Since I am nominally responsible for the sleeves of the Tattered Coat, I thought I would compose a brief (oh, who am I kidding, I don’t know the meaning of the word) discursion on the subject.

Some people recommend the use of fake sleeves, in the form of tattoos, although I have no idea why anyone would want to do such a thing. But you can check them out here. Or here. Oddly, the second link involves the wearing of clothing that is supposed to look like a tattoo, rather than a tattoo that is supposed to resemble clothing. This kind of behaviour starts to approach a form of sleeve fetishism with which I am frankly rather uncomfortable. Either wear sleeves or don’t. Just please don’t be coy about it.

Some people take the notion of the sleeve qua sleeve rather seriously, such that they even go so far as to make an academic career out of it, as follows. There are, evidently, more sleeves in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your or my philosophy, including my personal favorite, the raglan sleeve (see figures 16 through 19). I understand, although I have no personal experience in this area, that the knitting of the sleeve can be the source of much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the knitter. If you, on the other hand, are the knittee, you may well be sitting there all cold and sleeveless wondering what all the fuss is about. My mother promised to knit me a sweater about five years ago and I’m still waiting for it. I don’t think this has anything to do with the sleeves in particular, although I’m sure it isn’t helping. Maybe sleeves are so hard to knit that my mother cannot even face the idea of anything at all to do with the rest of the sweater because she so dreads the idea of navigating the textile equivalent of the Magellan Straits, which is sad. I don’t want my imaginary sweater to be the cause of anyone’s anxiety, least of all my mother’s. I wish I’d never even mentioned the sweater.

Talk of textiles gives us occasion to refer not only to knitting and purling, but also to the selection of bolts of cloth, which may or may not be made of worsted wool. Did you know that wool could be worsted? One of my fondest memories as a child was accompanying my father to his tailor, where he would be fitted for a suit (he used to wear fitted suits back then, whereas he has long since given up any pretence at sartorial diligence; now he just wears sweatpants all the time. This too is sad). The tailor would give him these big heavy books of samples, all of which had been cut with serrated shears, so that they had a crinkled, zig-zag edging. And the pages, such as they were, made of expensive fabric, would flop over heavily, with a lazy slap, and the material was soft and luxurious, and it smelled so perfectly new and clean. I especially liked the materials that contained a very feint stripe. There was something mysterious and discreet about, even to my very young aesthetic. My five-year old arms could barely lift the books, but I so wanted to be able to bring them home with me and look at them for days on end, picking out imaginary suits and smelling the fabrics. When my dad’s suit was in draft form, he’d go in and try it on, and the suit looked just so weird, with pins all in it and chalk marks everwhere. And sometimes, they’d just detach the sleeves in order to try out some different interaction between the arm and the shoulder, so that you could make yourself look more or less bulky, depending on the kind of sleeve arrangement you had. I was rapt. And I have to admit that the deconstructed suit made me kind of sad and upset, like it needed to be made whole, even though its evolving assembly was simultaneously fascinating. It’s hard to believe, in retrospect, that I didn’t become a tailor.

I used to fantasize, later in life, about the kind of suit I would wear to my wedding. The sleeves were a significant part of the fantasy. The suit would be some kind of green serge, and the jacket would be longer than your regulation suit jacket, almost like the kind that conductors wear, except that it would be green. But the thing about the jacket was the sleeves. They would be three-quarter length, and flared, so that when I raised my arms it would look like I had wings, green wings of love with which to enfold my betrothed. Needless to say, this fantasy has not been realized, either in terms of the suit or the nuptials. I don’t really want to talk about this anymore.

You can obviously wear your heart on your sleeve (see previous paragraph), although I wouldn’t advise it based on past experience where somebody took said heart from the sleeve where it was so prominently displayed, threw it to the dirty dusty ground, stomped on it until it was no thicker than an escalope, pummelled into bloody tenderness, and walked away laughing maniacally, leaving me with a messy sleeve and a broken, even messier heart. The tattered coat, indeed. Of course in flu and allergy season, it is not unknown that you might be wearing something else on your sleeve besides a pulmonary muscle, but that’s just nasty and uncouth and not to be recommended.

There are also some rather lovely and touching lyrics about sleeves, the most affecting of which is almost certainly Tom Waits’ “Rainbow Sleeves,” from 1983, which he wrote for, and about, Rickie Lee Jones around the time of their beautiful, poignant, and ultimately doomed dalliance. This song is available on Rickie Lee Jones’ “Girl At Her Volcano,” which I have on ten-inch vinyl. This album is hard, if not impossible, to find on CD. If you are lucky you will stumble across a rather expensive Japanese import, which you should certainly consider buying on account of its extreme quality. It also contains an exquisite cover version of the Four Tops’ “Walk Away, Renee.” The cover art work on the sleeve is gorgeous. The lyrics go like this:

“Rainbow Sleeves”
You used to dream yourself away each night
To places that you’ve never been
On wings made of wishes that you whispered to yourself
Back when every night the moon and you would sweep away
To places that you knew you would never get the blues

Now whiskey gives you wings to carry each one of your dreams
And the moon does not belong to you
But I believe that your heart keeps young dreams
Well, I’ve been told to keep from ever growing old
And a heart that has been broken will be stronger when it mends

Don’t let the blues stop singing
Darling, you only got a broken wing
Hey, you just hang on to my rainbow
Hang on to my rainbow
Hang on to my rainbow sleeves

Of course there are the almost equally affecting Green Sleeves of Leonard Cohen, which are terribly sexual, and the very prim and proper New Lace Sleeves of Elvis Costello, sleeves which seem to signify the big bourgeois sellout which Elvis finds so righteously repellent. I must confess to never being much of a fan of the original “Greensleeves” with all its Henry VIII and fol-de-rol and mead associations, but the Greensleeves record label has long been a purveyor of some of the finest reggae known to humankind, including the very wonderful Doctor Alimantado’s “Best Dressed Chicken in Town,” which might be the best album name ever, even though he’s shirtless on the cover and so sans sleeves, which is almost ironic, if you’re Alanis Morrissette.

I think that’s about all I have to say about sleeves for the time being.

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