The Grande Affaire

The Grand Affair\n\nThe Grand Affair is a very powerful song emotionally. Musically it caresses the strings of excitement, sensuality, and reminiscence. At the same time, it poses a riddle to the listener. On the surface it is a narrative of the splendor of clandestine meetings of the past. On closer examination, as the listener tries to piece together the details of the narrative, it becomes clear that something very different is being communicated.\n\nThis song shares much in common with “the Dutchman” in the classic song performed by the Clancy Brothers. The central figure is an older gentleman who has lost discrimination between reality, memory, and imagination. In both cases, we see reality through the narrator’s eyes and must disentangle it.\n\nThe Dutchman thinks the “flowers bloom beneath the snow”, and sometimes thinks he’s “still in Rotterdam”. The gentleman in the Grand Affair has to convince himself where he is from the landscape; “I see canals, this is Amsterdam”. He apparently doesn’t know who he is either, but his friends “know, they can say, who I am”.\n\nThe details he describes are incongruent. It is a “Grand Affair”, but he has no money, and would “rather not talk”. He describes exotic travel by boat or plane, “anywhere now, except Greece or Spain”, would take a bus instead of car. He seldom drives, but walks instead. \n\nAs in the Dutchman, there is another figure that looms large. In the “Dutchman” it is Margaret who, “remembers now for me”. In the Grand Affair the gentleman addresses a female companion, present or remembered: “wasn’t I glad that you were mine”.\n\nThe timeline is confused, and slides between past and present. He tells his companion, “wasn’t I glad”, and asks her to remember. But in the next breath he describes, in the present tense, the continued splendor of the best hotels as if the affair is continuing. He notes that the “year was all wrong” referring to the wine, but perhaps he simply does not know what year it is, and the wine is only imagined.\n\nOnce the disconnect with reality is appreciated, it is possible to reinterpret the ambiguity of other details described by the gentleman. What is the “room without any view”? It would seem strange in a grand hotel, but perhaps to be expected in a hospital or retirement home. To be “frightened of meeting someone that we knew” might happen during a clandestine encounter, or could also happen with the shame of being institutionalized. It is not clear why there would be “no farewells or how-do-you-dos” in a grand affair, but perhaps that’s what would happen as an individual is left behind at a care facility against their will. It is to be suspected that the “white coated waiters” that “attend me” are perhaps doctors, and the “beautiful girls” who he thinks are trying to “win” him may be nurses. He choses to wear a brown suit, but in the “end wears the white”, which may be hospital clothing. He reminiscences about the “taste of the sheets and the feel of the wine”, which may originally seem a highly poetic and beautiful image. Given the broader mixing of real and imagined experiences, however, this may simply be a real confusion of sensory experience. What he “thinks”, and what he “believes” are confused as he corrects himself in mid-sentence, “I think, I believe that you knew”.\n\nWe often listen to songs and are carried away by their emotion without examining their words in detail. I listened to this song that way for many years. While various incongruities were apparent, and even jarring, it wasn’t until today that I actually sat down to analyze them, and noticed a more coherent picture emerge. This new picture changes the song for me completely, but I still prefer to follow the narrator into memory and illusion rather than look reality starkly in the eye.