So, in the course of thinking about abstraction in my last post I
considered picking on Selena Gomez’s “Love You Like a Love Song”
because its a song that I’ve had to suffer through more times than
I’d care to and the blandness of the title (which is also about 90%
of the lyrical content of the song) speaks to its featureless abstraction.
After all, given the general
blandness of most love songs, to say something like I love you like a
love song sounds like it is just compounding abstraction upon
abstraction. But even though the song isn’t good or enjoyable, upon
listening to it a little more closely I can at least say that the
song wears its abstraction knowingly, perhaps even to the extent that
it could be said that it is unconsciously critical of its entire
genre. Maybe that last claim stretches it too far, but I try not to
be too abstract myself by one-sidedly condemning things (see Hegel’s
twistedly charming little essay Who Thinks Abstractly? for an
abstruse but fun illustration of how easy it is to be abstract
without knowing it—also note that there is nothing redeemable about
Fergie’s “Me Myself I”).
Anyway, if you want to follow me down this path, just consider the
line “I love you like a love song.” Its pretty bland since there
is nothing unexpected or unusual about the simile, and verbally the
repetition of the word “love” contributes to this (as does the
near-endless repetition of the line itself). But all of this should
not let us overlook what it means to love someone like a love song,
for it is not as if the two terms of comparison are identical. Love
songs tend to portray the extremes of love: intense obsession (I’m
thinking primarily of the very first moments of falling in love, but
also the scarier forms of obsession) and heartbreak, but they also
tend to be simple, catchy and repetitive, which is to say, the very
epitome of pop songs.
What’s worth noticing is the way that these two sets of
qualities tend to go together—obsession and heartbreak alike tend
to provoke repetition: “I need to see them again,” “I can’t
stop thinking about them,” etc. This need for repetition, it seems
to me, comes from the fact that both obsession and heartbreak are
defined by the lack of their object. Both are in their own way
blinded to the reality of their object by the desire for its
possession, a fact that renders the whole relation rather abstract
and thus in need of constant reinforcement.
In this regard perhaps there is something to this idea that there
is a type of love like a love song: one that is intense, immediate,
overly dramatic, and a matter of compulsive repetition in order to
keep the feeling alive. And there is one more commonality linked to
these, the abstractness of the love song, which we see in the
vagueness of the image of the beloved and concomitant overemphasis
upon the lover’s relatively unanchored feelings. This abstractness
helps to fulfil the function of the love song, which is to promote
identification with the song’s affect and to prompt its repetition.
After all, the more abstract the lover and beloved the easier it is
to project one’s own feelings onto them while at the same time
enjoying their apparent objectification.
The qualities of abstraction and repetition at in the love song
here happen to be just what Gomez’s song is about, particularly if
you note that the line after the repetition of “I love you like a
love song” is “And I keep hittin’
repeat-peat-peat-peat-peat-peat.” While this message comes through
more on a formal level through its intense repetition than any real
lyrical exploration, even at the level of its lyrics there is
self-awareness about this fact, as the beginning of the song
introduces its context as one of the depletion of the content of a
love song in favour of repetition:
“It's been said and done
Every beautiful thought's been
already sung
And I guess right now here's another one”
Now to return to the issue of abstractness, I guess we can say
that this is a song that at least semi-self-consciously revels in its
own abstractness by making itself into the formal convergence of love
and love song and the abandonment of any content.
I’ve railed against abstraction in other songs--”Renegades,”
for instance—but in listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Into the
Fire” recently, I have also been thinking about when it works.
After all, abstraction is not automatically a bad thing, its just
that works of art are traditionally all about concreteness (although
the 20th century certainly explored the exceptions to this
tradition, though often in terms of sensory abstraction or purity),
so it often feels like a cheap betrayal of what art can be when,
instead of something specific, all we get are bland and vague
generalities.
On the face of it, the chorus of “Into the Fire” is largely a
string of abstractions:
“May your strength give us strength,
May your faith give us faith,
May your hope give us hope,
May your love give us love.”
Not only are those abstractions
repeated within the line (“strength...strength,” etc.), but they
are repeated continuously throughout the song. But even though
strength, faith, hope, and love are some of the most potentially
vague and empty and overused terms, they don’t feel like it here.
There are at least two reasons for this.
The first reason is that they have a very particular context in
this song. “Into the Fire” comes from Springsteen’s album The
Rising, which was written as a
response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which the very first lines
of the song evoke:
"The sky was falling and streaked with blood
I heard you
calling me, then you disappeared into the dust
Up the stairs,
into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need your
kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere
up the stairs,
Into the fire"
The falling sky, the fire, blood, and dust are all images of the
devastation of 9/11, and the lines “Up the stairs, into the fire,”
refer to the actions of the emergency personnel, particularly the
firefighters, who went towards the danger—up the stairs, into the
fire—while everyone else was fleeing it. The person this song is
directed to, the “you” whose strength, etc., is being called
upon, is one of these firefighters, so that context already helps to
fill out the meaning of these otherwise abstract terms. The different
verses of the song all emphasize prioritizing self-sacrifice for the
greater good over choosing a good rooted in self-interest (“I need
your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher”). The
ascent up the stairs is thus also an ascent towards higher forms of
these virtues than their everyday versions.
And this brings me to the second reason why Springsteen’s
invocation of them is not merely abstract. Looking at the form of the
appeal to these virtues (“May your strength give us strength”),
the “May your..” construction as well as their almost ritualistic
repetition (complete with a choir’s worth of backup singers by the
end of the song), makes their invocation more of a prayer or an
appeal than anything. What this means is that instead of using
abstract terms like love as a shortcut or a placeholder, this song is
actually a call to fill them with emotional content. To a certain
extent the subject matter of the song does this, and in another way
so performative nature of these lines—by calling out for strength,
so the idea goes, we gain strength.
With the news that Gord Downie, the lead singer and songwriter for
The Tragically Hip, was diagnosed with a terrible form of brain
cancer, and with the giant (possibly farewell) concert they put on in
August, The Hip are in the spotlight in a way that they haven’t
been for a long time. So although I’ve never been very concerned
with being current, since their song “Nautical Disaster” is
definitely on my list of songs about shipwrecks, I think this is a
good time to look at it (it also happens to be my favorite Hip song
anyway, so that doesn’t hurt).
In terms of discussion of the song, a lot of people get hung up on
trying to identify the historical referent for this particular
disaster, citing anything from the landing at Dieppe in WW2, to the
sinking of the Bismarck, to the Lancastria. But I am inclined to
agree with the commenter wonderdog from songmeanings.com
(http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/65612/
--his post is the top one, and its also useful because summarizes
these historical possibilities) that connecting it to any particular
historical even really doesn’t add much to the understanding of the
song. If you know anything about what happens in a nautical disaster
in general, then you know enough for this song. The song itself
hedges its bets about the reality of this experience through the
language it uses at the beginning (“I had this dream”; “It
was as though”).
But what does need to be grasped is the emotional truth of this
nautical disaster, and part of the reason why I think that this is
the greatest song of the Hip’s is that Downie’s lyrics are so
evocative. One of the high points is the imagery of “five hundred
more [men] thrashing madly / As parasites might, in your blood.”
The image of men struggling for their lives in the water (and 8 times
their number already dead) is horrific enough, but to introduce the
parasite image is to draw that horror into oneself, or imagine
oneself infected by the sight of it and inspire a kind of revulsion.
In part that revulsion comes from the content of the image. I think
of wriggling leeches somehow on the inside, but whatever you picture
when someone says parasite, I’m sure its not pretty.
What makes the image even worse, however, is if you think through
the consequences of thinking of these people as internal parasites.
The contempt and revulsion that we associate with parasites get
transferred to these poor souls and that seems especially cruel and
awful. But as the next lines in the song reveal, this attitude is
necessary: these parasites must be dispatched so that we may live. In
this case, it is a matter of limited space within a lifeboat:
Now I was in a lifeboat designed for ten, ten only
Anything
that systematic would get you hated
It's not a deal nor a test
nor a love of something fated
These lines spell out the terms of survival, with the main
constraint being how many can fit into the lifeboat. This discussion
comes up, I suspect, because of the guilt related to it. It is hard
to cling to accept that the distinction between the living and the
dead, the drowned and the saved (whichever side of it you’re on),
comes down to something as banal as a number, a safety
recommendation. There’s nothing preordained or noble or necessary
about it, it just is what it is, and that’s hard to live with or
die because of. And the same goes with the selection of the crew
itself, its cold and heartless:
The selection was quick, the crew was picked in order
And
those left in the water
Got kicked off our pant leg
And we
headed for home
But this decision, this whole situation, is not cold and heartless
in the sense of something detached or abstract like a “deal or a
test or a love of something fated.” No, the sheer physicality of
this decision—pick the survivors and actively fight off those who
cling on anyways and head for home (without looking back? At least
not immediately?)--again centres this decision squarely within the
realm of survival.
But the heart of this song is the idea that no matter what
justifies such a break (even survival), justification is not always
enough to avoid the consequences, as the final verse in the song
reminds its listeners that the previous scene was a dream:
Then the dream ends when the phone rings
"You doing all
right?"
He said, "It's out there most days and
nights
But only a fool would complain"
Anyway, Susan,
if you like
Our conversation is as faint a sound in my memory
As
those fingernails scratching on my hull
But it is not just the dream element that adds ambiguity to
the song, but the abrupt shift from reporting to direct address that
happens at the “Anyway, Susan” line. The phone call speaks to the
existence of some kind of guilt (presumably from the events that
inspired the dream, although the song never actually confirms the
reality of this experience), but the end of the quote of this
conversation also ends the report that began the song with “I had
this dream.....” The final lines directed to Susan (which are quite
devastating) is a shift that has the potential to redirect the
meaning of everything that came before. Is the whole shipwreck dream
simply meant to be an illustration of what is going on between the
narrator and Susan—is the shipwreck at issue in this song actually
the wreck of a relationship, a rumination of getting over the guilt
of leaving? It may be and that’s a compelling reading, or it also
may be a song about how we get on with things, where the pragmatic
answer to survivor’s guilt (“only a fool would complain”)
provides the context for how to deal with less troubles such as may
have come up with Susan (the positive reading of that “if you
like”). Or it may be about the cost of that survivor’s guilt
where the narrator has trouble dealing with such troubles except
through a kind of repression or active forgetting (the sarcastic
reading of the “if you like”). I don’t think there is an
answer, but that is what makes this so interesting.
But in praising the song it is important to give props to the
music as well—the swirling guitar and bass of the intro creates an
appropriate eerie and dreamlike atmosphere for Downie to set the
scene. We get the musical equivalent of groping our way through the
fog (perhaps the fog of a dream) before it lifts at about 0:53 to
begin revealing the horror with an appropriate shift in musical
intensity. At this point the drums crash insistently, almost
chaotically, the cymbals being especially prominent, reflecting the
general clamour and tumult off the scene. The guitar begins to pick
up pace, working through faster variations of the swirling arpeggios
with which the the song began, taking on a stronger presence by 1:10
(“Thrashing madly as parasite might, in your blood”) and finally
becoming the signature guitar line of the song 1:43 (“It’s not a
deal nor a test...). What does this guitar line “mean,” and what
does it do for the song? Its insistent wavering back and forth makes
me think of it as the sonic representation of the search for escape, or trying to
break free. This fits with its prominence at 2:07, the point where
they finally “head for home,” we begin the bridge in which that
underlying guitar line winds its way through a little solo as if
seeking resolution, seeking home.
Then at 2:23 we get a brief rest, almost a return to the peace of
the intro (as the dream ends) but then the emotional tenor almost
immediately ramps up again and the Susan section marks the return of
the winding guitar line which leads to the outro sol at 3:03, an
extended riff on that guitar line seeking some kind of resolution
across an even broader range before the guitar line exhaust itself
(perhaps) without relief at 3:40. It’s an appropriately ambiguous
ending for the song and an example of how to end songs right.
