I saw one of my favorite bands, "The New Pornographers," recently so here is quick post on the concert. Now, it was a relatively short set (1 hour) but without any breaks, so a lot of music got packed into it. While I can't reproduce the set list in order beyond a few notes (they opened with "Dancehall Domine," "Use It" was the 3rd song, and they closed with "The Bleeding Heart Show) here is a breakdown of every song they played by album (and note, they played at least one song from each album):
MR - "Mass Romantic"
EV - "A Testament to Youth in Verse"
"The Laws Have Changed"
TC- "Use It"
"The Bleeding Heart Show"
Ch- "All the Old Showstoppers"
T- "Moves"
BB- "Brill Bruisers"
"Champions of Red Wine"
"Dancehall Domine"
WC- "Play Money"
"Whiteout Conditions"
"High Ticket Attractions"
"This is the World of the Theatre"
As I begin I should also make a brief note about the lineup: Dan Bejar was not with them (he wasn't involved in Whiteout Conditions but I hope that it is simply a timing issue, I may not always appreciate the Bejar songs as much, but they added a lot of texture to the albums and "War on the East Coast" and "Born with a Sound" were some of my favorite tracks off of Brill Bruisers), and neither was Neko Case. Being a huge Case fan I was hoping she would be with them, but her not being there wasn't too bad since Kathryn Calder does a great job. There was only one song, "Play Money," that really needed Case, the violinist/vocalist who did Case's vocals had a little squawk with the high notes and couldn't give the song the verve it needs to work. "Play Money" largely gets by on its attitude (it's not nearly as strong as the other cuts from Whiteout Conditions that they played) and it was probably the weakest song on the list.
The runner-up for weakest song would probably be "Moves," which seemed like a strange choice from that album. I was really hoping for "Up in the Dark," which is one of my favorite songs of theirs, period, but even "Crash Years" would have been better. Maybe "Crash Years" would have needed Case, and "Moves" was more familiar because it was in a car commercial. Oh well, as I noted, they played "Use It" three songs into their set, so at least I got what I wanted there. Playing it early alleviated my anxiety about whether I would get to hear at least one song I really wanted to hear: on that list were "Use It," "Sing Me Spanish Techno," "My Rights Versus Yours," and "Up in the Dark"; sure I only got one out of this four, but I thoroughly enjoyed the concert. "Use It" may be their best song and contains one of my favorite lines: "Two sips from the cup of human kindness and I'm s#it-faced." The time-bending dynamics of "Sing Me Spanish Techno" would be really fun live, too. As for "My Rights Versus Yours," if its about a custody battle (or divorce proceeding) I can see why it doesn't get live play, but it is a fantastic song and I remember when that album first came out and I got it and played it for a friend, and those early "ooooooh" notes were part of what got him hooked on the band.
Among the pleasant surprises were how good "Champions of Red Wine" sounded, its shimmering texture on the album translated well into a live context, "All the Old Showstoppers" is a song that never really caught my ear, and yet it was good live, and the climax of "The Bleeding Heart Show" really worked as a finisher. Great show.
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Friday, July 13, 2018
Representing Lacerated Consciousness, Part One
While I don't have a lot of interest in the band Linkin Park, someone I am working with is a big fan, so I read this essay about them by Spencer Kornhaber. One part of the essay that caught my eye was where Kornhaber talked about how rock has long worked at expanding the potential range and form of emotional expression available to men. What this means is that (without necessarily giving up on misogyny or many of the traditional features of masculinity) it came to be acceptable for male singers to write songs dealing with angst, failure, and vulnerability without seeming like "wimps," as Kornhaber puts it. Kornhaber brings up grunge as an example, writing about how
"Sonically, the songs thrived on dichotomies of loud/soft and pretty/grating; the effect was less to gild aggression with sweetness than to wring drama and verisimilitude from the feeling of internal conflict."
For many this loud/soft dichotomy defines grunge, and a song like Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box," which I would say is all about the singer's ambivalence towards a woman (his lover? mother? its hard to say but I actually lean towards the latter: don't discount the fact that it was on "In Utero," the idea of being "forever in debt," "angel hair and baby's breath," and the "Throw down your umbilical noose" line). The ambivalent feelings the singer feels (attraction/repulsion) are mirrored by the quiet verse and loud chorus so yes, the form mirrors the content. I guess on a theoretical level I should enjoy this harmony of form and content, but I don't. Despite growing up at exactly the right time to be a Nirvana fan (so many people wore "In Utero" t-shirts in those days), I never really got into them and still haven't. And no doubt some what I say next is just a reflection of my own preferences (for thought, phrasing, and articulation), but that's what you get when I'm the one writing, so here it is.
The loud/soft dynamic in "Heart-Shaped Box" reflects the internal conflict, but it doesn't really develop it. And of course it doesn't help that lyrically it is an overloaded, obscure mess, so that even if the emotional aspect of the emotional situation is pretty clear, the situation itself remains murky. By the end of the song there is lots of emotion but it feels solipsistic and without understanding. Maybe this works for some people, and maybe I am asking too much (or the wrong thing) of it, but I don't feel like the song has really worked on its content, the attraction and repulsion don't seem to really interact with each other, the song just lurches from one to the other. Maybe if he could have expanded on the idea of being "forever in debt," or the "priceless advice" or something then I would be more satisfied.
If you want to see a masterful use of soft/loud work, I recommend The Posies' "Please Return It" (of course I do, it's pretty close to my favorite song) for its amazing (no disgrace) building and balancing of tension. The song is about the need (and perils) of reciprocity (of give and take-and returning), and way that the song handles its movement follows a real emotional contour, serving to embody the living, changing tension of a relationship. "Please Return It" does not offer the high energy discharge of the speculative the way some other Posies songs do, but these lines starting at 1:26 contain so much truth and tension in them:
"When you let me live my life,
You didn't do it completely,
But you were discreet.
Like the year I spent comparing me to you
Please return it."
I cannot stress enough the importance of these lines or the profundity of their grasp and expression of a fundamental kind of "internal conflict" in their own way. I have long thought of the overarching theme of much of The Posies' work in terms of an exploration of "lacerated consciousness," a consciousness divided against itself, cut open but still striving to heal. I draw the idea from my readings of German Idealism (particular Hegel) and the idea of the productive negativity (and the movement of thought) that can come from "diremption" (one translation of the German word "Entzweiung").
In "Please Return It" the idea is that all human relationships ideally operate according to a model of reciprocity, that for everything that we give to others we can also as "please return it" and expect our request to be honored. This is certainly a potentially fragile arrangement, and it means that there is a certain vulnerability to human relationships that makes autonomy tenuous. As the song puts it in an earlier line: "When we live the life we live, it's never ours completely, not completely." So, that this arrangement can break down in all sorts of ways comes as no surprise, but what is interesting is what is revealed in the breakdown, namely, how an external division can become an internal one.
From these lines it seems as though the singer escapes from the orbit of someone domineering and controlling (perhaps someone who is all take and no give), but soon learns that such an influence lingers in unexpected ways. The lines suggest that the other party is still responsible ("You didn't do it completely....You were discreet") but suddenly those actions are internal ("Like the year I spent comparing me to you"). The internal division takes the form of an internalization of a certain external standard and an accompanying sense of self-inferiority. The self is torn between what it is and what it thinks it should be, and this tearing is its own doing as an other (it does the other's bidding to itself). In this the situation is a bit like the one I analysed in the "I never did good things..." lines from Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" insofar as it is a matter of not being able to have a sense of oneself and one's own actions that are really one's own.
But the word "completely" in these lines ("You didn't do it completely") hearkens back to the earlier statement that life is "never ours completely, not completely") and suggests that in an important sense one's actions are never "completely" one's own. This song is the processing of the emotional impact of this fact that we will never escape the tensions and vulnerability that go along with sociality. Obviously there is no getting back the "year I spent comparing me to you," at least not in a literal sense, but there is at least the hope of redeeming it, where a "return" would be finding the "upside," i.e., the point at which you "bring the balance back to you in returning." What would it mean for the other to do this in this case? Given that the singer identifies it as being in the past ("the year I spent") and identifies its problematic part (the time spent "comparing me to you") he has already done the internal work of understanding it. But there is a difference between understanding that something was unhealthy and being free of that thing, and it may be that some kind of recognition from the other might help with that. To have long found oneself lacking in the face of the other, even if you get over that, it would still mean a lot for that other, on the one hand, to genuinely affirm your own worth, and on the other, to perhaps admit the he/she had a hand in creating those feelings of insecurity. This is a high bar and not one I'd expect to see from someone with a poisonous personality since it requires the other side to admit to their own vulnerability, but it is something you should be able to look for in "the certainly of friendship, you can ask, 'Please return it,' bring the balance back to you." Friendship is being able to bear your own laceration along with someone else's.
(I should also mention the fact that the song makes perhaps the coolest use of the saxophone ever-I am generally opposed to the saxophone, especially in pop music, as it tends to be super boring, but here they are barely even recognizable as such and work amazingly. Live version of this song always lose something because the distorted saxophone sound isn't properly reproduced by guitars.)
The album that "Please Return It" is on, "Amazing Disgrace," came out in 1996, well after the heyday of grunge, and despite being based in Seattle during the whole grunge period they were always on a very different track, and even a grittier album like 1993's "Frosting on the Beater" is up to something quite unlike their contemporaries with, for instance, its spectacular harmonizing ("Solar Sister," I'm looking at you). But from their very beginning The Posies were exploring this theme of :lacerated consciousness." In the next part I will explore this further.
"Sonically, the songs thrived on dichotomies of loud/soft and pretty/grating; the effect was less to gild aggression with sweetness than to wring drama and verisimilitude from the feeling of internal conflict."
For many this loud/soft dichotomy defines grunge, and a song like Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box," which I would say is all about the singer's ambivalence towards a woman (his lover? mother? its hard to say but I actually lean towards the latter: don't discount the fact that it was on "In Utero," the idea of being "forever in debt," "angel hair and baby's breath," and the "Throw down your umbilical noose" line). The ambivalent feelings the singer feels (attraction/repulsion) are mirrored by the quiet verse and loud chorus so yes, the form mirrors the content. I guess on a theoretical level I should enjoy this harmony of form and content, but I don't. Despite growing up at exactly the right time to be a Nirvana fan (so many people wore "In Utero" t-shirts in those days), I never really got into them and still haven't. And no doubt some what I say next is just a reflection of my own preferences (for thought, phrasing, and articulation), but that's what you get when I'm the one writing, so here it is.
The loud/soft dynamic in "Heart-Shaped Box" reflects the internal conflict, but it doesn't really develop it. And of course it doesn't help that lyrically it is an overloaded, obscure mess, so that even if the emotional aspect of the emotional situation is pretty clear, the situation itself remains murky. By the end of the song there is lots of emotion but it feels solipsistic and without understanding. Maybe this works for some people, and maybe I am asking too much (or the wrong thing) of it, but I don't feel like the song has really worked on its content, the attraction and repulsion don't seem to really interact with each other, the song just lurches from one to the other. Maybe if he could have expanded on the idea of being "forever in debt," or the "priceless advice" or something then I would be more satisfied.
If you want to see a masterful use of soft/loud work, I recommend The Posies' "Please Return It" (of course I do, it's pretty close to my favorite song) for its amazing (no disgrace) building and balancing of tension. The song is about the need (and perils) of reciprocity (of give and take-and returning), and way that the song handles its movement follows a real emotional contour, serving to embody the living, changing tension of a relationship. "Please Return It" does not offer the high energy discharge of the speculative the way some other Posies songs do, but these lines starting at 1:26 contain so much truth and tension in them:
"When you let me live my life,
You didn't do it completely,
But you were discreet.
Like the year I spent comparing me to you
Please return it."
I cannot stress enough the importance of these lines or the profundity of their grasp and expression of a fundamental kind of "internal conflict" in their own way. I have long thought of the overarching theme of much of The Posies' work in terms of an exploration of "lacerated consciousness," a consciousness divided against itself, cut open but still striving to heal. I draw the idea from my readings of German Idealism (particular Hegel) and the idea of the productive negativity (and the movement of thought) that can come from "diremption" (one translation of the German word "Entzweiung").
In "Please Return It" the idea is that all human relationships ideally operate according to a model of reciprocity, that for everything that we give to others we can also as "please return it" and expect our request to be honored. This is certainly a potentially fragile arrangement, and it means that there is a certain vulnerability to human relationships that makes autonomy tenuous. As the song puts it in an earlier line: "When we live the life we live, it's never ours completely, not completely." So, that this arrangement can break down in all sorts of ways comes as no surprise, but what is interesting is what is revealed in the breakdown, namely, how an external division can become an internal one.
From these lines it seems as though the singer escapes from the orbit of someone domineering and controlling (perhaps someone who is all take and no give), but soon learns that such an influence lingers in unexpected ways. The lines suggest that the other party is still responsible ("You didn't do it completely....You were discreet") but suddenly those actions are internal ("Like the year I spent comparing me to you"). The internal division takes the form of an internalization of a certain external standard and an accompanying sense of self-inferiority. The self is torn between what it is and what it thinks it should be, and this tearing is its own doing as an other (it does the other's bidding to itself). In this the situation is a bit like the one I analysed in the "I never did good things..." lines from Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" insofar as it is a matter of not being able to have a sense of oneself and one's own actions that are really one's own.
But the word "completely" in these lines ("You didn't do it completely") hearkens back to the earlier statement that life is "never ours completely, not completely") and suggests that in an important sense one's actions are never "completely" one's own. This song is the processing of the emotional impact of this fact that we will never escape the tensions and vulnerability that go along with sociality. Obviously there is no getting back the "year I spent comparing me to you," at least not in a literal sense, but there is at least the hope of redeeming it, where a "return" would be finding the "upside," i.e., the point at which you "bring the balance back to you in returning." What would it mean for the other to do this in this case? Given that the singer identifies it as being in the past ("the year I spent") and identifies its problematic part (the time spent "comparing me to you") he has already done the internal work of understanding it. But there is a difference between understanding that something was unhealthy and being free of that thing, and it may be that some kind of recognition from the other might help with that. To have long found oneself lacking in the face of the other, even if you get over that, it would still mean a lot for that other, on the one hand, to genuinely affirm your own worth, and on the other, to perhaps admit the he/she had a hand in creating those feelings of insecurity. This is a high bar and not one I'd expect to see from someone with a poisonous personality since it requires the other side to admit to their own vulnerability, but it is something you should be able to look for in "the certainly of friendship, you can ask, 'Please return it,' bring the balance back to you." Friendship is being able to bear your own laceration along with someone else's.
(I should also mention the fact that the song makes perhaps the coolest use of the saxophone ever-I am generally opposed to the saxophone, especially in pop music, as it tends to be super boring, but here they are barely even recognizable as such and work amazingly. Live version of this song always lose something because the distorted saxophone sound isn't properly reproduced by guitars.)
The album that "Please Return It" is on, "Amazing Disgrace," came out in 1996, well after the heyday of grunge, and despite being based in Seattle during the whole grunge period they were always on a very different track, and even a grittier album like 1993's "Frosting on the Beater" is up to something quite unlike their contemporaries with, for instance, its spectacular harmonizing ("Solar Sister," I'm looking at you). But from their very beginning The Posies were exploring this theme of :lacerated consciousness." In the next part I will explore this further.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
One Liners: David Bowie - "Ashes to Ashes"
Sometimes there is a line in a song that really stands out (and I'm talking in a good way, not in a "shape of you" kind of way) and I find myself turning it over in my mind. It may not be the catchiest line, but it has some extra depth which rewards rumination. One such line comes from David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes."
I'm not a huge Bowie fan, but I would say that this is definitely my favorite Bowie song, and there is undoubtedly a lot that could be said about the song as a whole, particularly in terms of how he uses it to reflect upon his own legacy and image. Or you could even just marvel at the angular slap bass line and eerie bleeps and bloops of the synth that open the song, and appreciate how they run through it, giving it a surreal atmosphere. But that is beyond the scope of what I want to address here, I just want to look at this line: “I’m stuck with a valuable friend”
I like this line because of the double meaning. Given the general drugginess of the lyrics, I assume the “valuable friend” is heroine. “Valuable friend” is an interesting substitute for “dear friend,” suggesting both the economic worth of heroine, and also less intimacy and caring than “dear.” Plus, the stuck refers both to being forced to stay with heroine—addicted—as well as the actual delivery method of the drug (stuck with a needle). The punning here reflects the theme of the song as a whole, which is that things can degenerate and become (or perhaps always have been) parodies (or puns) of themselves:
"Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high,
hitting an all-time low."
The movement from "funk to funky" reminds the listener that just as funk is a kind of music (the song's groove is itself pretty funky) a funk is also a dejected or low mood, a feeling of fear, and a bad smell, the latter also being one of the primary meanings of "funky." Something catchy and full of dynamism can also be something low and foul just underneath. (And to reference the amazing video, a clown can equally be a figure of fun and terror.) The joke, of course, is that the otherworldly highs reached by astronaut Major Tom (from Bowie's early hit "Space Oddity," and already a drug metaphor) have their corresponding lows.
Ok, I thought this would be a quick examination of one line, but I have to mention one other particularly affecting line that comes at the end of the song:
"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."
Thinking about the subject of this song, it seems as though this cannot be accurate. Its pretty hard to avoid doing good or bad things in life (perhaps especially the bad things part if you are a junkie). But the last line helps to contextualize what this might mean: what does it mean to do something "out of the blue?" It means to do something unexpected, something not already predicted, planned, or determined. This could be someone who has lived a totally convention life and has never done anything that wasn't expect of them, but it could equally be someone who is unstoppably drawn by their urges, their desires, or their addictions. The issue thus becomes less about whether the actions that make up one's own life are good or bad, but rather, one's own relation to those actions as their cause (or, more accurately in this case, the lack thereof).
Something as simple as putting the "I" in these lines in bold makes this a little clearer:
"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."
I'm not a huge Bowie fan, but I would say that this is definitely my favorite Bowie song, and there is undoubtedly a lot that could be said about the song as a whole, particularly in terms of how he uses it to reflect upon his own legacy and image. Or you could even just marvel at the angular slap bass line and eerie bleeps and bloops of the synth that open the song, and appreciate how they run through it, giving it a surreal atmosphere. But that is beyond the scope of what I want to address here, I just want to look at this line: “I’m stuck with a valuable friend”
I like this line because of the double meaning. Given the general drugginess of the lyrics, I assume the “valuable friend” is heroine. “Valuable friend” is an interesting substitute for “dear friend,” suggesting both the economic worth of heroine, and also less intimacy and caring than “dear.” Plus, the stuck refers both to being forced to stay with heroine—addicted—as well as the actual delivery method of the drug (stuck with a needle). The punning here reflects the theme of the song as a whole, which is that things can degenerate and become (or perhaps always have been) parodies (or puns) of themselves:
"Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high,
hitting an all-time low."
The movement from "funk to funky" reminds the listener that just as funk is a kind of music (the song's groove is itself pretty funky) a funk is also a dejected or low mood, a feeling of fear, and a bad smell, the latter also being one of the primary meanings of "funky." Something catchy and full of dynamism can also be something low and foul just underneath. (And to reference the amazing video, a clown can equally be a figure of fun and terror.) The joke, of course, is that the otherworldly highs reached by astronaut Major Tom (from Bowie's early hit "Space Oddity," and already a drug metaphor) have their corresponding lows.
Ok, I thought this would be a quick examination of one line, but I have to mention one other particularly affecting line that comes at the end of the song:
"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."
Thinking about the subject of this song, it seems as though this cannot be accurate. Its pretty hard to avoid doing good or bad things in life (perhaps especially the bad things part if you are a junkie). But the last line helps to contextualize what this might mean: what does it mean to do something "out of the blue?" It means to do something unexpected, something not already predicted, planned, or determined. This could be someone who has lived a totally convention life and has never done anything that wasn't expect of them, but it could equally be someone who is unstoppably drawn by their urges, their desires, or their addictions. The issue thus becomes less about whether the actions that make up one's own life are good or bad, but rather, one's own relation to those actions as their cause (or, more accurately in this case, the lack thereof).
Something as simple as putting the "I" in these lines in bold makes this a little clearer:
"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."
For all of the things "I've" done, he is saying, it was never really me who did them, you could practically say that it was the drugs, or society, or whatever, that was responsible for these things happening. Whatever good or bad things I did were not things that I could take credit for as an agent, there was always some other thing pushing me. It doesn't have to be about compulsion (although obviously it can be), sometimes it is enough that there never seemed to be another option, that the authority of those influences were always just taken as a given. If everything you do is about the drugs, or if everything you do is because it's expected, then your actions may come to take on an "alien" character and may not seem like they are really your own.
That is why the particular example of doing something "out of the blue" comes up. To do something out of the blue is like doing something for no reason at all, or, at least, not for a reason determined long in advance, or as a foregone conclusion. It is thus one model of living one's life independently of all of these influences, free to act simply (ha!) as oneself as the situation and your own reaction to it demand. Now, as you may suspect from following my discussions of identity and agency in the other posts on this page, I'm not holding this up as a model of some pure, absolute freedom. I take this example to be just that, an example, but I think it helps to illustrate what Bowie is trying to get at here.
That is why the particular example of doing something "out of the blue" comes up. To do something out of the blue is like doing something for no reason at all, or, at least, not for a reason determined long in advance, or as a foregone conclusion. It is thus one model of living one's life independently of all of these influences, free to act simply (ha!) as oneself as the situation and your own reaction to it demand. Now, as you may suspect from following my discussions of identity and agency in the other posts on this page, I'm not holding this up as a model of some pure, absolute freedom. I take this example to be just that, an example, but I think it helps to illustrate what Bowie is trying to get at here.
Saturday, June 9, 2018
The Shape of Sentence, or, Yes, How You Say Things Matters: Ed Sheeran "The Shape of You"
So now I'm going to go from raving about an interesting deployment of the pronoun "you" to a really frustrating one in Ed Sheeran's "The Shape of You."
Now I know I'm going against popular taste here, as this song has billions of views on youtube and got an overwhelming amount of radio play, but I just can't stomach it. Most of the song is just unremarkable, but I really hate the central line of the song: "I'm in love with the shape of you." That phrase, "the shape of you," sounds really clunky.
What do I mean by "clunky" ? Well, yes, it is grammatically incorrect, but grammatical correctness is not really that important when it comes to lyrics. There are plenty of songs that mangle grammar and sound good while doing it. But its bad grammar does have something to do with the problem. For one, it just doesn't sound like anything anyone would say. From a grammatical standpoint, we can see that it should be "I'm in love with your shape," or maybe "I'm in love with the shape of your body." The lameness of these two options tells us why Sheeran's version sucks. "I'm in love with your shape" falls flat rhythmically; there is something to the rhythm of two beats followed by the stress on "love" and then another two beats and the stress on "shape," but even still the "of you" just feels rushed. I prefer the similar rhythm as it plays out in the line: "I'm in love with your body"
Contrasting these lines also highlights how unsexy the word "shape" is--its way too abstract and geometrical. We might as well say "I love your outline!" or "I love your profile!" Sure, "I'm in love with your body" is kind of trite and boring, but that didn't stop Sheeran from using it a ton of times too. Plus, part of the reason why I don't like the actual version is it feels incomplete, as if I keep expecting Sheeran to sing "I'm in love with the shape of your body," which feels more normal if perhaps too wordy for a pop song.
I will just trash a few other lines which, if not as prominent as the main offender, are still pretty awful. Consider: "Your love was handmade for somebody like me." That's just a weird thing to say, the combination of specific customization ("handmade") with vague generality ("for somebody like me") is just an odd way to go when talking about love. It's the kind of thing you might hear in hawking some product: "You there, sir, try this, this love was handmade for somebody like you!"
Also, let's not forget the awkward phrase "Grab on my waist and put that body on me"-shouldn't it be "Grab onto my waist and put your body on mine," or at least "put that body onto mine" ? (Or is there a corpse in this song that she wants to hide under: "Quick, put that body on me!" I know I'm quibbling a bit here, but these are just really bizarre choices.
Let me finish with this gem:
"I'm in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do"
It's always cute when wordsmiths decide to get fancy and go all rhymey, but that's a terrible line. "We push and pull like magnets" is still stupid but at least it is grammatical (the other easy way out that keeps the rhyme is "We push and pull like magnets do" even though the "do" is totally unnecessary). Both options also avoid raising questions about how two people are like one magnet. Is there an attraction-repulsion thing going on between them and other objects? At least if they were attracted like magnets they would be together, but I guess you don't get the vaguely suggestive "push and pull" part. Maybe Ed Sheeran has been getting lessons on magnets from the ICP.
There isn't too much else I really have to say about the song. It's a simple song in a way that The Shins' "Simple song" isn't.
What do I mean by "clunky" ? Well, yes, it is grammatically incorrect, but grammatical correctness is not really that important when it comes to lyrics. There are plenty of songs that mangle grammar and sound good while doing it. But its bad grammar does have something to do with the problem. For one, it just doesn't sound like anything anyone would say. From a grammatical standpoint, we can see that it should be "I'm in love with your shape," or maybe "I'm in love with the shape of your body." The lameness of these two options tells us why Sheeran's version sucks. "I'm in love with your shape" falls flat rhythmically; there is something to the rhythm of two beats followed by the stress on "love" and then another two beats and the stress on "shape," but even still the "of you" just feels rushed. I prefer the similar rhythm as it plays out in the line: "I'm in love with your body"
Contrasting these lines also highlights how unsexy the word "shape" is--its way too abstract and geometrical. We might as well say "I love your outline!" or "I love your profile!" Sure, "I'm in love with your body" is kind of trite and boring, but that didn't stop Sheeran from using it a ton of times too. Plus, part of the reason why I don't like the actual version is it feels incomplete, as if I keep expecting Sheeran to sing "I'm in love with the shape of your body," which feels more normal if perhaps too wordy for a pop song.
I will just trash a few other lines which, if not as prominent as the main offender, are still pretty awful. Consider: "Your love was handmade for somebody like me." That's just a weird thing to say, the combination of specific customization ("handmade") with vague generality ("for somebody like me") is just an odd way to go when talking about love. It's the kind of thing you might hear in hawking some product: "You there, sir, try this, this love was handmade for somebody like you!"
Also, let's not forget the awkward phrase "Grab on my waist and put that body on me"-shouldn't it be "Grab onto my waist and put your body on mine," or at least "put that body onto mine" ? (Or is there a corpse in this song that she wants to hide under: "Quick, put that body on me!" I know I'm quibbling a bit here, but these are just really bizarre choices.
Let me finish with this gem:
"I'm in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do"
There isn't too much else I really have to say about the song. It's a simple song in a way that The Shins' "Simple song" isn't.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Semi-Current Song Obsession: The Shins - "Simple Song"
A few months ago I was driving alone at night when this song came to the top of my playlist:
for quite awhile afterwards this song, and indeed much of the album its from ("Port of Morrow") were on pretty heavy rotation for me. Before I get too far into what I think clicked with it for me, I'll provide some background.
I have enjoyed The Shins' music for a few years now. I checked out their first two albums because they fit into the general mould of harmonic pop that I enjoy. However, it was never a "Garden State" situation where The Shins were going to "change my life," especially with the first two albums which I find a little too low key despite their pleasant twistedness (The Posies do that better anyway-and I remember an interview where one of the Posies complains that their moment never quite came but yet The Shins broke out a few years later). Anyway, I enjoy their third album "Wincing the Night Away" more because it is a departure from that style, but even now I still haven't spent that much time on it.
But while sitting in heavy traffic about a year ago I was listening to the radio (to give my wife a brief respite from a continual stream of Posies, Mountain Goats, New Pornographers, Neko Case, etc.) and I heard a really catchy song that sounded like The Shins. I remembered enough of the lyrics to look it up later and it turned out to be "Name For You" off of their latest album, "Heartworms" (it may not have even been released by that point). I didn't really get into the album until the end of the summer, but it really took off for me in the fall and there was a period when it was on my playlist practically nonstop. "Painting a Hole" is wacky and amazing with some serious groove, "Cherry Hearts" is so great to sing along with (if no one else has to hear me); there are a ton of stand-outs.
But "Port of Morrow," well, I gave it enough of a cursory listen to pick out the highlights like "Simple Song," but it wasn't until that winter drive that I started to get into it. It too took hold, especially "Its Only Life," "No Way Down," and "40 Mark Strasse," but "Simple Song" above all.
In some respects I have laden this post with biographical information because the song is in many respects as simple as its title suggests (although I actually think the biographical part is good to have because I don't add bands to my musical "inner circle" all that often so it is worth documenting). The sentiment is laid out as clearly as the thesis statement in a high school essay:
"This is just a simple song, to say what you done
I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."
The song is about the love and gratitude that the singer feels for his beloved and the way that she, among other things, helped him conquer his fears and turn his life in a positive direction.
But I hesitate to say that things are really as simple as all that. Most songs are susceptible to being reduced to a quick description (hint: you've got a way better than 50/50 chance if you say "love" and don't specify whether the love goes well or not) without their subject matter being at all simple (to say nothing of their specific treatment of that subject matter).
The song actually takes a fairly unusual perspective in presenting a retrospective view of a happy, successful love. This isn't a song about wanting someone out of reach, or trying to convince someone to get with you, or a love gone wrong, or even just how wonderful the beloved is. It's close the that last one, but the difference is that many songs about the beloved just focus on the object, the beloved, whereas this one is about how the beloved changed and improved the singer's life, hence those lines about how "I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."
The lines that come next are where things get complicated (and interesting). They go as follows:
"You sure must be strong,
When you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun"
Now, I think the speaker is here praising the beloved (the "you") for being strong, and by virtue of that strength, for making the speaker "feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun." The "you feel" in this line is thus not a feeling the beloved feels, but a feeling that the beloved causes in others. This second "you" thus occupies a complicated position, where it treats the beloved as an object, but as an active rather than merely passive one. The "you" in "when you feel" has a similar function as the "you" in "to say what you done" earlier in the song.
It's a subtle point, and maybe I'm making too much out of it, but it seems to me that this construction is one way to elevate the "beloved" beyond the passivity usually designated by the term in order to give her strength and influence its due. As an addendum to this point, I just want to point out how enjoyable the pick-up in tempo is after he sing "being warmed by the sun," it's a simple, triumphant kind of pleasure. The strident strumming (along with the swirling synth) just crashes over the listener like the waves of a sin-warmed ocean.
But in thinking about all of this I find myself wondering about the "you" in the chorus:
"I know that things can really get rough when you go it alone
Don't go thinking you gotta be tough and be/bleed/play/plea (?) like a stone
Could be there's nothing else in lives so critical
As this little home."
I think that the "you" in the first two lines of the chorus is a rhetorical "you," rather than the beloved. I say this partly because of the "strength" of the beloved, she does not seem to be in any danger from going it alone or trying to put on a tough face. I also say it because the lead-in "I know" seems to signal a recounting of general advice rather than some kind of direct description, plus, the phrases themselves are curiously generic ("go it alone," "gotta be tough"). If anything, the chorus sounds like the speaker recounting advice he has received (perhaps from the beloved) and that he has had to learn to put into practice. Such a shift wouldn't be that unusual because the chorus is, at least to an extent, a separate part of the song, so it can play that dramatic role.
And speaking of drama, I would alike to point out the beautiful final lyrics of the song:
"Remember walking a mile to your house
Aglow in the dark
I made a fumbling play for your heart
And the ax drove the spark
You wore a charm on the chain that I stole special for you
Love's such a delicate thing that we do
With nothing to prove
Which I never knew
I do like the phrase "aglow in the dark," it is a romantic image that taps into the sun imagery and also leads into the clever bit about the ax (the ax image captures the endearing inexperience -"a fumbling play"- of the speaker, since it is only an ax that misses its target that causes a spark). But is the (nearly) final line, "Love's such a delicate thing that we do" that really resonates. Love is something active and shared ("something we do"), and like the complicated positioning of the"you" in this song, it is sometimes very subtle and delicate. So much for a simple song.
I have enjoyed The Shins' music for a few years now. I checked out their first two albums because they fit into the general mould of harmonic pop that I enjoy. However, it was never a "Garden State" situation where The Shins were going to "change my life," especially with the first two albums which I find a little too low key despite their pleasant twistedness (The Posies do that better anyway-and I remember an interview where one of the Posies complains that their moment never quite came but yet The Shins broke out a few years later). Anyway, I enjoy their third album "Wincing the Night Away" more because it is a departure from that style, but even now I still haven't spent that much time on it.
But while sitting in heavy traffic about a year ago I was listening to the radio (to give my wife a brief respite from a continual stream of Posies, Mountain Goats, New Pornographers, Neko Case, etc.) and I heard a really catchy song that sounded like The Shins. I remembered enough of the lyrics to look it up later and it turned out to be "Name For You" off of their latest album, "Heartworms" (it may not have even been released by that point). I didn't really get into the album until the end of the summer, but it really took off for me in the fall and there was a period when it was on my playlist practically nonstop. "Painting a Hole" is wacky and amazing with some serious groove, "Cherry Hearts" is so great to sing along with (if no one else has to hear me); there are a ton of stand-outs.
But "Port of Morrow," well, I gave it enough of a cursory listen to pick out the highlights like "Simple Song," but it wasn't until that winter drive that I started to get into it. It too took hold, especially "Its Only Life," "No Way Down," and "40 Mark Strasse," but "Simple Song" above all.
In some respects I have laden this post with biographical information because the song is in many respects as simple as its title suggests (although I actually think the biographical part is good to have because I don't add bands to my musical "inner circle" all that often so it is worth documenting). The sentiment is laid out as clearly as the thesis statement in a high school essay:
"This is just a simple song, to say what you done
I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."
The song is about the love and gratitude that the singer feels for his beloved and the way that she, among other things, helped him conquer his fears and turn his life in a positive direction.
But I hesitate to say that things are really as simple as all that. Most songs are susceptible to being reduced to a quick description (hint: you've got a way better than 50/50 chance if you say "love" and don't specify whether the love goes well or not) without their subject matter being at all simple (to say nothing of their specific treatment of that subject matter).
The song actually takes a fairly unusual perspective in presenting a retrospective view of a happy, successful love. This isn't a song about wanting someone out of reach, or trying to convince someone to get with you, or a love gone wrong, or even just how wonderful the beloved is. It's close the that last one, but the difference is that many songs about the beloved just focus on the object, the beloved, whereas this one is about how the beloved changed and improved the singer's life, hence those lines about how "I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."
The lines that come next are where things get complicated (and interesting). They go as follows:
"You sure must be strong,
When you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun"
Now, I think the speaker is here praising the beloved (the "you") for being strong, and by virtue of that strength, for making the speaker "feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun." The "you feel" in this line is thus not a feeling the beloved feels, but a feeling that the beloved causes in others. This second "you" thus occupies a complicated position, where it treats the beloved as an object, but as an active rather than merely passive one. The "you" in "when you feel" has a similar function as the "you" in "to say what you done" earlier in the song.
It's a subtle point, and maybe I'm making too much out of it, but it seems to me that this construction is one way to elevate the "beloved" beyond the passivity usually designated by the term in order to give her strength and influence its due. As an addendum to this point, I just want to point out how enjoyable the pick-up in tempo is after he sing "being warmed by the sun," it's a simple, triumphant kind of pleasure. The strident strumming (along with the swirling synth) just crashes over the listener like the waves of a sin-warmed ocean.
But in thinking about all of this I find myself wondering about the "you" in the chorus:
"I know that things can really get rough when you go it alone
Don't go thinking you gotta be tough and be/bleed/play/plea (?) like a stone
Could be there's nothing else in lives so critical
As this little home."
I think that the "you" in the first two lines of the chorus is a rhetorical "you," rather than the beloved. I say this partly because of the "strength" of the beloved, she does not seem to be in any danger from going it alone or trying to put on a tough face. I also say it because the lead-in "I know" seems to signal a recounting of general advice rather than some kind of direct description, plus, the phrases themselves are curiously generic ("go it alone," "gotta be tough"). If anything, the chorus sounds like the speaker recounting advice he has received (perhaps from the beloved) and that he has had to learn to put into practice. Such a shift wouldn't be that unusual because the chorus is, at least to an extent, a separate part of the song, so it can play that dramatic role.
And speaking of drama, I would alike to point out the beautiful final lyrics of the song:
"Remember walking a mile to your house
Aglow in the dark
I made a fumbling play for your heart
And the ax drove the spark
You wore a charm on the chain that I stole special for you
Love's such a delicate thing that we do
With nothing to prove
Which I never knew
I do like the phrase "aglow in the dark," it is a romantic image that taps into the sun imagery and also leads into the clever bit about the ax (the ax image captures the endearing inexperience -"a fumbling play"- of the speaker, since it is only an ax that misses its target that causes a spark). But is the (nearly) final line, "Love's such a delicate thing that we do" that really resonates. Love is something active and shared ("something we do"), and like the complicated positioning of the"you" in this song, it is sometimes very subtle and delicate. So much for a simple song.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Speculative titles: Pat Benatar - "Hell is for children" (Part two)
Just in case you didn't read Part One of this post and didn't watch the lyric video of the album version of "Hell is for children," or even if you did and have forgotten how excellent a song it is (and how great Pat Benatar is), then check out this amazing live version.
Ok, so I ended Part One with a discussion of the inappropriateness of the advice "forgive and forget" when applied to child abuse. The idea was that while being able to "forgive and forget" is nice if you are able to do so in a healthy way, the nature and circumstances of child abuse in particular render that ability problematic, to say the least. "Forgive and forget" thus becomes one more mechanism by which abusers can get away with their awful deeds and by which the categories of good and bad, love and hate, get distorted, and with them goes the language we use to talk about them. Benatar provides examples of this with lines like:
"Be daddy's good girl and don't tell mommy a thing
Be a good boy and you'll get a new toy."
To us, the context warps the phrases "daddy's good girl" and "Be a good boy" into something horrifying, and yet to the children, who don't know any different, these meanings are normal. This is literally a warping of what "good" and "bad" mean. This connection between ignorance and the normalization of suffering is, as I said before, part of what makes hell particularly suited to children, i.e., for them.
But this way of looking at the issue also opens the door to the other idea implicit in the phrase "hell is for children," namely, that the very idea of hell (the standard-issue Christian version in particular) is for children in the sense that it is essentially a childish notion insofar as it is enmeshed in the "developmentally-stunted" concepts of love and pain that we see in the song.
Now, without getting into discussions of the difference between "Hell," "Gehenna," "Hades," "Sheol," or "Tartarus" (to name a few), or with the modern attempt to turn hell into some kind of metaphor for "a state of utter alienation from God," what I'm talking about when I say "hell" is the idea of an afterlife in which the dead are punished with eternal torment. The most common version of this is the cartoonish picture of lakes of fire and brimstone populated by red devils wielding pitchforks. This idea didn't come out of nowhere, it has occupied a prominent position in Western Christian consciousness for centuries. While people nowadays may not endorse this version of hell, and some may agree that it is a bit childish, the idea behind it, namely, eternal punishment in the afterlife, is still going strong. And it is this core idea, not simply the fire and pitchforks deployment of it, that I ultimately take issue with.
Why is hell for children? I don't think I'm covering any new ground (I've previously written quite a bit on Byron's particular concern with this idea) when I say that is is because it is tied to the idea of an all-powerful and ever-loving God. As soon as this combination of attributes results in eternal torment, you know that something is messed up. Either God isn't really all-powerful, so he can't prevent their being a hell (resulting in a pretty lame God), or his definition of "love" is just as twisted as the one Benatar sings about. Infinite love and infinite pain should not be one and the same.
To me, these contradictions stem from the fact that the idea of belongs to a childish worldview. For one, I see it as an ideological tool to control people's behavior: threaten people with eternal punishment to keep them from doing what you don't want them to. In this regard hell is for people who are being treated as children, who must be kept in line by force and by fear.
But hell is also for children in the sense that the idea appeals to people who, for whatever reason, are stuck in what could be said to be a position of ethical immaturity. For these people the idea of eternal punishment is appealing because it provides an outlet for resentment. The justice (or revenge) that you cannot seem to get in this world can supposedly be had in the next, and there is supposedly comfort in that. But the idea of hell stems from a much crueler time, and it seems to me that we can no longer say that torture is compatible with justice. We need to have a more grown up concept of love and justice, ones not purely based personal satisfaction ("I hate him and want to see him punished").
Now, in criticizing a topic like hell there is of course plenty of room for objections like "What you are describing is too literal, what we mean is something more metaphorical like 'a state of utter alienation from God.'"
There are a couple things I have to say to such an objection:
First, even if you don't personally believe in that version of hell, there are plenty of people who do, both now and throughout the idea's long history. And even to those who are far more nuanced in their understanding of hell, I would still ask what role the concept plays for them and for God?
Are you just trying to rationalize and sanitize a concept that really has no place any more, and ought to be left behind with many of the other cruel things we have outgrown?
Do you need to think of an afterlife at all? And why does the afterlife have to be divided into winners and losers?
Second, I would also like to take a step back and consider what may lie behind defensive objections like "Well that's not what I believe in." There is undoubtedly a recognition that I judge this idea of hell to be bad, and with that comes the assumption that because I think it is bad I also think that anyone who believes in it is bad. It is true that I think this idea of hell is bad, but with regard to the second assumption, it's complicated.
To a certain extent, I think how we judge such a matter it depends on what you do with that belief. As the whole discussion in part one of the development of our intellectual and emotional capacities suggests, we are not wholly in change of what we think and feel and believe; the circumstances of our development influence us in ways we cannot entirely control. There is some truth to the excuse "They can't help it, that's how they were brought up": I don't think it is true for everyone to the same degree or for all qualities equally, but I think we can recognize that there are ways of growing up that certainly stunt one's possibilities for change and growth and improvement. Couple that with the fact that (as I address in this post) it is not so easy to change one's beliefs, that they are not simply ideas that we have intentionally chosen. So no, I do not think that anyone is a bad person simply because they believe in hell. Or, at least I don't think of them as a bad person in an uncomplicated way--I suspect most of us are bad people in a variety of complicated ways. I know I certainly am.
As I said briefly, it all depends on what you do with it. For those people for whom a belief in hell serves as a goad to live a good life, well, I'd prefer it if you could live a good life without that fear being a factor in your life both for your emotional well-being and for your moral well-being too. I say the latter because (not uncontroversially) I think that doing something good out of fear is less good than doing it for more positive reasons. Without trying to rank these positive reasons, I think I can at least say that it is more "ethically mature" to do something good because you like doing good things than because you are afraid of bad things happening. "Hell is for children," in this sense, means that hell is for people who have not yet developed to the point where they can do good things on their own, for their own sake.
Ok, so I ended Part One with a discussion of the inappropriateness of the advice "forgive and forget" when applied to child abuse. The idea was that while being able to "forgive and forget" is nice if you are able to do so in a healthy way, the nature and circumstances of child abuse in particular render that ability problematic, to say the least. "Forgive and forget" thus becomes one more mechanism by which abusers can get away with their awful deeds and by which the categories of good and bad, love and hate, get distorted, and with them goes the language we use to talk about them. Benatar provides examples of this with lines like:
"Be daddy's good girl and don't tell mommy a thing
Be a good boy and you'll get a new toy."
To us, the context warps the phrases "daddy's good girl" and "Be a good boy" into something horrifying, and yet to the children, who don't know any different, these meanings are normal. This is literally a warping of what "good" and "bad" mean. This connection between ignorance and the normalization of suffering is, as I said before, part of what makes hell particularly suited to children, i.e., for them.
But this way of looking at the issue also opens the door to the other idea implicit in the phrase "hell is for children," namely, that the very idea of hell (the standard-issue Christian version in particular) is for children in the sense that it is essentially a childish notion insofar as it is enmeshed in the "developmentally-stunted" concepts of love and pain that we see in the song.
Now, without getting into discussions of the difference between "Hell," "Gehenna," "Hades," "Sheol," or "Tartarus" (to name a few), or with the modern attempt to turn hell into some kind of metaphor for "a state of utter alienation from God," what I'm talking about when I say "hell" is the idea of an afterlife in which the dead are punished with eternal torment. The most common version of this is the cartoonish picture of lakes of fire and brimstone populated by red devils wielding pitchforks. This idea didn't come out of nowhere, it has occupied a prominent position in Western Christian consciousness for centuries. While people nowadays may not endorse this version of hell, and some may agree that it is a bit childish, the idea behind it, namely, eternal punishment in the afterlife, is still going strong. And it is this core idea, not simply the fire and pitchforks deployment of it, that I ultimately take issue with.
Why is hell for children? I don't think I'm covering any new ground (I've previously written quite a bit on Byron's particular concern with this idea) when I say that is is because it is tied to the idea of an all-powerful and ever-loving God. As soon as this combination of attributes results in eternal torment, you know that something is messed up. Either God isn't really all-powerful, so he can't prevent their being a hell (resulting in a pretty lame God), or his definition of "love" is just as twisted as the one Benatar sings about. Infinite love and infinite pain should not be one and the same.
To me, these contradictions stem from the fact that the idea of belongs to a childish worldview. For one, I see it as an ideological tool to control people's behavior: threaten people with eternal punishment to keep them from doing what you don't want them to. In this regard hell is for people who are being treated as children, who must be kept in line by force and by fear.
But hell is also for children in the sense that the idea appeals to people who, for whatever reason, are stuck in what could be said to be a position of ethical immaturity. For these people the idea of eternal punishment is appealing because it provides an outlet for resentment. The justice (or revenge) that you cannot seem to get in this world can supposedly be had in the next, and there is supposedly comfort in that. But the idea of hell stems from a much crueler time, and it seems to me that we can no longer say that torture is compatible with justice. We need to have a more grown up concept of love and justice, ones not purely based personal satisfaction ("I hate him and want to see him punished").
Now, in criticizing a topic like hell there is of course plenty of room for objections like "What you are describing is too literal, what we mean is something more metaphorical like 'a state of utter alienation from God.'"
There are a couple things I have to say to such an objection:
First, even if you don't personally believe in that version of hell, there are plenty of people who do, both now and throughout the idea's long history. And even to those who are far more nuanced in their understanding of hell, I would still ask what role the concept plays for them and for God?
Are you just trying to rationalize and sanitize a concept that really has no place any more, and ought to be left behind with many of the other cruel things we have outgrown?
Do you need to think of an afterlife at all? And why does the afterlife have to be divided into winners and losers?
Second, I would also like to take a step back and consider what may lie behind defensive objections like "Well that's not what I believe in." There is undoubtedly a recognition that I judge this idea of hell to be bad, and with that comes the assumption that because I think it is bad I also think that anyone who believes in it is bad. It is true that I think this idea of hell is bad, but with regard to the second assumption, it's complicated.
To a certain extent, I think how we judge such a matter it depends on what you do with that belief. As the whole discussion in part one of the development of our intellectual and emotional capacities suggests, we are not wholly in change of what we think and feel and believe; the circumstances of our development influence us in ways we cannot entirely control. There is some truth to the excuse "They can't help it, that's how they were brought up": I don't think it is true for everyone to the same degree or for all qualities equally, but I think we can recognize that there are ways of growing up that certainly stunt one's possibilities for change and growth and improvement. Couple that with the fact that (as I address in this post) it is not so easy to change one's beliefs, that they are not simply ideas that we have intentionally chosen. So no, I do not think that anyone is a bad person simply because they believe in hell. Or, at least I don't think of them as a bad person in an uncomplicated way--I suspect most of us are bad people in a variety of complicated ways. I know I certainly am.
As I said briefly, it all depends on what you do with it. For those people for whom a belief in hell serves as a goad to live a good life, well, I'd prefer it if you could live a good life without that fear being a factor in your life both for your emotional well-being and for your moral well-being too. I say the latter because (not uncontroversially) I think that doing something good out of fear is less good than doing it for more positive reasons. Without trying to rank these positive reasons, I think I can at least say that it is more "ethically mature" to do something good because you like doing good things than because you are afraid of bad things happening. "Hell is for children," in this sense, means that hell is for people who have not yet developed to the point where they can do good things on their own, for their own sake.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Speculative Titles: Pat Benatar "Hell is for children" (Part One)
I'm going to read this song somewhat against the grain, or at
least to extrapolate beyond the usual interpretations of it. The most
obvious reading of this song is that it is about the horrors of child
abuse (not, as some trolls--or genuine fools--claim, that Pat Benatar
hates children and wants them to go to hell). The main idea expressed
in the line "hell is for children" is that the combination
of innocence and dependence/vulnerability that children embody makes
it particularly apt to use hell as the analogue for the special kind
of torment that they experience in such situations. This is a
powerful idea and I endorse Benatar's handling of it in this way, and
part one of this post will be devoted to cashing out this idea. But,
in part two I want to read the expression "hell is for children"
in another way, and say that precisely because the concept of hell
and all that it represents is so beastly and awful, that the idea is
"for children" in the sense of being childish.
Now before I go any further, because child abuse is an emotionally charged subject that has had devastating effects upon those whom it has touched, I should note that I do not speak from experience here and I do not claim any particular authority on the matter or claim to speak for anyone. What follows are basically theoretical reflections: I speak in a general way of experiences that I have only heard reports of, and the best I can do is to think and use my imagination to understand the phenomenon.
That being said, one particularly ghastly element of child abuse is surely the fact that it doesn't simply do immediate damage to the child (though of course it does that in spades), but it actually damages the child's very process of emotional and psychological maturation and everything that comes from that. Because children are still learning what it means to love and be loved while they are being abused, and often are abused by the very people who are supposed to teach it/model it to them, their torment has the "special" internal component (I say "special" to differentiate it from the fact that all torment has a crucial internal component) of actually twisting the concept of love in its very formation. Benatar is sensitive to this fact, writing that:
Forgive and forget
All the while
Love and pain become one and the same
In the eyes of a wounded child
The idea that "Love and pain become one and the same / In the eyes of a wounded child" is crucial, and she will later sing that "It's all so confusing, this brutal abusing, / They blacken your eyes and then apologise." It is confusing for children, and that confusion goes deep to become a kind of confusion of concepts--love and pain. At such a level, the potential for damage is tremendous, as these twisted lesson have the potential to infect a person's entire capacity to enter into loving relationships with others. (I say "have the potential" because not everyone will be affected by abuse in the same way; I am telling one story, the one that Benatar also tells. If you have been abused but this is not your story, I hope that is because your story went a better way.)
Related to this is Benatar's inclusion of the nostrum "Forgive and forget," a form of advice wholly unsuited to children who lack the emotional capability to properly forgive. I am not disputing the importance of the capability to overcome (or leave behind or comes to grips with or however you wish to understand it) injury or hurt captured by that phrase, nor do I think Benatar is. No, the problem is that child abuse seems to stand in the way of developing the very capability to "forgive and forget" in the first place, at least to do so in a healthy way. After all, what I think of as genuine forgiveness involves coming to terms with one's injury, and I don't think most children have the emotional resources to do so. This is because of the general emotional immaturity of children, and is likely made worse by the damage that abuse does to their capability to eventually develop the kinds of emotional resources necessary to ever "come to terms" with it. After all, I think Benatar is trying to say, without a healthy understanding of what love and trust are supposed to be, how could one forgive?
In addition, there is the fact that children who have been abused may not have the external resources--like existential safety and independence--to give them the luxury of coming to a genuine place of forgiveness. Likely many children will "forgive" their abusers, but not because they have have attained a higher perspective from which to overcome the wrong that was done to them, but rather because they desire love and approval from the very person who is abusing them, and because they depend on them. Perhaps even more likely is that in the course of "forgiving" their abuser most children will really just do their best to forget what happened, while nonetheless carrying it with them their whole lives in some form or another. (This last statement is not meant as an endorsement or denial of repressed memories, a matter that I have not formed any definite judgment about, nor is it meant to consign all victims of abuse to a condition of permanent and defining victimhood. Rather, I just want to express the idea that one does lightly overcome abuse in the blithe way suggested by the expression "forgive and forget" in this context.)
The point of Benatar's inclusion of a phrase like "forgive and forget" then, may very well be a demonstration of its very inadequacy. If hell is for children, part of the reason for this hellishness may be because neither forgiveness nor forgetting are possible. But as I indicated at the beginning of this post, that is only one side of what there is to say about the idea that "hell is for children," next, I will look at an idea that lurks in the song in parallel, as it were.
Now before I go any further, because child abuse is an emotionally charged subject that has had devastating effects upon those whom it has touched, I should note that I do not speak from experience here and I do not claim any particular authority on the matter or claim to speak for anyone. What follows are basically theoretical reflections: I speak in a general way of experiences that I have only heard reports of, and the best I can do is to think and use my imagination to understand the phenomenon.
That being said, one particularly ghastly element of child abuse is surely the fact that it doesn't simply do immediate damage to the child (though of course it does that in spades), but it actually damages the child's very process of emotional and psychological maturation and everything that comes from that. Because children are still learning what it means to love and be loved while they are being abused, and often are abused by the very people who are supposed to teach it/model it to them, their torment has the "special" internal component (I say "special" to differentiate it from the fact that all torment has a crucial internal component) of actually twisting the concept of love in its very formation. Benatar is sensitive to this fact, writing that:
Forgive and forget
All the while
Love and pain become one and the same
In the eyes of a wounded child
The idea that "Love and pain become one and the same / In the eyes of a wounded child" is crucial, and she will later sing that "It's all so confusing, this brutal abusing, / They blacken your eyes and then apologise." It is confusing for children, and that confusion goes deep to become a kind of confusion of concepts--love and pain. At such a level, the potential for damage is tremendous, as these twisted lesson have the potential to infect a person's entire capacity to enter into loving relationships with others. (I say "have the potential" because not everyone will be affected by abuse in the same way; I am telling one story, the one that Benatar also tells. If you have been abused but this is not your story, I hope that is because your story went a better way.)
Related to this is Benatar's inclusion of the nostrum "Forgive and forget," a form of advice wholly unsuited to children who lack the emotional capability to properly forgive. I am not disputing the importance of the capability to overcome (or leave behind or comes to grips with or however you wish to understand it) injury or hurt captured by that phrase, nor do I think Benatar is. No, the problem is that child abuse seems to stand in the way of developing the very capability to "forgive and forget" in the first place, at least to do so in a healthy way. After all, what I think of as genuine forgiveness involves coming to terms with one's injury, and I don't think most children have the emotional resources to do so. This is because of the general emotional immaturity of children, and is likely made worse by the damage that abuse does to their capability to eventually develop the kinds of emotional resources necessary to ever "come to terms" with it. After all, I think Benatar is trying to say, without a healthy understanding of what love and trust are supposed to be, how could one forgive?
In addition, there is the fact that children who have been abused may not have the external resources--like existential safety and independence--to give them the luxury of coming to a genuine place of forgiveness. Likely many children will "forgive" their abusers, but not because they have have attained a higher perspective from which to overcome the wrong that was done to them, but rather because they desire love and approval from the very person who is abusing them, and because they depend on them. Perhaps even more likely is that in the course of "forgiving" their abuser most children will really just do their best to forget what happened, while nonetheless carrying it with them their whole lives in some form or another. (This last statement is not meant as an endorsement or denial of repressed memories, a matter that I have not formed any definite judgment about, nor is it meant to consign all victims of abuse to a condition of permanent and defining victimhood. Rather, I just want to express the idea that one does lightly overcome abuse in the blithe way suggested by the expression "forgive and forget" in this context.)
The point of Benatar's inclusion of a phrase like "forgive and forget" then, may very well be a demonstration of its very inadequacy. If hell is for children, part of the reason for this hellishness may be because neither forgiveness nor forgetting are possible. But as I indicated at the beginning of this post, that is only one side of what there is to say about the idea that "hell is for children," next, I will look at an idea that lurks in the song in parallel, as it were.
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