Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 81
ZZTop and the Regional Lyric Poetry of Texas
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that one must not go too far in trying to overcome monotony. Each
work warns against the deadliness of separating the painful
experience of reality from a stigmatized pleasure in the beautiful:
"don't give Johnny Walker a ride / cause Jack Black is right by your
side" is essentially the same as saying "you believe / in deer and
cattle-crossing signs." Jack Black and cattle-crossing signs represent
the restraints, the reminders that reality can be harmful if ignored.
The enticement to "hit the switch," to drive "while blind" and
disregard the signs and social stigmas associated with moving out of
bounds is great, but the consequences of doing so can be fatal. Living on
the edge, on the frontier where the monotony of social restraint can be
challenged, McDonald's and ZZTop's characters must constantly
guard against going too far, allowing themselves to become
vulnerable. Hardness is a necessary attribute if one is to survive.
Both McDonald’s "Night of the Scorpion" and ZZTop's "Master of
Sparks" examine the landscape's absurd and arbitrary threat of
annihilation for those who are somehow off their guard. In "Night of
the Scorpion" the speaker, who is a young boy, and his father wander
too far into the wilderness, drawn in to explore the ruin of an old
house and its "tumbling stones / of a chimney fallen to rubble years
ago . . . ." The landscape here has reclaimed man's shelter, his
necessary enclave against the ravages of time and nature, but the
innocence of the young boy prevents him from realizing the potential
dangers lurking in what was once a haven against the harshness of
the landscape. When the poem opens, the speaker has already been
stung by a scorpion and his father is absurdly searching through the
rubble, trying to avenge his son's inevitable death. In a sense, he is
also trying to kill the landscape, trying to prevent what has already
happened, but his actions are futile and meaningless.
As the poem progresses, we see the effect of the scorpion's poison
working on the speaker:
In fever I rolled and tossed, saw his shadow
high in the willows, cast by the car lights,
broad back and head like a stinger
lunging from side to side, stones crashing
like thunder, like ninepins in the mountains.