While I can only speak from my limited experience in this case, when someone mentions "unintended pregnancies" I think of them as typically being unintended by both partners. However, as Heart's "All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You)" has clearly shown, it is possible for the pregnancy to be intended by one half but not the other (although the roadside hunk in Heart's song is hardly blameless here since he clearly didn't use any protection that night--so many times, so easily, no less). We have a similar case with Ace of Base's "All That She Wants," although the motivation here is quite a bit different than in Heart's case:
In "All That She Wants" the song is quite literally about a woman who goes out and has sex with guys in order to get pregnant. Now, some have claimed that when the chorus goes "All that she wants is another baby," it only means that she wants is another lover (someone to call "baby") since the opening does say that "She leads a lonely life," but I don't think that meaning holds up as well as the unintended pregnancy one. She is clearly dedicated to one-night stands, as the lines "She's gone tomorrow boy" and "It's a night of passion / But the morning means goodbye," make clear. However, the whole predatory angle that the song goes for--"She's going to get you" and "She's a hunter you're the fox"--suggests something more "sinister" is going on here.
The explanation that she wants to get pregnant works with the one-night stand angle, her loneliness, and the whole "She's going to get you" aspect of the song. Not only would having children (in her mind at least) help with her loneliness, but the song suggests a financial motive as well. At the beginning of the song she has woken up "late in the morning" and her first thought is "Oh what a morning, / It's not a day for work / It's a day for catching tan." These are not the signs of someone especially committed to working for a living (and I've seen the sign, and it opened up my mind), so we can assume that another baby will provide her with material as well as emotional comfort.
While I can't say that sounds like her life is going to get any less lonely any time soon (especially since if its another baby then she already has at least one), I guess she's in pretty good spirits on this particular sunny morning, so more power to the cheeriness of this song about unintended pregnancies!
Just watch out, she going to get you...either that or the sheer catchiness of Ace of Base will.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Musical Mathematics Update (XTC/Flaming Lips/Fleet Foxes)
I am reading Robert Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution and I came across this quote from Durkheim that really captures what I see going on in the ritualistic/animalistic moments of XTC's "Sacrificial Bonfire" and the video for the Fleet Foxes' "The Shrine/The Argument":
Commencing at nightfall, all sorts of processions, dances and songs had taken place by torchlight; the general effervescence was constantly increasing...One ca readily see how, when arrived at this state of exaltation, a man does not recognize himself any longer. Feeling himself dominated and carried away by some sort of an external power which makes him think and act different than in normal times, he naturally has the impression of being himself no longer. It seems to him that he has become a new being: the decorations he puts on and the masks that cover his face figure materially in this interior transformation, and to a still greater extent, they aid in determining its nature. And as at the same time all his companions feel themselves transformed in the same way and express this sentiment by their cries, their gestures and their general attitude, everything is just as though he really were transported into a special world, entirely different from the one where he ordinarily lives, and into an environment filled with exceptionally intense forces that take hold of him and metamorphose him. (Quoted in Bellah, 17-18)I think these songs are trying to recall this kind of transformative experience, and the animal costumes and symbolism capture some of what that transformation is supposed to be about: being transformed into a being closer to the natural world and to the powerful energies that still run through it underneath our civilized veneer.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Form and Content: "Your Silent Face" by New Order
In the article "What Isn't for Sale?" in The Atlantic (which also takes excellent book form as What Money Can't Buy where the argument is expanded further), Michael J Sandel address the increasing encroachment of market values into every aspect of life. While he makes a number of worthwhile points, I was particularly interested in how he framed his longer, second answer to the question, "Why worry that we are moving toward a society in which everything is up for sale?" Sandel wants to make a claim about the "corrosive tendency of markets." In particular, he asserts, "Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. That’s because markets don’t only allocate goods; they express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged."
What I find particularly resonant in his response is one of the mistakes he identifies in the thinking of people who tend to ignore this "corrosive tendency" when they urge market solutions for any and all organizational problems. Sandel writes, "Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not affect the goods being exchanged. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark. Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about." The underlying assumption governing the thoughts of these economists is essentially that there is no necessary relation between form and content, when it should be clear that the form of our approach to an issue (treating it purely in terms of economics, for instance) inherently affects every part of the process. This is, in a sense, the same thing being expressed by the saying, "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail."
Of course, this particular problem of the separability of form and content is as old the the dichotomy between them itself. In can easily be traced back at least as far as classical Greek philosophy: after all, we don't talk about the transcendent realm of Platonic forms--eidos--as separate from their instantiations in any particular content for nothing. (Of course, the basis for that dichotomy likely greatly predates the Greeks, and probably has a tremendously complicated religious lineage, since it was still essentially religious for them even after they explicitly conceptualized it.)
The general problem with these two concepts seems to me to be that people confuse the fact that we can provisionally distinguish between them with the idea that they are fully separable from each other in any meaningful fashion. Their relation is a good examples of the dialectical movement of concepts, as any rigorous attempt to deal with one leads necessarily to a consideration of the other as well (I have to specify "rigorous" here because, along with Hegel, I do recognize that the majority of the concepts that we employ in ordinary life are abstract and one-sided--see his delightfully playful piece "Who Thinks Abstractly" for an example of this--even though closer attention to even our ordinary reveals their unintended complexity, a fact that drove many a Platonic dialogue as well).
Now, Sandel's particular criticisms and these philosophical issues of form and content are interesting all by themselves, but because everything is better with music here is New Order's "Your Silent Face," which also deals with these themes:
The very first verse captures the inextricable relation between form and content and the futility of any conception of either apart from the other:
A thought that never changes is a stupid lie precisely because it never changes, because if it stays the same it is not truly being thought. Thinking is an act, it is something that we do and is a dynamic process bound up with the rest of our life. That includes our relations with others (who we hear or who are to hear us), our own physical and emotional state (breathing), the effects of time and distance as well as the need for thought to develop or be expressed (movement), and even confront the variety and complexity of the material world (colors).
If the content of a thought stays the same then it does not deserve the status of a thought as such, instead it is a dogma, a fact (and likely quite narrowly conceived), or something similar. It is stupid because it is not thinking, not using one's own intelligence; it is a lie because it is being untrue to the world and to experience, both of which are far more dynamic than can be captured by a "thought that never changes." Indeed, such an attitude is indicative of a pretty grim way of living, as we see expressed in a line shortly after: "We asked you what you'd seen, / You said you didn't care." Only if you don't really care about the whole, wide, incredible world outside of you could you really embrace such an attitude, and maybe then you would have a "silent face," one unreadable to others, giving and asking nothing.
Indeed, this kind of emptiness is the focus of the second major verse in the song:
Of course, it might seem hypocritical of me to have spent so much time discussing the meaning of this song in terms of one very particular form of content (the lyrics) without addressing its form, and there is a certain validity to that criticism. However, my point here has not been that we can never differentiate between form and content, only that no final and complete differentiation is possible. The extreme nature of the examples in "Your Silent Face"--a thought that never changes, a sound in a vacuum--suggests that it too is primarily directed at the absolute separation of form and content. But none of that means that we can't devote our time to mostly one or the other, after all, to demand that we always and everywhere deal with both it to fall into another kind of unreasonable demand for absoluteness and completeness.
Yet at the same time, I think it is worthwhile to at least briefly mention the form of this song as it is certainly relevant here. This is because this song could be said to serve as a kind of self-explanation for New Order, particular in terms of their embrace of electronica. Because of the precision of electronic beats and programmed synthesizers parts of New Order's music might seem to be devoted to the ideal of "sameness," and indeed the beginning of the song does feature the repetition of a simple beat and synth line. However, the song is quickly awash in broad sweeps of synth and then harmonica, and then the singing itself, which triggers a subtle change in the original synth line, and from there the songs begins to develop more and more layers. The "sameness" of electronica makes room for hearing, breathing, movement, and lyrics.
What I find particularly resonant in his response is one of the mistakes he identifies in the thinking of people who tend to ignore this "corrosive tendency" when they urge market solutions for any and all organizational problems. Sandel writes, "Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not affect the goods being exchanged. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark. Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about." The underlying assumption governing the thoughts of these economists is essentially that there is no necessary relation between form and content, when it should be clear that the form of our approach to an issue (treating it purely in terms of economics, for instance) inherently affects every part of the process. This is, in a sense, the same thing being expressed by the saying, "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail."
Of course, this particular problem of the separability of form and content is as old the the dichotomy between them itself. In can easily be traced back at least as far as classical Greek philosophy: after all, we don't talk about the transcendent realm of Platonic forms--eidos--as separate from their instantiations in any particular content for nothing. (Of course, the basis for that dichotomy likely greatly predates the Greeks, and probably has a tremendously complicated religious lineage, since it was still essentially religious for them even after they explicitly conceptualized it.)
The general problem with these two concepts seems to me to be that people confuse the fact that we can provisionally distinguish between them with the idea that they are fully separable from each other in any meaningful fashion. Their relation is a good examples of the dialectical movement of concepts, as any rigorous attempt to deal with one leads necessarily to a consideration of the other as well (I have to specify "rigorous" here because, along with Hegel, I do recognize that the majority of the concepts that we employ in ordinary life are abstract and one-sided--see his delightfully playful piece "Who Thinks Abstractly" for an example of this--even though closer attention to even our ordinary reveals their unintended complexity, a fact that drove many a Platonic dialogue as well).
Now, Sandel's particular criticisms and these philosophical issues of form and content are interesting all by themselves, but because everything is better with music here is New Order's "Your Silent Face," which also deals with these themes:
The very first verse captures the inextricable relation between form and content and the futility of any conception of either apart from the other:
"A thought that never changes
Remains a stupid lie
It's never been quite the same
No hearing or breathing
No movement, no colors
Just silence."
A thought that never changes is a stupid lie precisely because it never changes, because if it stays the same it is not truly being thought. Thinking is an act, it is something that we do and is a dynamic process bound up with the rest of our life. That includes our relations with others (who we hear or who are to hear us), our own physical and emotional state (breathing), the effects of time and distance as well as the need for thought to develop or be expressed (movement), and even confront the variety and complexity of the material world (colors).
If the content of a thought stays the same then it does not deserve the status of a thought as such, instead it is a dogma, a fact (and likely quite narrowly conceived), or something similar. It is stupid because it is not thinking, not using one's own intelligence; it is a lie because it is being untrue to the world and to experience, both of which are far more dynamic than can be captured by a "thought that never changes." Indeed, such an attitude is indicative of a pretty grim way of living, as we see expressed in a line shortly after: "We asked you what you'd seen, / You said you didn't care." Only if you don't really care about the whole, wide, incredible world outside of you could you really embrace such an attitude, and maybe then you would have a "silent face," one unreadable to others, giving and asking nothing.
Indeed, this kind of emptiness is the focus of the second major verse in the song:
"Sound formed in a vacuumThis verse reiterates much of the same perspective as the first, emphasizing that a content (sound) without a form (in a vacuum) is, for all intents and purposes, just nothing. If a thought is not somehow expressed or embodied, i.e., if no one hears it, no one says it, no sound waves move, and no meaning is put across, then it is totally fruitless. Even if it prevents the thought/sound from staying the same, prevents it from staying pure, expression is necessary.
May seem a waste of time
It's always been just the same
No hearing or breathing
No movement no lyrics
Just nothing."
Of course, it might seem hypocritical of me to have spent so much time discussing the meaning of this song in terms of one very particular form of content (the lyrics) without addressing its form, and there is a certain validity to that criticism. However, my point here has not been that we can never differentiate between form and content, only that no final and complete differentiation is possible. The extreme nature of the examples in "Your Silent Face"--a thought that never changes, a sound in a vacuum--suggests that it too is primarily directed at the absolute separation of form and content. But none of that means that we can't devote our time to mostly one or the other, after all, to demand that we always and everywhere deal with both it to fall into another kind of unreasonable demand for absoluteness and completeness.
Yet at the same time, I think it is worthwhile to at least briefly mention the form of this song as it is certainly relevant here. This is because this song could be said to serve as a kind of self-explanation for New Order, particular in terms of their embrace of electronica. Because of the precision of electronic beats and programmed synthesizers parts of New Order's music might seem to be devoted to the ideal of "sameness," and indeed the beginning of the song does feature the repetition of a simple beat and synth line. However, the song is quickly awash in broad sweeps of synth and then harmonica, and then the singing itself, which triggers a subtle change in the original synth line, and from there the songs begins to develop more and more layers. The "sameness" of electronica makes room for hearing, breathing, movement, and lyrics.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Brooks on de Botton (Who's on top?)
A little while ago in a review in the NY Times called "Without Gods: Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists", David Brooks discusses some of the various suggestions that de Botton has for trying to incorporate some of the religious practices that are so effective at giving people as sense of community and helping them to make sense of their lives. De Botton's recognition that much of what has traditionally been important (and compelling to people) about religion are its practices, its social and communal character, and the sense of meaning, order and purpose that people derive from it is an important one. This recognition allows de Botton to position himself against other high-profile contemporary atheists (the "Gnu atheists" as PZ Myers would say) like Richard Dawkins who tend to see nothing of value in religion whatsoever and call for its wholesale elimination.
Given my Hegelian background, wherein talk of religion and God is seen as mis-descriptions of the nature of human sociality and communal life, I find the basics of this kind of position quite attractive. This is not to say that I think that what Dawkins et al. say about religion is false, because I do agree with them. As propositions expected to reflect empirically verifiable claims about the world and about some being called God, religion really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. This includes, I think, cosmological arguments about the origin of matter, the big bang, and whatnot, which merely "fill in the gaps" with unbridled speculation, and certainly don't justify any talk of a deity that would recognizable from any religious tradition I know of; after all, why must the ability to create all things also entail any kind of moral goodness? You could just as easily get a Chthulu or Yog-Sothoth as a Kronos as a Jehovah...
So, I am not disagreeing with the deconstruction and debunking of many of the crazy and obviously untrue claims that Dawkins carries out; I do think it is important to make explicit some of the crazy things that are actually implicated in what people claim to believe. However, and this is where Brooks and de Botton's ideas come in, sometimes the important thing about religion is not the specific content of someone's beliefs, especially not as they can be rendered as propositions or claims, but rather it is about lived experiences and the overall sense of meaning and community that they provide. A religion is not just a set of beliefs, it is a particular kind of institution, and like all institutions it serves to mediate between other people, ideas, institutions, etc. Belief is not absent here, religions can only do this work of mediation properly when we participate in them and believe in them, but (and this is what I think Dawkins does not pay enough attention to) the belief involved is not purely intellectual and is often resistant to intellectual suasion.
This is one thing that de Botton seems to get right in his recognition of why "Religion for Atheists" might be something to consider, namely that we do need to maintain and further develop the institutions that give human life a common and stabilizing ground (Hegelian sittlichkeit). Furthermore, if we are to criticize religion then we do need to be aware of this institutional level and to address it as well as the more intellectual propositional level of the debate, or else risk missing the point altogether.
But, as Brooks acknowledges, there is also something profoundly disingenuous about the idea of "religion for atheists" that is signaled in the contradiction in the very title. De Botton's suggestions about self-consciously inventing new rituals to take the place of religion seem as though they are destined to mostly fall afoul of the corrosive effects of self-consciousness. After all, as I mentioned, one of the important things about the institutions like religion is that they require our belief in them in order to truly function: if we don't genuinely believe in the institution then our ability to fully participate in it and benefit from it will be limited. This is particularly so in terms of deriving any sense of self, purpose, or meaning to one's life. The kind of self-identification and belief necessary to make such rituals effective seems destined to conflict with the critical self-consciousness that atheists tend to bring to the issue of religion. It seems like any "religion for atheists" would end up having to sacrifice one of those terms, and either be too ironic or self-conscious to be religious or too dogmatic to be atheistic.
Given my Hegelian background, wherein talk of religion and God is seen as mis-descriptions of the nature of human sociality and communal life, I find the basics of this kind of position quite attractive. This is not to say that I think that what Dawkins et al. say about religion is false, because I do agree with them. As propositions expected to reflect empirically verifiable claims about the world and about some being called God, religion really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. This includes, I think, cosmological arguments about the origin of matter, the big bang, and whatnot, which merely "fill in the gaps" with unbridled speculation, and certainly don't justify any talk of a deity that would recognizable from any religious tradition I know of; after all, why must the ability to create all things also entail any kind of moral goodness? You could just as easily get a Chthulu or Yog-Sothoth as a Kronos as a Jehovah...
So, I am not disagreeing with the deconstruction and debunking of many of the crazy and obviously untrue claims that Dawkins carries out; I do think it is important to make explicit some of the crazy things that are actually implicated in what people claim to believe. However, and this is where Brooks and de Botton's ideas come in, sometimes the important thing about religion is not the specific content of someone's beliefs, especially not as they can be rendered as propositions or claims, but rather it is about lived experiences and the overall sense of meaning and community that they provide. A religion is not just a set of beliefs, it is a particular kind of institution, and like all institutions it serves to mediate between other people, ideas, institutions, etc. Belief is not absent here, religions can only do this work of mediation properly when we participate in them and believe in them, but (and this is what I think Dawkins does not pay enough attention to) the belief involved is not purely intellectual and is often resistant to intellectual suasion.
This is one thing that de Botton seems to get right in his recognition of why "Religion for Atheists" might be something to consider, namely that we do need to maintain and further develop the institutions that give human life a common and stabilizing ground (Hegelian sittlichkeit). Furthermore, if we are to criticize religion then we do need to be aware of this institutional level and to address it as well as the more intellectual propositional level of the debate, or else risk missing the point altogether.
But, as Brooks acknowledges, there is also something profoundly disingenuous about the idea of "religion for atheists" that is signaled in the contradiction in the very title. De Botton's suggestions about self-consciously inventing new rituals to take the place of religion seem as though they are destined to mostly fall afoul of the corrosive effects of self-consciousness. After all, as I mentioned, one of the important things about the institutions like religion is that they require our belief in them in order to truly function: if we don't genuinely believe in the institution then our ability to fully participate in it and benefit from it will be limited. This is particularly so in terms of deriving any sense of self, purpose, or meaning to one's life. The kind of self-identification and belief necessary to make such rituals effective seems destined to conflict with the critical self-consciousness that atheists tend to bring to the issue of religion. It seems like any "religion for atheists" would end up having to sacrifice one of those terms, and either be too ironic or self-conscious to be religious or too dogmatic to be atheistic.
This problem is a thoroughly modern one, and is intrinsically connected to the rise of individualism, which made the critique of religion possible, but in so doing also disrupted much of the relation between the individual and any social institutions. Brooks comments on the difference that this individualism makes by comparing the writings of some founding figures of religion like Augustine to de Botton:
These writers don’t coolly shop for personal growth experiences like someone at the spiritual mall. They find themselves enmeshed in paradoxes of a richness unimaginable before they became entangled in them — that understanding comes after love, that one achieves fullness by surrendering self, that as you approach wisdom you are swept by a sensation that you have been suppressing all along, and all you need do is release....There’s something at stake in these accounts, a person’s whole destiny and soul. The process de Botton is recommending is more like going on one of those self-improving vacations. If all his advice were faithfully followed, we’d be a collection of autonomous individuals seeking a string of vaguely uplifting experiences that might perhaps leave a sediment of some sort of spiritual improvement.
Despite recognizing the important matters at stake in this issue of religious institutions, de Botton's "solutions" fail because he misconceives of the relation between individual and institutions. de Botton treats individuals in a typically modern fashion as if they originally exist outside of institutions and have to find some way to get into them, which in turn automatically estranges the two and cuts off any potential for a real relation between them.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Cheery Songs About Unintended Pregnancies #2: Heart--All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You)
One of the great things about being aware of the discrepancy between form and content in these cheery songs about unintended pregnancies is being able to watch other people listen to them, blissfully unaware of the meaning of the song, and initiate them into the hilarity.* Never is the enjoyment of a cheery song about unintended pregnancies quite as fun as when shared, especially for the first time. Heart's "All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You)" can slip under people's radar because so much of the song is devoted to the chorus and the description of the one-night stand that it refers to.
The whole pregnancy angle only comes in at the end, by which time a lot of people figure they already know what they need to know about the song, namely, that all she wants to do is make love to him. But, the story the song actually tells is of a woman whose real partner is (presumably) infertile, so she picks up a sexy hitchhiker and they have (unprotected) sex. Suitably impregnated, she sneaks out without letting him know her identity and (presumably) goes back to her partner to have a baby. The song zips forward to when she accidentally runs into the hitchhiker again as she is walking with his baby. In what is no doubt a confirmation of the Maury Povich brand of genetics where paternity is instantly and indubitably recognizable (or not) by a single feature, the hitchhiker realizes that the baby is his: "You can imagine his surprise, / When he saw his own eyes." The woman pleads for him to keep it a secret, etc., etc.
So here we have an interesting variation on the "unintended pregnancy." The pregnancy from my first example "Wanna Be Startin' Something" by Michael Jackson, is not explicitly unintended, although we can infer that it probably was given the mother's apparent inability to properly care for her child (there was some lack of foresight involved). While Jackson's example was probably unintended by both parents, in Heart's case the pregnancy only the father didn't intended it (although, in this tangled web, the person who thinks he's the father but isn't probably intended it). In a refreshing change, however, at least this isn't a case of entrapment on the part of the woman where she comes off as cruel and manipulative, but rather some secret outsourcing which is morally ambiguous given the combination of deceit and (mostly) good intentions.
Of course, there is an alternate reading of this song, where the baby is wholly unintended and she only wanted to have a good time, after all, she had a pretty rocking night with the hitchhiker (he "brought out the woman in [her], many times, easily"). If you really want to have a baby without your partner there are other ways of doing it which might give him fewer misgivings, like a trip to the sperm bank. That certainly puts a new (and humiliating, for her partner) spin on her explanation to the hitchhiker at the end of the song that "what he couldn't give me / Was the one little thing that you can."
The only problem with that reading is the hilariously stupid note that she leaves the hitchhiker after their night of "magic." In what is an amazing case of mixed up metaphors, she declartes
"I am the flower and you are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree"
First of all, this woman needs to study some botany, because she clearly doesn't understand plant reproduction and is obviously confused by the fact that human sperm is sometimes (especially in olden times) called seed. Flowers are crucial to the sexual reproduction of many plants, but their seeds would be the products of the pollination of flowers, not what pollinates them. It would have made more sense if she was the flower and he was the bee, but she clearly sings "seed" (well, actually, it sounds like "sea" but the s-sound is there). So technically, if he's the seed then he is her offspring (since she's the flower) which would add some pretty strange dimension to this song if that's actually what they meant. Anyway, this note, as confused as it may be (especially since it goes on to talk about walking in the garden and planting trees--I thought they were the plants?) it does clarify this woman's intent in terms of the one night stand, she's clearly got fertilizin' on the brain (let's just hope her reputation isn't soiled by this! She should be guard'n it more closely...)
*As tempting as it might be to do this with romantic-sounding songs with creepy lyrics, that is a more dangerous game. For instance, you never know what you're in for when it comes to people who play The Police's "Every Breath You Take" at their wedding, you always run the risk that they really do know what the song's about...
The whole pregnancy angle only comes in at the end, by which time a lot of people figure they already know what they need to know about the song, namely, that all she wants to do is make love to him. But, the story the song actually tells is of a woman whose real partner is (presumably) infertile, so she picks up a sexy hitchhiker and they have (unprotected) sex. Suitably impregnated, she sneaks out without letting him know her identity and (presumably) goes back to her partner to have a baby. The song zips forward to when she accidentally runs into the hitchhiker again as she is walking with his baby. In what is no doubt a confirmation of the Maury Povich brand of genetics where paternity is instantly and indubitably recognizable (or not) by a single feature, the hitchhiker realizes that the baby is his: "You can imagine his surprise, / When he saw his own eyes." The woman pleads for him to keep it a secret, etc., etc.
So here we have an interesting variation on the "unintended pregnancy." The pregnancy from my first example "Wanna Be Startin' Something" by Michael Jackson, is not explicitly unintended, although we can infer that it probably was given the mother's apparent inability to properly care for her child (there was some lack of foresight involved). While Jackson's example was probably unintended by both parents, in Heart's case the pregnancy only the father didn't intended it (although, in this tangled web, the person who thinks he's the father but isn't probably intended it). In a refreshing change, however, at least this isn't a case of entrapment on the part of the woman where she comes off as cruel and manipulative, but rather some secret outsourcing which is morally ambiguous given the combination of deceit and (mostly) good intentions.
Of course, there is an alternate reading of this song, where the baby is wholly unintended and she only wanted to have a good time, after all, she had a pretty rocking night with the hitchhiker (he "brought out the woman in [her], many times, easily"). If you really want to have a baby without your partner there are other ways of doing it which might give him fewer misgivings, like a trip to the sperm bank. That certainly puts a new (and humiliating, for her partner) spin on her explanation to the hitchhiker at the end of the song that "what he couldn't give me / Was the one little thing that you can."
The only problem with that reading is the hilariously stupid note that she leaves the hitchhiker after their night of "magic." In what is an amazing case of mixed up metaphors, she declartes
"I am the flower and you are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree"
First of all, this woman needs to study some botany, because she clearly doesn't understand plant reproduction and is obviously confused by the fact that human sperm is sometimes (especially in olden times) called seed. Flowers are crucial to the sexual reproduction of many plants, but their seeds would be the products of the pollination of flowers, not what pollinates them. It would have made more sense if she was the flower and he was the bee, but she clearly sings "seed" (well, actually, it sounds like "sea" but the s-sound is there). So technically, if he's the seed then he is her offspring (since she's the flower) which would add some pretty strange dimension to this song if that's actually what they meant. Anyway, this note, as confused as it may be (especially since it goes on to talk about walking in the garden and planting trees--I thought they were the plants?) it does clarify this woman's intent in terms of the one night stand, she's clearly got fertilizin' on the brain (let's just hope her reputation isn't soiled by this! She should be guard'n it more closely...)
*As tempting as it might be to do this with romantic-sounding songs with creepy lyrics, that is a more dangerous game. For instance, you never know what you're in for when it comes to people who play The Police's "Every Breath You Take" at their wedding, you always run the risk that they really do know what the song's about...
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Musical Mathematics Part Two
I see the last song in this particular equation, "The Gash (Battle Hymn for a Wounded Mathematician)" by The Flaming Lips, as a kind of inspiration for the sound of the particularly jarring and clashing part of "The Shrine / An Argument" that I have been focusing on.
I see a similar motivation in each. The Fleet Foxes emphasize the violence and destruction that logically accompanies the cycle of renewal. After all, without death there would be no need for renewal. But at the same time, being part of that cycle gives this violence a different form than if it were just on its own, it elevates it. That is why I particularly enjoy these two songs, because rather than just being loud and clashing for the sake of stirring shit up, they spiritualize the sense of strife that they capture.
"The Gash" puts a particularly "spiritual" spin on strife, indeed it makes the spiritual a matter of strife. Of course, this is only if you understand "spiritual" in the sense of the highest concerns and values of human life from within human life, and not stemming from some transcendent origin. Indeed, the "spiritual" is only won from out of struggling with the messy world of human affairs, not by some appeal to a pure, unsullied conception of truth as if everything in life could work out as clearly as a mathematical equation (hence the title character).
Among other things, this means that the truth needs forms of renewal and preservation and that it is susceptible to being lost. The gash that the song is named after reflects the contingency and the vulnerability of truth, as well as those who search for it. But what is interesting about the way that this song presents this issue is the fact that it is not the gash that is finally the problem, that it is not our "quasi-animality" (as I have been calling it) that is at issue, but this intra-spiritual concern:
Is that gash in your leg
Really why you have stopped?
‘Cause I’ve noticed all the others
Though they’re gashed, they’re still going
‘Cause I feel like the real reason
That you’re quitting, that you’re admitting
That you’ve lost all the will to battle on
As I believe the lyrics make clear, the gash is not in itself what makes this mathematician give up the struggle, indeed, the gash may only be one more occasion for the struggle. Instead, the whole issue concerns the reasons we have for continuing to fight; whether the gash counts as a reason to stop or not is a matter of self-determination, of how we understand it and ourselves. This is why I speak of this as a spiritual issue solely from within life; it is this focus on self-determination that makes the struggle spiritual, and lends this song its credibility when it stages the whole issue as one of sanity:
Will the fight for our sanity
Be the fight of our lives?
Now that we’ve lost all the reasons
That we thought that we had
Still the battle that we’re in
Rages on till the end
With explosions, wounds are open
Sights and smells, eyes and noses
But the thought that went unspoken
Was understanding that you’re broken
Still the last volunteer battles on.
In the struggle of what can ultimately only be reason, all of the combatants are volunteers and they could only ever be so. Very eloquently put.
I see a similar motivation in each. The Fleet Foxes emphasize the violence and destruction that logically accompanies the cycle of renewal. After all, without death there would be no need for renewal. But at the same time, being part of that cycle gives this violence a different form than if it were just on its own, it elevates it. That is why I particularly enjoy these two songs, because rather than just being loud and clashing for the sake of stirring shit up, they spiritualize the sense of strife that they capture.
"The Gash" puts a particularly "spiritual" spin on strife, indeed it makes the spiritual a matter of strife. Of course, this is only if you understand "spiritual" in the sense of the highest concerns and values of human life from within human life, and not stemming from some transcendent origin. Indeed, the "spiritual" is only won from out of struggling with the messy world of human affairs, not by some appeal to a pure, unsullied conception of truth as if everything in life could work out as clearly as a mathematical equation (hence the title character).
Among other things, this means that the truth needs forms of renewal and preservation and that it is susceptible to being lost. The gash that the song is named after reflects the contingency and the vulnerability of truth, as well as those who search for it. But what is interesting about the way that this song presents this issue is the fact that it is not the gash that is finally the problem, that it is not our "quasi-animality" (as I have been calling it) that is at issue, but this intra-spiritual concern:
Is that gash in your leg
Really why you have stopped?
‘Cause I’ve noticed all the others
Though they’re gashed, they’re still going
‘Cause I feel like the real reason
That you’re quitting, that you’re admitting
That you’ve lost all the will to battle on
As I believe the lyrics make clear, the gash is not in itself what makes this mathematician give up the struggle, indeed, the gash may only be one more occasion for the struggle. Instead, the whole issue concerns the reasons we have for continuing to fight; whether the gash counts as a reason to stop or not is a matter of self-determination, of how we understand it and ourselves. This is why I speak of this as a spiritual issue solely from within life; it is this focus on self-determination that makes the struggle spiritual, and lends this song its credibility when it stages the whole issue as one of sanity:
Will the fight for our sanity
Be the fight of our lives?
Now that we’ve lost all the reasons
That we thought that we had
Still the battle that we’re in
Rages on till the end
With explosions, wounds are open
Sights and smells, eyes and noses
But the thought that went unspoken
Was understanding that you’re broken
Still the last volunteer battles on.
In the struggle of what can ultimately only be reason, all of the combatants are volunteers and they could only ever be so. Very eloquently put.
Musical Mathematics: XTC--"Sacrificial Bonfire" + The Flaming Lips--"The Gash" = Fleet Foxes--"The Shrine/An Argument"
If you have not yet seen the official video for the Fleet Foxes song "The Shrine/An Argument," then I would highly recommend it. Surprisingly for a band as generally gentle and melodic as the Fleet Foxes, the video itself contains quite a few disturbing images. Of course, if you know the song, especially the "argument" part of it which starts around 2:30 or so, you can see how there is room for some disturbance.
Anyway, in watching the "argument" section I mentioned above, going from about 2:30 to 4:22 I couldn't help but think of some other songs that I love quite dearly and think are, at the very least, spiritual ancestors of this song. This is the quite unmathematical sense in which I am claiming that this song is the sum of the other two.
Anyway, on to the first song, XTC's "Sacrificial Bonfire," which is off of their best album, Skylarking (which is also what this blog is named after, as it had a huge influence over my musical interests, acting as a sort of gateway album to all kinds of other harmonious pop sounds). The link between these two songs lies in those human (?), marked (?) figures dancing around the fire in the Fleet Foxes video, which so remind me of these lines from "Sacrificial Bonfire":
"Assembled on high
Silhouettes against the sky
The smoke prayed and pranced
The sparks did their dance in the wind.
Disguises worn thin with less and less skin
And the clothes that were draped
Was all that told man from ape."
Against the stately drumbeat and melodic arpeggio that give the song a measured thrust, "Sacrificial Bonfire" is about the various kinds of imaginative practices throughout history humans have directed at promoting renewal, be it the renewal of the seasons, or of generations and societies (the disjunction between the joyous renewal of the world in spring and the much more anguished and fraught human potential for renewal led Eliot to remark that "April is the cruelest month," although he was by no means the first to dwell on this). The rhythm to the song is important because like the seasons, its power comes from cyclical renewal.
I see the quasi-animality of the human figures dancing around the campfire as a sign primal nature of their participation in this practices of renewal, and as a sign of the quasi-animality that remains with us no matter how civilized we think we have become. Likewise, in portraying this in the context of the memorial practices of the deer (?) in the video (at least that's what I assume is going on with the stakes), it reminds us that animals participate in some of the same activities even if in different and less elaborate forms.
At this point I would like to digress for a moment and discuss Skylarking itself, if for no other reason than to introduce my namesake a little more. The album itself is a playful "concept album" tracing the cycles of the seasons alongside the various developments of human life albeit loosely. Beginning with youth, freedom and love in their height with summer ("Grass" and "The Meeting Place" most clearly, though of course "Summer's Cauldron" starts everything off), the album moves on to the the doubts and disappointments of life and love with its autumnal tracks (from "That's Really Super, Supergirl" to "Big Day" or so), to the coldness of final loss and separation ("Another Satellite" to "Dying"). "Sacrifical Bonfire" is the official final song of the album (the later inclusion of the surprise hit and atheist anthem "Dear God" onto the album tends to mess up the track order somewhat, though thematically the song surely belongs in the "Winter" section given its relative negativity). The significance of this position is that it makes it the only spring song on the album and that is indeed fitting given its subject matter.
Ok, I've rambled enough about these songs (there's nothing precise in these mathematics) and would like to turn to the last one by The Flaming Lips--"The Gash (Battle Hymn for the Wounded Mathematician)," but will do so in the next post.
Anyway, in watching the "argument" section I mentioned above, going from about 2:30 to 4:22 I couldn't help but think of some other songs that I love quite dearly and think are, at the very least, spiritual ancestors of this song. This is the quite unmathematical sense in which I am claiming that this song is the sum of the other two.
Anyway, on to the first song, XTC's "Sacrificial Bonfire," which is off of their best album, Skylarking (which is also what this blog is named after, as it had a huge influence over my musical interests, acting as a sort of gateway album to all kinds of other harmonious pop sounds). The link between these two songs lies in those human (?), marked (?) figures dancing around the fire in the Fleet Foxes video, which so remind me of these lines from "Sacrificial Bonfire":
"Assembled on high
Silhouettes against the sky
The smoke prayed and pranced
The sparks did their dance in the wind.
Disguises worn thin with less and less skin
And the clothes that were draped
Was all that told man from ape."
Against the stately drumbeat and melodic arpeggio that give the song a measured thrust, "Sacrificial Bonfire" is about the various kinds of imaginative practices throughout history humans have directed at promoting renewal, be it the renewal of the seasons, or of generations and societies (the disjunction between the joyous renewal of the world in spring and the much more anguished and fraught human potential for renewal led Eliot to remark that "April is the cruelest month," although he was by no means the first to dwell on this). The rhythm to the song is important because like the seasons, its power comes from cyclical renewal.
I see the quasi-animality of the human figures dancing around the campfire as a sign primal nature of their participation in this practices of renewal, and as a sign of the quasi-animality that remains with us no matter how civilized we think we have become. Likewise, in portraying this in the context of the memorial practices of the deer (?) in the video (at least that's what I assume is going on with the stakes), it reminds us that animals participate in some of the same activities even if in different and less elaborate forms.
At this point I would like to digress for a moment and discuss Skylarking itself, if for no other reason than to introduce my namesake a little more. The album itself is a playful "concept album" tracing the cycles of the seasons alongside the various developments of human life albeit loosely. Beginning with youth, freedom and love in their height with summer ("Grass" and "The Meeting Place" most clearly, though of course "Summer's Cauldron" starts everything off), the album moves on to the the doubts and disappointments of life and love with its autumnal tracks (from "That's Really Super, Supergirl" to "Big Day" or so), to the coldness of final loss and separation ("Another Satellite" to "Dying"). "Sacrifical Bonfire" is the official final song of the album (the later inclusion of the surprise hit and atheist anthem "Dear God" onto the album tends to mess up the track order somewhat, though thematically the song surely belongs in the "Winter" section given its relative negativity). The significance of this position is that it makes it the only spring song on the album and that is indeed fitting given its subject matter.
Ok, I've rambled enough about these songs (there's nothing precise in these mathematics) and would like to turn to the last one by The Flaming Lips--"The Gash (Battle Hymn for the Wounded Mathematician)," but will do so in the next post.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Cheery Songs About Unintended Pregnancies #1: Michael Jackson--"Wanna Be Startin' Something"
One of the ways I avoided doing schoolwork back in high school and university was coming up with lists of songs that shared the same hilarious theme. I tried a few with various degrees of success, the most successful of which was, as the title of this post demonstrates, cheery songs about unintended pregnancies. Now, while I don't hold either the cheeriness or the unintendedness to too strict a standard, in general I look for songs with a fair amount of dissonance between form (cheeriness) and content (unintended pregnancy). I don't necessarily have a lot to say about some of these songs, the dissonance is usually enough, but if I have any additional commentary I will undoubtedly share it.
The first one on my list (there's no particular order to it) is Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something."
Formally I know the song is not exactly cheery, its more supremely groovin' than anything, but I for one think that's good enough, after all, it isn't slow, meandering and depressive. In terms of the lyrical content of the song, I'm not going to hazard a guess at what all of it is about and how much of it fits together, but the following lyrics are pretty clear about what you shouldn't be starting if you aren't ready for it (hint: its a baby)
If You Cant Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
Then Don't Have A Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
And Don't Think Maybe (Yeah, Yeah)
If You Can't Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
You'll Be Always Tryin'
To Stop That Child From Cryin'
Hustlin', Stealin', Lyin'
Now Baby's Slowly Dyin'
I don't think there's much more I can say about this; it seems like pretty good advice.
The first one on my list (there's no particular order to it) is Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something."
Formally I know the song is not exactly cheery, its more supremely groovin' than anything, but I for one think that's good enough, after all, it isn't slow, meandering and depressive. In terms of the lyrical content of the song, I'm not going to hazard a guess at what all of it is about and how much of it fits together, but the following lyrics are pretty clear about what you shouldn't be starting if you aren't ready for it (hint: its a baby)
If You Cant Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
Then Don't Have A Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
And Don't Think Maybe (Yeah, Yeah)
If You Can't Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
You'll Be Always Tryin'
To Stop That Child From Cryin'
Hustlin', Stealin', Lyin'
Now Baby's Slowly Dyin'
I don't think there's much more I can say about this; it seems like pretty good advice.
Misrecognitions: The Posies--"Pay You Back in Time"
I posted the lyrics to The Posies song "Pay You Back in Time" for more than just altruistic reasons, although I certainly do want to spread the word about the band I consider to be one of the best out there. I first read about them on Wilson and Alroy's review page years ago when I was trying to broaden my musical horizons. I dug the songs of theirs I could get a hold of at the time, but it took a few years (and exposure to "Amazing Disgrace," which is the best album I know of) to really get to know The Posies. I couldn't agree more with what W & A say about "Amazing Disgrace," it is a 15-track tour de force in every respect. Anyway, I do want to promote The Posies, especially since they are so criminally underrecognized, but really you will see me return to them over and over again because I just can't help wanting to write about their work. I find it incredibly compelling, especially the "inscrutable lyrics are loaded with poetic allusions and head-spinning wordplay" that W & A give the nod to.
Speaking of "Amazing Disgrace," I believe that "Pay You Back in Time" is a demo that The Posies recorded during (or in and around) the recording sessions for "Amazing Disgrace." ("At Least, At Last," the compilation it can be found on dates it in the 1993-1994 time period, which is after "Frosting on the Beater" and quite a bit before "Amazing Disgrace," and there are lots of tracks from the latter on it such as "Daily Mutilation," "World," "Throwaway," "Everybody is a F*cking Liar," and "Fight It.") Anyway, the "academic" details of dating the recording aside, the interesting thing about this track, as its title suggests, is that it is about debt, and more particularly, the position of being in debt to someone and the attempt to get out of it. In a lot of ways this makes it the sister song to "Please Return It," which is also primarily concerned with being in an unbalanced relationship with another person.
What is particularly interesting about "Pay You Back in Time" (PYBT) is the way that the ambiguity of the very last line in the very last verse (not counting the refrain)throws the meaning of the rest of the song into doubt. The line, which is really quite stunning, is as follows: "All those lies that I told you, they must have been true." The song is torn between the potential ways of resolving the contradiction expressed by those "lies" turning out to be true.
The situation captured by the song is one of a fundamental misrecognition wherein what had seemed to be a pack of lies turns out to be the truth, but the question is, whose lies, and what is being misrecognized?
The song begins with the speaker (I guess I should say singer, but I'm so used to writing about literature, poetry in particular, the I'll stick with speaker) proclaiming that he never got to tell his side of the story because he lost contact with the person he is addressing (some former beloved judging by the reference to "love" in the second verse). The reason for this communication breakdown seems to be that other people were telling lies about the speaker and his intentions concerning whatever mysterious transgression or debt that needs to be paid back:
Well, they never let you know;
All they filled [you in with] was blanks.
As the distance and time will show,
All they protected you from was my thanks.
And you never took the call
That I placed to explain it,
Explain it all.
The most straightforward reading of the song's final line takes it as a reference to this initial situation. When the speaker first promised to pay the debt back, to make good on it, we can assume that all those people said that he never really had any intention of doing so. The claim that "I'll pay you back in time" may have been branded a lie, but by the end of the song when everyone but the speaker has abandoned this figure (the beloved debt-collector), it turns out to be true.
Now, this explanation is a pretty good one, and the story it tells is plenty interesting, especially with the devastating lines littered about the song, such as this one describing the sense of being in someone's debt: "Well, they say it never rests, like the sun on an empire in distress." Plus, it does make this last line into a minor triumph for the speaker, a final vindication of the truth of his love and character.
So why do I have to worry about alternatives? Well, I'm a cynical man and have known enough flaky people in my day to know that a lot of promises are cheaply held, and the more time people spend saying "I'll pay you back" the less time the spend actually doing it. So, while I think it
From this perspective the first verse, which I've quoted above, sounds a lot like the indignant protests of someone who resents being being in debt, and the blow to his self-esteem that it represents. The claim to be able to "explain it all" is the desire to see one's actions as justified, to somehow remove or mitigate the culpability of the debt or transgression, or at least the sense of responsibility that attends it. Explanation here is essentially an attempt to lessen the sense of indebtedness by means other than paying it back.
However cynical this may appear, this perspective actually makes the final line more interesting. If the speaker does by whatever turn of events end up being the only person left with the (ex)beloved, then, rather than a story of steadfast commitment it becomes a story of unexpected and perhaps unintended, reconciliation. Instead of the (ex)beloved misrecognizing the intentions and character of the speaker, the speaker actually misrecognizes his own character. What to the speaker had always been a self-serving lie, "I'll pay you back in time," becomes, by a simple twist of fate, the truth as he finds himself in the unexpected position of being able and willing to pay it back.
What is so interesting about this? Well, according to this reading the moral of this story is that we often only really know our own intentions and character retrospectively. We often tell lies about ourselves that turn out to be true, partially because we have told those lies long enough that we started to believe them, but also because we might not know enough about ourselves beforehand to know if they are really lies since our character and our actions are not exhausted by our explicit intentions. Now, perhaps I am misrecognizing this song in this way because I find this thought deeply satisfying, explaining as it does so many of the strange twists and turns of life, but it is certain that I only recognized this retrospectively.
Speaking of "Amazing Disgrace," I believe that "Pay You Back in Time" is a demo that The Posies recorded during (or in and around) the recording sessions for "Amazing Disgrace." ("At Least, At Last," the compilation it can be found on dates it in the 1993-1994 time period, which is after "Frosting on the Beater" and quite a bit before "Amazing Disgrace," and there are lots of tracks from the latter on it such as "Daily Mutilation," "World," "Throwaway," "Everybody is a F*cking Liar," and "Fight It.") Anyway, the "academic" details of dating the recording aside, the interesting thing about this track, as its title suggests, is that it is about debt, and more particularly, the position of being in debt to someone and the attempt to get out of it. In a lot of ways this makes it the sister song to "Please Return It," which is also primarily concerned with being in an unbalanced relationship with another person.
What is particularly interesting about "Pay You Back in Time" (PYBT) is the way that the ambiguity of the very last line in the very last verse (not counting the refrain)throws the meaning of the rest of the song into doubt. The line, which is really quite stunning, is as follows: "All those lies that I told you, they must have been true." The song is torn between the potential ways of resolving the contradiction expressed by those "lies" turning out to be true.
The situation captured by the song is one of a fundamental misrecognition wherein what had seemed to be a pack of lies turns out to be the truth, but the question is, whose lies, and what is being misrecognized?
The song begins with the speaker (I guess I should say singer, but I'm so used to writing about literature, poetry in particular, the I'll stick with speaker) proclaiming that he never got to tell his side of the story because he lost contact with the person he is addressing (some former beloved judging by the reference to "love" in the second verse). The reason for this communication breakdown seems to be that other people were telling lies about the speaker and his intentions concerning whatever mysterious transgression or debt that needs to be paid back:
Well, they never let you know;
All they filled [you in with] was blanks.
As the distance and time will show,
All they protected you from was my thanks.
And you never took the call
That I placed to explain it,
Explain it all.
The most straightforward reading of the song's final line takes it as a reference to this initial situation. When the speaker first promised to pay the debt back, to make good on it, we can assume that all those people said that he never really had any intention of doing so. The claim that "I'll pay you back in time" may have been branded a lie, but by the end of the song when everyone but the speaker has abandoned this figure (the beloved debt-collector), it turns out to be true.
Now, this explanation is a pretty good one, and the story it tells is plenty interesting, especially with the devastating lines littered about the song, such as this one describing the sense of being in someone's debt: "Well, they say it never rests, like the sun on an empire in distress." Plus, it does make this last line into a minor triumph for the speaker, a final vindication of the truth of his love and character.
So why do I have to worry about alternatives? Well, I'm a cynical man and have known enough flaky people in my day to know that a lot of promises are cheaply held, and the more time people spend saying "I'll pay you back" the less time the spend actually doing it. So, while I think it
From this perspective the first verse, which I've quoted above, sounds a lot like the indignant protests of someone who resents being being in debt, and the blow to his self-esteem that it represents. The claim to be able to "explain it all" is the desire to see one's actions as justified, to somehow remove or mitigate the culpability of the debt or transgression, or at least the sense of responsibility that attends it. Explanation here is essentially an attempt to lessen the sense of indebtedness by means other than paying it back.
However cynical this may appear, this perspective actually makes the final line more interesting. If the speaker does by whatever turn of events end up being the only person left with the (ex)beloved, then, rather than a story of steadfast commitment it becomes a story of unexpected and perhaps unintended, reconciliation. Instead of the (ex)beloved misrecognizing the intentions and character of the speaker, the speaker actually misrecognizes his own character. What to the speaker had always been a self-serving lie, "I'll pay you back in time," becomes, by a simple twist of fate, the truth as he finds himself in the unexpected position of being able and willing to pay it back.
What is so interesting about this? Well, according to this reading the moral of this story is that we often only really know our own intentions and character retrospectively. We often tell lies about ourselves that turn out to be true, partially because we have told those lies long enough that we started to believe them, but also because we might not know enough about ourselves beforehand to know if they are really lies since our character and our actions are not exhausted by our explicit intentions. Now, perhaps I am misrecognizing this song in this way because I find this thought deeply satisfying, explaining as it does so many of the strange twists and turns of life, but it is certain that I only recognized this retrospectively.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
The Posies--"Pay You Back in Time" (Lyrics)
Below are the lyrics to The Posies song "Pay You Back in Time." I am posting the lyrics rather than a link to a recording of the song because it never made it past the demo stage and is only collected on "At Least, At Last," which means there are no easily available versions online. You can find a copy to preview for about 45s here, but otherwise there's not much out there. This also means that the transcription of the lyrics is also my own, so I take full credit for any errors. Lastly, in terms of errors, any words I am unsure of I have placed in brackets.
Well, they never let you know;
All they filled [you in with] was blanks.
As the distance and time will show,
All they protected you from was my thanks.
And you never took the call
That I placed to explain it,
Explain it all.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Well, they say it never rests,
Like the sun on an empire in distress.
And they say all love [needs tests],
But I think we've fulfilled that request.
Now, just let me catch my breath...
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
It's beneficial to both sides
We acknowledge the [work] we've both done.
It's better not to become what we hate
Or hate what we've become.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Well, they really took the cake
When they left you alone,
Now, what a mistake.
Now you're taking it all in.
So you started with nothing,
Well, better to begin.
Well, just look who's here with you,
All those lies that I told you,
They must have been true.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Well, they never let you know;
All they filled [you in with] was blanks.
As the distance and time will show,
All they protected you from was my thanks.
And you never took the call
That I placed to explain it,
Explain it all.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Well, they say it never rests,
Like the sun on an empire in distress.
And they say all love [needs tests],
But I think we've fulfilled that request.
Now, just let me catch my breath...
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
It's beneficial to both sides
We acknowledge the [work] we've both done.
It's better not to become what we hate
Or hate what we've become.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Well, they really took the cake
When they left you alone,
Now, what a mistake.
Now you're taking it all in.
So you started with nothing,
Well, better to begin.
Well, just look who's here with you,
All those lies that I told you,
They must have been true.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Keyboard Reform
All you diligent grammarians out there, I'm sure you are dismayed by the doubled hyphens that I am using to separate the artist's name from their song's name rather than an em-dash. I too regret this. Word will turn doubled-hyphens into em-dashes most of the time, but it would be nice if there were a proper key for the em-dash. Because of this I fully support the proposals for keyboard reform put forth by this Slate article (especially getting rid of CAPS LOCK, which makes an already too-easy thing as being an asshole on the internet even easier).
Equi-vocals: Big Star--"The Ballad of El Goodo"
In the spirit of punning as well as the desire to sometimes only focus on a few lines of a song rather than the whole thing, I will be characterizing posts with a narrow focus upon an ambiguous line or two, as "Equi-vocals."
I am starting off with Big Star's "The Ballad of El Goodo" because the sheer insistence of this song's refrain has always drawn my attention to it, and to the question of just what lies behind it.
This line, "And there ain't no one gonna turn me 'round/ Ain't no one gonna turn me 'round," embodies the spirit of opposition and independence that the song is all about. The question that this insistent line prompts, however, is the meaning of this opposition. On the one hand, "Ain't no one gonna turn me 'round'" sounds like a cry of an individual determined not to let anything stop him, which would make this song a kind of celebration about the kind of person who can resist the temptation to just be like one of the crowd, or the masses. But on the other hand, this line could also reflect a kind of insane recognition that one has gone too far, that,consumed by the spirit of opposition one is beyond all help and there is no turning back from the looming abyss.
This song's glorious melodies and overall triumphant sound certainly suggest that the former is the better interpretation, but I still can't shake the sense that the latter lurks beneath the surface. I am reminded of Aristotle's saying early on in Book One of the Politics, that "he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state." Even if this song is about resolute opposition to all of the powers that will "zip you up and dress you down and stand you in a row," there is nevertheless still a point at which that opposition can go too far and become madness, a denial of one's own humanity.
I am starting off with Big Star's "The Ballad of El Goodo" because the sheer insistence of this song's refrain has always drawn my attention to it, and to the question of just what lies behind it.
This line, "And there ain't no one gonna turn me 'round/ Ain't no one gonna turn me 'round," embodies the spirit of opposition and independence that the song is all about. The question that this insistent line prompts, however, is the meaning of this opposition. On the one hand, "Ain't no one gonna turn me 'round'" sounds like a cry of an individual determined not to let anything stop him, which would make this song a kind of celebration about the kind of person who can resist the temptation to just be like one of the crowd, or the masses. But on the other hand, this line could also reflect a kind of insane recognition that one has gone too far, that,consumed by the spirit of opposition one is beyond all help and there is no turning back from the looming abyss.
This song's glorious melodies and overall triumphant sound certainly suggest that the former is the better interpretation, but I still can't shake the sense that the latter lurks beneath the surface. I am reminded of Aristotle's saying early on in Book One of the Politics, that "he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state." Even if this song is about resolute opposition to all of the powers that will "zip you up and dress you down and stand you in a row," there is nevertheless still a point at which that opposition can go too far and become madness, a denial of one's own humanity.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
The Perils of Indeterminateness Part One: James Blunt--"You're Beautiful"
Ok, so as a change of pace after the earnestness of the Fleet Foxes I have decided to pick on some terrible music. Now, while the pace may change the issue at stake will not: just like the first verse of "Helplessness Blues," the songs I will deal with here are all about indeterminacy and vagueness. However, while "Helplessness Blues" deals with indeterminacy, these songs deal in it. But hey, there's nothing like the levity that comes from criticizing the ineptness of others to ease thoughts of the predicament of modernity.
Anyway, first up on the chopping block is a song that oozed steadily from the radio a few years ago, James Blunt's "You're Beautiful." To be blunt (I'm sure that joke's been overused, but he's all about overuse, over-emoting, and overkill so it's fitting), this song is about as beautiful as a Hallmark card. But then again, it is designed to appeal to people for whom bland simplicity and sentimentality are the hallmarks of beauty (clearly a different kind of terrible beauty than Yeats' kind). I've included the version with lyrics so you can gaze at them and tremble, mortal.
Now, just as the bizarre mixture of childishness and adult sexuality in Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry" made for a telling if probably unintended example of the unthinking sexualization of young children, the fit between form and content in "Beautiful" is likewise unintentionally apt. The shallowness of this song, musically and lyrically is only matched by the shallowness of its theme: love at first (and only) sight.
Skipping past the less than brilliant opening, the first verse chronicle's the singer's encounter on the subway with a woman:
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.
This verse perfectly illustrates why I am suspicious of claims of love at first sight. The "purity" of the love involved here is the purity of nothingness (or pure horse shit). After all, what basis is there for this outpouring of song? Nothing but a brief smile, which I am inclined to think was more a social nicety (or an awkward reaction, since "She could see from my face that I was, Flying/Fucking high," and there's nothing sexier than drug-addled creep leering at you on the subway) than a come hither stare. The love on display here is unrelated to everything actually important about this woman (who she is, what she's actually like, or what she thinks and feels, for instance) other than her beauty. But this beauty--and this is where the significance of this post's title kicks in--is itself utterly meaningless and empty. The problem with "beautiful" is that it the way it is used here it is really more of an evaluative rather than a descriptive term, i.e., it tells us less about the object than the speaker's relation to the object. That relation is extremely tenuous (and maybe a little creepy as well) so we are left with a love song that, like most love songs, is mostly about the shallow ego of its singer. The best he can come up with is to describe her as an angel, but that only works since there is really nothing human about her so she might as well be some kind of imaginary/mythological figure.
So, rather than being romantic this song is actually quite misogynistic in the way that it reduces her to an occasion to fantasize. The indeterminacy of "you're beautiful" means that it ends up being an insult instead of a compliment.
Anyway, first up on the chopping block is a song that oozed steadily from the radio a few years ago, James Blunt's "You're Beautiful." To be blunt (I'm sure that joke's been overused, but he's all about overuse, over-emoting, and overkill so it's fitting), this song is about as beautiful as a Hallmark card. But then again, it is designed to appeal to people for whom bland simplicity and sentimentality are the hallmarks of beauty (clearly a different kind of terrible beauty than Yeats' kind). I've included the version with lyrics so you can gaze at them and tremble, mortal.
Now, just as the bizarre mixture of childishness and adult sexuality in Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry" made for a telling if probably unintended example of the unthinking sexualization of young children, the fit between form and content in "Beautiful" is likewise unintentionally apt. The shallowness of this song, musically and lyrically is only matched by the shallowness of its theme: love at first (and only) sight.
Skipping past the less than brilliant opening, the first verse chronicle's the singer's encounter on the subway with a woman:
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.
This verse perfectly illustrates why I am suspicious of claims of love at first sight. The "purity" of the love involved here is the purity of nothingness (or pure horse shit). After all, what basis is there for this outpouring of song? Nothing but a brief smile, which I am inclined to think was more a social nicety (or an awkward reaction, since "She could see from my face that I was, Flying/Fucking high," and there's nothing sexier than drug-addled creep leering at you on the subway) than a come hither stare. The love on display here is unrelated to everything actually important about this woman (who she is, what she's actually like, or what she thinks and feels, for instance) other than her beauty. But this beauty--and this is where the significance of this post's title kicks in--is itself utterly meaningless and empty. The problem with "beautiful" is that it the way it is used here it is really more of an evaluative rather than a descriptive term, i.e., it tells us less about the object than the speaker's relation to the object. That relation is extremely tenuous (and maybe a little creepy as well) so we are left with a love song that, like most love songs, is mostly about the shallow ego of its singer. The best he can come up with is to describe her as an angel, but that only works since there is really nothing human about her so she might as well be some kind of imaginary/mythological figure.
So, rather than being romantic this song is actually quite misogynistic in the way that it reduces her to an occasion to fantasize. The indeterminacy of "you're beautiful" means that it ends up being an insult instead of a compliment.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Fleet Foxes - "Helplessness Blues" (Part Two)
So, with the rejection of the empty uniqueness of a pure and "heroic" individualism, the exploration of what other conceptions of the self continues. The "cog in a machine" approach is abandoned not just because of the vagueness evident in its introduction, but because of its determinism and the loss of freedom that that entails.
To illustrate this the next lines explore the idea of a "cog in the machine" by referencing its closest historical analogue in the questions
"What’s my name?
What’s my station?
Oh just tell me what I should do."
The notion of an identity (a name) and a role (a station) that is dictated by some kind of social hierarchy is, of course, an old idea. The cohesion of feudal and tribal societies, for instance, is owed largely to such structures. Against the cold, disenchanted and alienated backdrop of modernity, it may be comforting to hearken back to the time when someone could "just tell me what I should do" and for that to be in itself authoritative.
Part of what I admire about this song is the way that it can entertain these kinds of tempting positions (even if only in the space of a line or two) without embracing them as an easy way out. The song quickly shows why the "cog in a machine"/"tell me what I should do" kind of submission to some kind of external influence is not a viable option:
"I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night
who would do such injustice to you.
Or bow down and be grateful,
and say ‘Sure take all that you see,'
to the men who move only in dimly lit halls
and determine my future for me."
Exactly what injustice is being referred to is not clear, but the idea surely is. While I may have associated this "cog"/"hierarchy" with older values and social structures, that is not to say that it is by any means confined to the past. At the beginning of my previous post I mentioned the sense in which the Fleet foxes are continuing the Folk movement's tradition of protesting injustice, and we can certainly recognize this kind of injustice in the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis (and subsequent recession). The moral of this story for any age, then, is that to simply surrender your autonomy along with your individuality is risk losing everything.
What is the answer then? The closest thing to one comes with the second half of the song, which is marked by a distinct change from the strident tempo of the first part to a much warmer, majestically sprawling sound. This difference in sound, from one of searching to one of celebration, reverence, satisfaction, certainly suggests a more tenable position. This position is marked in particular by the replacement of the cog/machine imagery with the organic figure of tending to an orchard:
"If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm raw.
If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore.
And you would wait tables
and soon run the store.
Gold hair in the sunlight,
my light in the dawn.
If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore."
What works here is clearly the suggestive difference between the cog/machine relationship and the orchardist/orchard. The orchardist (I know it's an awkward word, but what else is there?) is active and self-determining in a way that the cog clearly is not, yet that actively is circumscribed by that of the orchard itself. The reciprocity to be had in this situation is clearly preferably to its lack in either of the initial options provided by the song.
There is a similar movement encapsulated in the lines about waiting tables and then running the store, where the trend is to go from some kind of servitude to autonomy. I am a little dubious about this side of it, however, because the job waiting tables seems like something necessitated by the move to the orchards in the first place. That certainly might mitigate the satisfaction to be had from finally running the store (I speak from experience here).
But of course it is important to keep in mind that this whole section and the kind of reconciliation that it represents, as beautiful as it is, operates under the auspices of a series of "ifs." The beauty of this section is the beauty of a dream or a wish. It is for this reason that I don't want to be too harsh on this section. Normally, as someone who spent a very long and painful week raking blueberries, and who has known plenty of farmers, I am more than a little wary of any attempt to romanticize the kind of backbreaking labour that goes with farming. The persistent recognition that there is a tremendous amount of ache and soreness to that life tempers this, but even more importantly I think that the emphasis on soreness is a measure of the difficulty of the reconciliation projected here. Indeed, this reconciliation might only be possible in a dream, or a work of art like a song, or a movie, as the last line of the song suggests: "Some day I'll be like the man on the screen..."
To illustrate this the next lines explore the idea of a "cog in the machine" by referencing its closest historical analogue in the questions
"What’s my name?
What’s my station?
Oh just tell me what I should do."
The notion of an identity (a name) and a role (a station) that is dictated by some kind of social hierarchy is, of course, an old idea. The cohesion of feudal and tribal societies, for instance, is owed largely to such structures. Against the cold, disenchanted and alienated backdrop of modernity, it may be comforting to hearken back to the time when someone could "just tell me what I should do" and for that to be in itself authoritative.
Part of what I admire about this song is the way that it can entertain these kinds of tempting positions (even if only in the space of a line or two) without embracing them as an easy way out. The song quickly shows why the "cog in a machine"/"tell me what I should do" kind of submission to some kind of external influence is not a viable option:
"I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night
who would do such injustice to you.
Or bow down and be grateful,
and say ‘Sure take all that you see,'
to the men who move only in dimly lit halls
and determine my future for me."
Exactly what injustice is being referred to is not clear, but the idea surely is. While I may have associated this "cog"/"hierarchy" with older values and social structures, that is not to say that it is by any means confined to the past. At the beginning of my previous post I mentioned the sense in which the Fleet foxes are continuing the Folk movement's tradition of protesting injustice, and we can certainly recognize this kind of injustice in the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis (and subsequent recession). The moral of this story for any age, then, is that to simply surrender your autonomy along with your individuality is risk losing everything.
What is the answer then? The closest thing to one comes with the second half of the song, which is marked by a distinct change from the strident tempo of the first part to a much warmer, majestically sprawling sound. This difference in sound, from one of searching to one of celebration, reverence, satisfaction, certainly suggests a more tenable position. This position is marked in particular by the replacement of the cog/machine imagery with the organic figure of tending to an orchard:
"If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm raw.
If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore.
And you would wait tables
and soon run the store.
Gold hair in the sunlight,
my light in the dawn.
If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore."
What works here is clearly the suggestive difference between the cog/machine relationship and the orchardist/orchard. The orchardist (I know it's an awkward word, but what else is there?) is active and self-determining in a way that the cog clearly is not, yet that actively is circumscribed by that of the orchard itself. The reciprocity to be had in this situation is clearly preferably to its lack in either of the initial options provided by the song.
There is a similar movement encapsulated in the lines about waiting tables and then running the store, where the trend is to go from some kind of servitude to autonomy. I am a little dubious about this side of it, however, because the job waiting tables seems like something necessitated by the move to the orchards in the first place. That certainly might mitigate the satisfaction to be had from finally running the store (I speak from experience here).
But of course it is important to keep in mind that this whole section and the kind of reconciliation that it represents, as beautiful as it is, operates under the auspices of a series of "ifs." The beauty of this section is the beauty of a dream or a wish. It is for this reason that I don't want to be too harsh on this section. Normally, as someone who spent a very long and painful week raking blueberries, and who has known plenty of farmers, I am more than a little wary of any attempt to romanticize the kind of backbreaking labour that goes with farming. The persistent recognition that there is a tremendous amount of ache and soreness to that life tempers this, but even more importantly I think that the emphasis on soreness is a measure of the difficulty of the reconciliation projected here. Indeed, this reconciliation might only be possible in a dream, or a work of art like a song, or a movie, as the last line of the song suggests: "Some day I'll be like the man on the screen..."
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Fleet Foxes - "Helplessness Blues" (Part One)
Back in its heyday folk music was all about protesting injustice, so it shouldn't be surprising that the Fleet Foxes, a band with folksy inflections to their baroque pop creations, would write the closest thing to a protest song I've heard in awhile. (Of course, I'm not exactly on the lookout for protest songs, so I'm no authority on such things).
Anyway, the Fleet Foxes' song "Helplessness Blues," released last year and therefore just a little before the Occupy movements got off the ground (and in the middle of the "recovery" from a recession) is a great song that reflects the spirit of that movement.
As we shall see, some of the song is centered around economic issues, but it also goes much deeper than that to question some of the central elements of the modern ethos of which the woes of capitalism are only a part. The song opens with a reconsideration of an extreme notion of individuality:
“I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique,
like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes,
unique in each way you’d conceive."
What is immediately apparent in these lines is the emptiness of this conception of uniqueness: being "somehow" unique says about as much here as being "unique in each way you'd conceive." Each form of "uniqueness" is essentially an empty vessel that has to be filled by real content. found in life in order to be really meaningful. This real content is part of the world that we share with others-the actions, relations, and roles, i.e., the things that we care about and that occupy our time in daily life. Even the distinctness of snowflakes from each other depends upon the overarching similarity of what each shares as a snowflakes (a fact alluded to by the repetition of the word "snowflake" in the line). Likewise, the fact that this song begins as an account of what the singer was raised up to believe, his being raised suggests that any individuality to be had is tempered by the actions and ideas of others
Despite the emptiness of this kind of uniqueness, this conception of it underwrites a lot of our culture's deeply held beliefs about individuality and originality. Indeed, the middle line about "a snowflake distinct among snowflakes" reminds me of something I often heard when I was younger (and would likely hear again if I spent more time around children): adults would tell children that each of them was unique; like snowflakes, no two are identical. This was, I believe, meant to make them feel good about themselves as if their uniqueness was a great achievement worth being proud of (so was everyone else's apparently). The falseness of this idea is evident from the fact that many of the most boring and irritating people I have ever met were people who considered their originality their finest quality-rarely have I ever heard uttered so many formulaic and uninspired declarations as from the mouth of an "original."
While the historical nature of every human life means that we are undoubtedly unique and irreplaceable (contra Beyonce, who reveals a certain callousness in her song "Irreplaceable") in a basic sense, I would hardly rank uniqueness among the most worthy of human qualities. Mere uniqueness cannot hold a candle to courage, intelligence, or humour, for instance. The conception of individuality that puts some form of uniqueness and originality ahead of all else as the defining quality of a person fails to recognize the greater importance these others, perhaps because they do not pertain solely to the individual, but lead outward.
For these reasons the song turns and rejects this individualism in the space of the same verse:
"And now after some thinking
I’d say I’d rather be
a functioning cog in some great machinery
serving something beyond me."
On the one hand, this represents a radical step forward, a rejection of individualism so extreme that it seems to fall into its opposite, some kind of blind and mechanical determinism or collectivism where nothing is anything but a piece of something larger. But on the other hand, it is only a half-step, as the singer is not fully committed to this position at all: it comes to him as the result of thinking, and exists in the form of a preference or a desire, not as something already realized in his life. Furthermore, as with the individualism of the initial lines, there is a lot of vagueness to this position, as we are left with "some great machinery" that is "something beyond me"-not exactly the stuff of great passions and the grand ends of life. Even my recourse to such a vague sentence as the one that contains the words, "nothing is anything but a piece of something larger," to describe it suggests that this position is perhaps not much of improvement. The yearning to be part of something larger, to be connected with the world as a whole, is there in an inchoate form, but it has yet to be realized adequately in thought, much less in action. This is why the song takes its first really dramatic turn, introducing the harmonies for which the Fleet Foxes are famous, as well as making explicit the confusion signified by all of the vagueness and indeterminacy of the earlier lines: " But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be,/ I’ll get back to you someday, soon you will see.”
Anyway, the Fleet Foxes' song "Helplessness Blues," released last year and therefore just a little before the Occupy movements got off the ground (and in the middle of the "recovery" from a recession) is a great song that reflects the spirit of that movement.
As we shall see, some of the song is centered around economic issues, but it also goes much deeper than that to question some of the central elements of the modern ethos of which the woes of capitalism are only a part. The song opens with a reconsideration of an extreme notion of individuality:
“I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique,
like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes,
unique in each way you’d conceive."
What is immediately apparent in these lines is the emptiness of this conception of uniqueness: being "somehow" unique says about as much here as being "unique in each way you'd conceive." Each form of "uniqueness" is essentially an empty vessel that has to be filled by real content. found in life in order to be really meaningful. This real content is part of the world that we share with others-the actions, relations, and roles, i.e., the things that we care about and that occupy our time in daily life. Even the distinctness of snowflakes from each other depends upon the overarching similarity of what each shares as a snowflakes (a fact alluded to by the repetition of the word "snowflake" in the line). Likewise, the fact that this song begins as an account of what the singer was raised up to believe, his being raised suggests that any individuality to be had is tempered by the actions and ideas of others
Despite the emptiness of this kind of uniqueness, this conception of it underwrites a lot of our culture's deeply held beliefs about individuality and originality. Indeed, the middle line about "a snowflake distinct among snowflakes" reminds me of something I often heard when I was younger (and would likely hear again if I spent more time around children): adults would tell children that each of them was unique; like snowflakes, no two are identical. This was, I believe, meant to make them feel good about themselves as if their uniqueness was a great achievement worth being proud of (so was everyone else's apparently). The falseness of this idea is evident from the fact that many of the most boring and irritating people I have ever met were people who considered their originality their finest quality-rarely have I ever heard uttered so many formulaic and uninspired declarations as from the mouth of an "original."
While the historical nature of every human life means that we are undoubtedly unique and irreplaceable (contra Beyonce, who reveals a certain callousness in her song "Irreplaceable") in a basic sense, I would hardly rank uniqueness among the most worthy of human qualities. Mere uniqueness cannot hold a candle to courage, intelligence, or humour, for instance. The conception of individuality that puts some form of uniqueness and originality ahead of all else as the defining quality of a person fails to recognize the greater importance these others, perhaps because they do not pertain solely to the individual, but lead outward.
For these reasons the song turns and rejects this individualism in the space of the same verse:
"And now after some thinking
I’d say I’d rather be
a functioning cog in some great machinery
serving something beyond me."
On the one hand, this represents a radical step forward, a rejection of individualism so extreme that it seems to fall into its opposite, some kind of blind and mechanical determinism or collectivism where nothing is anything but a piece of something larger. But on the other hand, it is only a half-step, as the singer is not fully committed to this position at all: it comes to him as the result of thinking, and exists in the form of a preference or a desire, not as something already realized in his life. Furthermore, as with the individualism of the initial lines, there is a lot of vagueness to this position, as we are left with "some great machinery" that is "something beyond me"-not exactly the stuff of great passions and the grand ends of life. Even my recourse to such a vague sentence as the one that contains the words, "nothing is anything but a piece of something larger," to describe it suggests that this position is perhaps not much of improvement. The yearning to be part of something larger, to be connected with the world as a whole, is there in an inchoate form, but it has yet to be realized adequately in thought, much less in action. This is why the song takes its first really dramatic turn, introducing the harmonies for which the Fleet Foxes are famous, as well as making explicit the confusion signified by all of the vagueness and indeterminacy of the earlier lines: " But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be,/ I’ll get back to you someday, soon you will see.”
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Fergie - Big Girls Don't Cry (Personal)
While I am certainly a lot more likely to want to write about music that I actually like since those are the songs that I actually want to listen to enough times in order to get engaged with the meaning of the song, that doesn't mean that I have to ignore some of the particularly egregious songs that come my way. The "hits" of the summer are particularly bad in this regard, as they tend to be nearly inescapable. Take Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry (Personal)" for example. In the summer of 2007 this song played on the radio continuously, and since I spent a lot of time driving around for work that summer that meant that it was seemingly everywhere I was. Or, to characterize one waste land in terms of another: "Fergie in the morning blaring behind you, and Fergie in the evening rising to meet you, I will show you fear on the FM dial." (Not to mention the horror's of Rihanna's "Umbrella," Bon Jovi's "Making a Memory," and the Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah," among others.) Of course, one benefit of writing about things you dislike is that's it's particularly easy to find the humor in it, and there is plenty of humor to be found in the menagerie of (often contradictory) cliches fighting for airtime in this song.
Now, I realize that artists don't always have to sing from personal experience and are free to inhabit different situations, personalities, etc. in their songs, but freedom in the choice of subject matter does not equal freedom of presentation when it comes to actually writing a good song. So, this means that there need not be anything wrong with a woman in her thirties singing a song with a title like "Big Girls Don't Cry" that immediately suggests pre-adolescence. After all, there is nothing out of the ordinary about looking back at one's childhood. However, this is where the whole issue of presentation comes in, and I have to say that in this regard the song is a bit of a mess.
Without discussing the video, which (as you will soon see) would inject a whole other level of weirdness into the song, let me focus on the strange combination of sex and childhood innocence throughout the song. On the sex front, Fergie (god knows what a search for the terms "sex front Fergie" would turn up) sings things like "The smell of your skin lingers on me now," but then spends most of the song singing about things from a very (very) young girl's perspective in the chorus: "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket." The little girl in this song has an idea of romance that has nothing to do with sex: "Like a little school mate in the schoolyard / We'll play jacks and Uno cards, / I'll be your best friend and you'll be mine, / Valentine."
The real weirdness is how the song begins to merge these two, and its in the merging that things get really creepy: "Yes, you can hold my hand if you want to, / 'Cause I want to hold yours too, / We'll be playmates and lovers / And share our secret worlds." Although perhaps Playboy has ruined the term "playmates" for good, I still see a big age discrepancy between the mentalities behind being playmates and lovers (and unless "secret worlds" is just a silly euphemism straight out of bad romance novel sex scenes--"love grottos" and such--then its very out of place as well). There is definitely something very off-putting about the juxtaposition of these two perspectives, particularly if they belong to the same person at the same time. Anyone who has such a childish emotional life might want to consider refraining from sexual relationships until they grow up some more.
Of course, we could give Fergie some credit and postulate that the collision of sex and childhood is meant as some kind of critical reflection upon the increasingly early sexualization of young children (a more subtle version of Dishwalla's "Pretty Babies" perhaps?) or at least a reflection of the contradictory impulses that mark the difficult transition to adulthood. But this is the "artist" who gave us the song "My Humps," so I'm not sure how far we can go with that one; if anything, she's probably just carrying on the project of increasing the trend of sexualizing the young which makes songs like "My Humps" generate even more money by expanding the market for them.
Now, I realize that artists don't always have to sing from personal experience and are free to inhabit different situations, personalities, etc. in their songs, but freedom in the choice of subject matter does not equal freedom of presentation when it comes to actually writing a good song. So, this means that there need not be anything wrong with a woman in her thirties singing a song with a title like "Big Girls Don't Cry" that immediately suggests pre-adolescence. After all, there is nothing out of the ordinary about looking back at one's childhood. However, this is where the whole issue of presentation comes in, and I have to say that in this regard the song is a bit of a mess.
Without discussing the video, which (as you will soon see) would inject a whole other level of weirdness into the song, let me focus on the strange combination of sex and childhood innocence throughout the song. On the sex front, Fergie (god knows what a search for the terms "sex front Fergie" would turn up) sings things like "The smell of your skin lingers on me now," but then spends most of the song singing about things from a very (very) young girl's perspective in the chorus: "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket." The little girl in this song has an idea of romance that has nothing to do with sex: "Like a little school mate in the schoolyard / We'll play jacks and Uno cards, / I'll be your best friend and you'll be mine, / Valentine."
The real weirdness is how the song begins to merge these two, and its in the merging that things get really creepy: "Yes, you can hold my hand if you want to, / 'Cause I want to hold yours too, / We'll be playmates and lovers / And share our secret worlds." Although perhaps Playboy has ruined the term "playmates" for good, I still see a big age discrepancy between the mentalities behind being playmates and lovers (and unless "secret worlds" is just a silly euphemism straight out of bad romance novel sex scenes--"love grottos" and such--then its very out of place as well). There is definitely something very off-putting about the juxtaposition of these two perspectives, particularly if they belong to the same person at the same time. Anyone who has such a childish emotional life might want to consider refraining from sexual relationships until they grow up some more.
Of course, we could give Fergie some credit and postulate that the collision of sex and childhood is meant as some kind of critical reflection upon the increasingly early sexualization of young children (a more subtle version of Dishwalla's "Pretty Babies" perhaps?) or at least a reflection of the contradictory impulses that mark the difficult transition to adulthood. But this is the "artist" who gave us the song "My Humps," so I'm not sure how far we can go with that one; if anything, she's probably just carrying on the project of increasing the trend of sexualizing the young which makes songs like "My Humps" generate even more money by expanding the market for them.
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