He gives me some knowledge, I buy him some shoes
A love letter to the lyrics of Mr. Wendal by Arrested Development
Danny was homeless and sleeping rough in the City of London when he found himself swept up into the three thousand strong Occupy London community that colonised the area around St Paul’s Cathedral for four months from October 2011.
I heard Jamie Kelsey-Fry tell the story of Danny (not his real name) at the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics in 2018. It’s the life-affirming tale of how Occupy reinstated Danny as a storied human being rather than an animate but scarcely noticed piece of street furniture.
Mr. Wendal, that’s his name
No one ever knew his name cause he’s a no-one
Homelessness strips you of story. Without story you are deflated and two dimensional, visible but unseen. It’s the moral of this song.
Mr. Wendal, a man who was an island until the narrator of the song that carries his name took time to get to know him. Mr. Wendal. The title includes his title. He’s a mister. It’s an important decision. You’d think that Mr. Wendal would introduce himself by his first name when he and our narrator got talking. But he’s introduced to us formally; he’s not a Danny or a Joey or a Mike. He’s a Yours Sincerely. The song’s title infers that its protagonist demands our respect. But how so, beyond the basic respect due to any human being regardless of circumstance? He’s described as an “ol’ bum”, so he’s older than the narrator and maybe a senior citizen of the streets. What else? In the words of When The Sun Goes Down by Arctic Monkeys, “I start to wonder what his story might be.”
Never thought twice about spending on a ol’ bum
Until I had the chance to really get to know one
Now that I know him, to give him money isn’t charity
He gives me some knowledge, I buy him some shoes
My partner, Claire, has struck up a Mr. Wendal style relationship with a homeless man on our local high street. Let’s call him Pete. Claire buys him pastries and cups of tea from Greggs and sometimes gives him the money he needs to secure a bed in a hostel rather than sleeping rough on the beach. They talk. He has a story. He also has a baby. His girlfriend has got herself clean and sober as a result. He’s doing the same. He’s taking steps to get a job and a permanent roof over their heads. It won’t be easy. He described to Claire how the early days of methadone treatment, when the dosage is low, are particularly tough. Like Mr. Wendal, Pete’s given Claire some knowledge. She knows much more about the trials, the infrastructure and the bureaucracy of homelessness. There’s a lot more to sleeping rough than meets the eye, which makes the idea of Mr. Wendal having freedom feel somewhat romanticised.
Mr. Wendal has freedom
A free that you and I think is dumb
Free to be without the worries of a quick to diss society
For Mr. Wendal’s a bum
His only worries are sickness
And an occasional harassment by the police and their chase
What is Mr. Wendal’s story? The narrator knows more than he is letting on. He shares Mr. Wendal’s confidences sparingly. We know that Mr. Wendal is worldly wise, that he has useful knowledge to impart. We know that the narrator envies Mr. Wendal’s apparent freedom on some level. But how does Mr. Wendal feel about his situation? Does he feel emancipated? Does he use the word ‘only’ when he makes a list of his worries?
Mr. Wendal is described as a bum twice in the song that carries his name. There’s a half-rhyme between ol’ bum and no one, and a full rhyme with dumb. Bum is a dismissive and derogatory word, paired and rhymed in the lyrics with equally degrading ideas of insignificance and stupidity. However, a plausible (and certainly the most pleasing) etymology of bum, as used by Americans to mean a vagrant, is the German verb bummeln, meaning to loaf, as in to loaf about, to idle one’s time away. Voluntary loafing is indeed a form of freedom. It’s a wilful, reversible lifestyle choice. Ironically, there’s purpose and proactivity to that kind of loafing. The loafer has options and agency. Loafing is a privilege. It’s hard to believe that Mr. Wendal is free in this sense.
But is that the listener’s prejudice at play? Is it my prejudice if I assume that Mr. Wendal is a victim, that he fell or was cast out of society rather than willingly dropping out? Exactly how old is he? Hard as it is to believe, perhaps he really does prefer this harsh but simple way of life. The street version of becoming institutionalised. If we can see past our stereotypes, these lyrics invite us to wonder.
Mr. Wendal, the song not the man, was released in 1992. Since then, technology has enabled a quick-to-diss society to diss at much greater speed, in higher numbers, and in a more coordinated fashion. Mr. Wendal was free from antisocial media and surveillance capitalism. We all were back then. But the absence of smartphones and Twitter didn’t make him immune to being cancelled. Whether it’s 1992 or 2021, cancelled is the timeless default state for homeless people. Mr. Wendal isn’t climbing any greasy poles. He doesn’t do a tax return. He’s not on LinkedIn. But it’s stretching things to call that freedom. He might have fewer problems than the rest of us but they’re all existential.
Uncivilized we call him
But I just saw him eat off the food we waste
Civilization, are we really civilized, yes or no?
Who are we to judge
When thousands of innocent men could be brutally enslaved
And killed over a racist grudge?
The listener is at liberty to draw their own conclusions about Mr. Wendal’s freedom. But there is no doubt about Mr. Wendal’s resilience. He gets by. He survives. He adapts.
Mr. Wendal has tried to warn us about our ways
But we don’t hear him talk
Is it his fault when we’ve gone too far
And we got too far, cause on him we walk
Mr. Wendal, a man, a human in flesh
But not by law
For many people, the likes of Mr. Wendal are an eyesore, an unwanted reminder of the threads that we hang by. To notice him is to be confronted with the reality that capitalism and consumerism, and all their attendant inequalities, have a lot to answer for. He’s a living statue to the growing population and the diminishing wealth of the have-nots. That’s our problem not his. Mr. Wendal’s an irritation to some people, perhaps even a confrontation, but he’s not an imposition, neither on them, nor on the planet.
So, what to make of this song? There’s more than a hint of virtue signalling if you’re inclined to cynicism, particularly in the opening lines. Look at me giving money to this man. Listen to the patronising poem I wrote, suggesting that faith is the solution to all Mr. Wendal’s problems.
Here, have a dollar
In fact, no brotherman here, have two
Two dollars means a snack for me
But it means a big deal to you
Be strong, serve God only
Know that if you do, beautiful heaven awaits
That’s the poem I wrote for the first time
I saw a man with no clothes, no money, no plate
I think there’s more to it than that. There’s something more subtle going on. The narrator wants Mr. Wendal to be seen by us as he was seen by him. He wants us to see all the Mr. Wendals in fact. They have nothing, but they are storied. Mr Wendal has a story and he is a story. The narrator has decided that we don’t need to know it all, just that Mr. Wendal is as complex and multi-dimensional as any of us. He is worthy of our time, but would we be worthy of his?
I feed you dignity to stand with pride
Realise that all in all you stand tall
Mr. Wendal has been brought to our attention but he remains an enigma. These lyrics have created Mr. Wendal as a cipher onto which the listener projects their politics and their perceptions of society. The gaps in his story stir the imagination and provide stronger provocation than would a more satisfying, fully-formed narrative. Maybe that’s why it feels as pertinent as ever, nearly three decades after its release.
If you liked this, you might also like this love letter to the lyrics of North, East, West, South by The Last Poets.
