To whet the stone

You know the children’s song “There’s a hole in the Bucket?” A man is singing to his wife ‘dear Liza.’ There is a hole in the bucket (hence the name of the song) and he is unsure how to proceed. She tells him to fix it, but, as the song progresses, we discover he is unable to do this as there is no wood to fix the hole, the ax is dull so he can’t chop more wood and the sharpening stone is dry so he can’t sharpen the ax, to cut the wood to fix the hole. The song comes full circle.

It is a great song, repetitious, humorous, with a circuitous logic that leaves the listener stumped. What is the man to do? The bucket will hold no water. There is no wood to patch the leak. The ax is dull. He needs water to whet the stone to sharpen the ax. But again, there can be no water, for there is a hole in the bucket.

I admit that this song delighted me as a child. I felt sorry for the man, whose lines in the song I heard as a kind of desperate plea. I imagined the woman growing evermore impatient with her simple-minded husband; as she had to time and again explain to him, fix it. Fit it. Fix it. Only to discover, like he had, that the solution was beyond their immediate means. The song, you see is a dialogue. Not exactly a Socratic dialogue, but a device used to create greater degrees of tension within the logical structure of the song.

Usually when you listen to the song, the man is played as a whiny sort, clueless and inept while the wife is shrill and painfully judgmental. Liza is sure she can present a solution for her husband. Meanwhile, Henry has exhausted the possibilities and has turned to his partner in the hopes that she will find some fault in his logic that allows him to complete his goal. “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza” is a plea for help. “Where have I gone wrong?” He asks. “Have you Tried A? B? C?” She responds.

The relationship between Liza and Henry made me think of Adam and Eve. Not because there is any clear parallel. Though I suppose one could construct it: What’s wrong with the Apple? Is it poison? Is it bitter? What is wrong with being smart? Why shouldn’t we eat it? I wonder about the rational of Eve, biting into the apple and then offering it to Adam. Was it her way of saying “the bucket be damned!” or “I am going to eat this and prove that nothing will happen”? No, the reason I thought about the first couple in creation was because they acted in tandem, “I ate this apple, here, you try it.” They are working together.

The thing about Henry and Liza is, they are trying to solve a problem. He turns to her, she parrots the solution back to him, and, ultimately, they arrive at the conclusion that the bucket is unfixable. Interpretations that pit the two against one another may add to the comedic moment when both realize that the bucket is unfixable, but detract from the truth that they work in unison.

The other day I was looking around the house thinking: “there is so much to do, Laundry, dishes, piles of children’s toys and brick-a-brac.” It is in moments like these that I hear the old familiar tune come to mind. “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.” And all the picking up and the washing and the scrubbing seem like so much work, an impossible mountain of chores that would never go away and I had no idea where to start. Like Sisyphus I would throw my weigh against the stone over and over again wondering if there was ever a solution.

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

As I stood there singing songs of confusion and defeat it occurred to me that I could pick up what was mine, my shoes for example. That might be a place to start. I could wash my coffee cup, I could put my clean clothes away, and so on. In short, I didn’t have to start with the WHOLE house. I could just pick up after myself and see where that lead me. As it turned out, I had a very large part in that particular days mess for it seemed like everywhere I went there was one thing or another that was mine.

My problem then is that what I though was a hole in the bucket was really self- defeatist thinking. “The mess is too big” or “I don’t know where to start” which is different from, “To fix A I need B but B requires A.”

“No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

Taking another stab at the song, I should point out that Henry is immersed in the dilemma of the bucket. One conclusion that you might draw is that he has already tried to whet the axe and has discovered that there is no clear solution. Frustrated he turns to his wife. The immediacy with which he answers her suggestions seems to support this interpretation. “With what shall I…?” Could be interpreted as “I tried that but…” The fact that Liza shares with Henry solutions that he has already visited speaks to the like- minded nature of their relationship.

They are equals, and both set about “solving the problem” in the same way. For Henry and Liza, each new situation is met with a set of variables that must be solved. “How do I mend the bucket?” is answered with “With Wood.” Unfortunately for each the solution may fall outside of the liner logical structure of the equation. “I may need to borrow an axe from neighbor Fred” or “I may need to buy a new bucket” or even “Do I need any of these things at all?”

The last solution seems to be the one that the song suggests, for if the stone cannot be whet, what purpose does the bucket serve? The answer in the structure of the song namely that we are metaphorically casing our tail here, creates an ambiguity about the nature of Henry and Liza, that they are simpleminded folk who cannot see the proverbial forest for the trees, or that the spiritual solution, as I like to call it, is to step away from the situation and thus remove yourself from the equation. “The bucket is broken” is both the beginning and the end of the song suggesting that the harder we react to the situation, the less “distance” we cover. Through this line of questioning the absolute nature of their situation is now evident and they have gained nothing but the certainty of the knowledge they already possessed.

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

The conclusion of the song suggests that in fact Henry and Liza are now at a completely new place, one of equal footing and ultimately of a kind of equality. This place is one born of frustration but open to the possibility that they can now choose to act or choose not to act with full conviction. The stage is now set for a “real” beginning, of sorts and the song bizarrely begins at last, even as the myth begin again.