces the men whom she encounters. That identification, despite her destructiveness, is much of what makes this film so compelling; we love her despite ourselves."

'C.S. Lewis'
Clive Staples Lewis. 29/11/98 – 22/11/63. The Belfast-born author was educated at University College, Oxford where – interrupted by service in the First World War – he studied classics. From 1925 – 54, he taught at Magdalen College, Oxford, and from 1954 until his death he was professor of medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, Cambridge. Although a respected scholar, it is as an apologist for Christianity that he gained his fame.

Key works include The Pilgrims Regress (1933), The Problem of Pain (1940), Miracles (1947), and The Screwtape Letters (1942. He wrote a trilogy of religious science fiction novels: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). He is now perhaps best remembered for his Christian allegory Narnia series of children's novels beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 1950.

'Henry and Anais'
Erotic writer Anais Nin is also quoted in Rich.

From www.generationterrorists.com: Anais Nin (1903 - 1977) Writer; born in Paris, France. Child of a Spanish father and French-Danish mother, she and her mother moved to New York City (1914) where she attended Catholic schools. She left school when 16, worked as a model, studied dance, and returned to Europe (1923). (In 1923 she married a New York banker, Hugh Guiler; although he would later illustrate some of her novels under the name "Ian Hugo," little is known of how long this marriage survived.) She investigated psychoanalysis under the tutelage of Otto Rank, and briefly practised the discipline under his supervision and on her own in New York City (1934--35). She returned to France (1935), and helped establish a publishing house, Siana Editions, because no one would publish her erotically charged works. She returned to New York City (1939) and continued writing but it would be the 1960s before she began to be discovered by the literary world at large.

She would eventually become best-known for her series of intensely personal journals begun in 1931, The Diary of Anaïs Nin (10 vols. 1966--83); additional journals have since been published. She is also known for her intimate relationships with Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell, among many others described in her writings. She also wrote novels, short stories, and erotica, all clearly drawing on the contents of her journals."

Also from www.generationterrorists.com: Henry Valentine Miller (1891 - 1980) Writer; born in New York City. Of German-American parentage (young Henry mainly spoke German until he began school), he briefly attended City College of New York (1909), then worked at a variety of jobs, including Western Union (1920-24). He had married in 1917 and had a daughter in 1919) but was divorced in 1924, immediately marrying his second wife, June Smith, a dancer. He had long aspired to be a writer and had begun to publish book reviews by 1919, but it was 1922 before he commenced writing a novel (never published).

"Quitting his job in 1924, he turned to anything to support himself as a writer--selling poems door-to-door, managing a speakeasy in Greenwich Village--and then in 1928 went off to Europe hoping to find a publisher. He returned to New York, wrote a third novel (never published), and, his marriage failing, went to Paris in 1930 where he would live famously for the entire decade. Subsisting largely on handouts and some journalism, he became involved with Anaïs Nin, who helped him publish (in Paris) his first major work, Tropic of Cancer (1934), heavily autobiographical and so sexually explicit that it was banned in English-speaking countries. (The first American edition did not come out until 1961.) Subsequent books such as Black Spring (1936) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939) were also banned.

"As World War II began, he went off to Greece to visit with an early admirer, the writer Lawrence Durrell; out of this came Miller's Colossus of Maroussi (1941). Back in the U.S.A., he toured the country - describing the experience in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)- before settling in Big Sur, Calif., in 1944. By now he was living off advances from James Laughlin of New Directions Press, but several of his books began to sell. His Sexus (1949) was the first part of a promised trilogy on his life, called The Rosy Crucifixion, but only Nexus (1960) appeared. By the late-1950s he was finding himself increasingly honoured by the literary establishment, and with the legal decision that Tropic of Cancer was not obscene, his works began to be republished. He also began to receive some recognition as a water colourist. By the end of his life, he was widely recognized both for breaking down the barriers of censorship and for opening up the possibilities of modern fiction."

'Microsoft'
Microsoft is, of course, the world's most successful computer software company, founded by Bill Gates.

'Primrose Hill'
Primrose Hill is one of the highest points in London, and from the top, it is possible to see the whole City of London.

Lyrics: Steve Hogarth & John Helmer

Songs with a link have explanations.

• Introduction 
• A Legacy
• Deserve
• Go!
• Rich
• Enlightened
• Built-in Bastard Radar
• Tumble Down the Years
• Interior Lulu
• House
  

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