Glimpses of Recognition: The Mountain Goats--"Against Pollution"

Thinking about recognition in "The Ballad of Bull Ramos" got me thinking about another moment of recognition (or in this case, non-recognition and the hope of recognition) in another Mountain Goats song, "Against Pollution":

The song seems to be a confession of sorts: it tells the story of someone working in a liquor store who, when someone tries to rob the store with a gun, shoots the would-be robber in the face. The song itself seems to be an attempt to work through the experience, and in particular, to sort out whether (or more likely, to what extent) he should feel guilty for what he did. Certainly the circumstances help to justify the act as self-defense from a legal and moral sense. But even if the act was justified, even if it was the right thing to do (or at least not unequivocally wrong), it was still not a good thing to have done, even despite the fact that that the whole thing was largely out of one’s control. There are tragedies of all sorts in the world, ones where there is no good outcome, and no one escapes unscathed or as good (or morally sound or clean or pure or whatever terminology you want).

Especially given the biblical content of the song (the terminology of pollution, the praying on the rosary at the Catholic church, and the passages drawn from the bible about the last days and seeing through a glass darkly) I think this kind of guilt by association is the pollution that is at issue in the song's title, although it is ambiguous whether the title means the song is actually against the idea of pollution/guilt or if the song is rather meant to be the singer's struggle against pollution. I'm not sure if an analysis of the song can clear that up, but it certainly sheds light on what is at stake in each, and in the course of the analysis we can see how recognition functions as a certain kind of ideal in it. 
 
So to begin with the shooting incident, it is worth noticing that the song actually runs through it twice with subtle differences. This running through it multiple times makes sense as a way of trying to make sense of the whole thing--we run these types of things through our minds over and over  to try to understand them, often telling them with slight variations until we get to the point where the story becomes one we can live with, or, to put it another way, we can recognize ourselves in. This can be an ambiguous process: it may just be until we get to a version of events self-serving enough for us to live with, and sometimes it may be until see if from the right angle so that we can understand it and fit it into our sense of what the world is like--or adjust our sense of the world accordingly. This is also part of the function of confession: by telling the story to another, we submit our actions to their judgement in the hopes of being vindicated, i.e., being recognized, by them.
Here is the first telling:

When I worked down at the liquor store
A guy with a shotgun came raging through the place,
Muscled his way behind the counter,
I shot him in the face.

It's pretty factual, it simply recounts setting A, action B, and reaction C. Compare that to the second telling:

A year or so ago I worked at a liquor store
And a guy came in,
Tried to kill me,
So I shot him in the face.
I would do it again, I would do it again.

The second telling connects the incident to a specific(ish) time in the teller's life ("A year or so ago"), gives the robber a far more threatening and directed intent ("tried to kill me"), and frames his own reaction in terms of that threat, thereby justifying it ("I would do it again, I would do it again"), but perhaps even more importantly, incorporating it into the fabric of his life. 

The first telling leads to a seemingly spontaneous desire to go down to the Catholic church, where the teller spends 45 minutes praying the rosary (a penace typically given after confession, thereby making it seems like ). The repetition of the rosary is reflected in the repetition of the story, and the need for confession/absolution (one leading to the other, hopefully) is of course linked to the church. 
 
Indeed, the speaker seems to imagine absolution as a form of full and mutual recognition, which is itself an event of apocalyptic, biblical proportions: 

When the last days come
We shall see visions
More vivid than sunsets,
Brighter than stars
We will recognize each other
And see ourselves for the first time
The way we really are

What is interesting is that the second "I would do it again" from the second telling then immediately transitions into this, so its hard to tell if this "I would do it again" is meant to simply be a second affirmation for emphasis, or if it is actually meant to be "I would do it again when the last days come," implying that the act is ultimately justified in the cosmic scheme of things, such as in the reckoning in Revelation 20:12, or perhaps more like what gets described in the I Corinthians 13:11 for the element of interpersonal knowledge and recognition that comes from it:

"Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away...For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (The Simon & Schuster Living Literature edition of the KJV 1146)
 
This famous passage (which the Mountain Goats also directly quote in “Love Love Love”--“love” being a synonym for “charity,” although the latter is more specific when it comes to the translation of the Greek term agape in the passage) undoubtedly lurks behind this moment of finally recognizing each other as we really are, rather than being limited by the endless stream of merely partial knowledge that normally makes up our world and our personal relations. Another related passage comes from the1^st Letter of John (3:2):

"what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1216)

The idea throughout these biblical passages is that the ultimate goal is to be able to fully recognize and love each other, and I think what the speaker wants is this recognition to exist between himself and the robber (that is who I think the “we” is in this song). Without a heaven or an end of the world this kind of recognition is ultimately unachieveable in this case (the robber is surely dead after being shot int he face), but it is easy to see how religious feelings get summoned up in an attempt to come to grips with the desire for such a resolution. It is a complicated moral situation, one in which recognition plays an ambiguous but crucial role.

Glimpses of Recognition: The Mountain Goats' "The Ballad of Bull Ramos"

The concept that I wish to pursue an examination of across a pair of Mountain Goat songs is a philosophically laden one: recognition. As the word literally says, re-cognition is not just a matter of cognition, of thinking something for the first time, but of some kind of thinking-over of something that we already know but perhaps in a higher-order or fuller fashion like when we come to recognize something as true. This sense is particularly relevant to the social meaning of the term: when we recognize someone we know from a crowd, for instance, it's not like picking one object out from a series of others, but of affirming a prior relationship based upon the knowledge (at least to an extent) of who that person is, i.e., their identity. Connected to this sense of recognition and social identity is the way that we also speak about it in terms of the attribution of some kind of status to one's identity. So when we say that we want recognition for something, what we mean is that we want some particular act or achievement, along with whatever social status they are supposed to bring, to be explicitly connected to our identity. 

The song that began my reflection on this matter is "The Ballad of Bull Ramos," which is about a wrestler who was long classified as a heel, but the song itself is a celebration of his life and spirit, as the uplifting music itself attest. 

As for the details of his life, Bull Ramos did actually buy and run a car wrecking yard, so that part is all accurate, as are his famous generosity and the bits about his later health problems. The picture is paints of him is far removed from that of the bull-whip wielding heel; instead, the energy of the song reflects the vitality that seems to have infused his life inside and out of the ring. In this regard the song is really about giving him the recognition that he deserves, a task that much of the album it comes from, Beat the Champ, is devoted to doing for wrestling in general by revealing the human content of wrestling and of the enjoyment of it.


I think the most touching part of the song--its emotional core--comes around 1:25, after he's laid up by a piece of glass on the floor of the shop:

And the doctor recognizes me
As the operating theatre grows dim,
"Aren't you that old wrestler with a bull whip?"
"Yes sir, that's me, I'm him."

All of the weight of this entire song, with its documentation of not just a career but a life, bears down on the one word, "recognizes"  and the kind of status-giving that it implies. In the case of Bull Ramos, I think there is a certain validation in being recognized by the doctor. The fact that a serious professional could have been so influenced by his performance to recognize him so many years later serves as a particular validation of his career. You can hear this in the way that Ramos addresses the doctor as sir as well as his triple affirmation of his identity ("Yes sir, that's me, I'm him"). It's a touching moment that is a testament to The Mountain Goats' songwriting ability. In the next post I'll follow up with the next Mountain Goats song, "Against Pollution." 

Musical Shipwrecks: Big Country "Ships"

Now, despite having categorized this song in terms of a “musical shipwreck,” I don’t think of this song as a shipwreck, it’s more that I find the shipwreck to be a particularly fascinating metaphor (in anything, not just songs). The magic, as it were, lies in the way that a shipwreck combines these elements and more: the terror of being in a foreign element (the sea); the anonymity of death at sea; the seemingly tragic inevitability of a ship being wrecked by external elements—as if by fate; the heroism of the crew’s endeavour to save themselves and the ship; the totality of the disaster that it represents, as it is the loss of a whole crew/community; and the sense that it signifies the ruin of a journey and the possibility of a homecoming. All in all it’s a powerful combination of elements stemming from what has long been one of the most important forms of transportation (and indeed, forms of life) in human history. All this makes it a potent metaphor for lots of other things (and a potent image in itself as well), and thus a great resource for song-writing.

That being said, let me present the song “Ships” from Big Country:

I’m going to start this one on a somewhat biographical note because it’s a song that has meant a lot to me for a long time. Although I cannot remember the exact date when I first heard this song, I would guess that it was either late in the summer of 1993 (maybe a promo play of it before the album was released) or the summer of 1994. Either way, I figure it was the summer because I heard it on the radio at my family cottage and that’s most likely when I’d have been there (could be a random part of the fall of 1993 but my fuzzy memory suggests the summer and fall trips to the cottage were infrequent). Anyway, I only heard it that one time on the radio for years before I finally tracked it down some time in the early 2000s on the basis of the super catchy folk-rock chorus—“Where were you went my ship went down….”

What I think is particularly fascinating (and affecting) about this song is how un-rock-and-roll its subjects are: the song details three lives shipwrecked on the rocks of life as it were. Now, failure isn’t foreign to rock, there are lots of losers throughout the rock catalogue (Springsteen is full of them, for instance). No, it’s the particular kind of failure detailed in the song, and the virtues that it espouses (despite their failure) that make it special.

To see what I mean let me first outline the three subjects here: the first is a “used-up” man who prides himself on his honesty and integrity and clings to whatever dignity he can; the second is a woman who tried to life a free life, trying to find love on her own terms rather than those dictated by society and who ends up alone; and the last is an “us” who are struggling to balance their ideals against the demands of mere survival. Yes rock has its rebels and idealists, but rarely on the humbler, more personal side such as this and rarely in the service of such unhip virtues as personal integrity, or for a genuine sexual/emotional freedom (as opposed to its usual commercialized form which is really just another kind of bondage). The shipwreck metaphor works here because these “ships” have charted such exemplary courses and yet despite that they still find themselves floundering against external conditions.

The fact that this song is largely about the failure of all of these people and their ideals would make it particularly depressing were it not for the rousing chorus, the one that enabled me to find the song so many years later:

So where were you when my ship went down?
Where were you when I ran aground?
Where were you when I turned it around?
Where were you when they burned me down?

The chorus is accusatory, which you would think would contribute to the general “downer” quality of the song, were it not for the infectious energy of that accusation. Sure these shipwrecks have happened and continue to happen and we are nowhere to be found, but this accusation is meant to wake us up. “Where were you?” turns into the question of “Where are you now?” and “Where are we now?” That is why the final part of the song switches to a reflection on “us,” because if we can get a sense of the course that we are on, then there is a chance to band together as a crew and prevent these shipwrecks in the future. The only hope we have is to form a “we” to stand against the “they” that burn it down.

The Posies-"You're the Beautiful One"

In the Cold War Kids song “First” from a few posts ago, one of the central parts of the song features a potential moment of redemption. In it the downward pull of psychological gravity gets arrested for a moment, written off as a “dark night of the soul”:

There comes a time, in a short life

Turn it around, get a rewrite

Call it a dark night of the soul

Ticking of clocks, gravity’s pull

First you get close, then you get worried

As the final lines quoted here suggest, this “rewrite” doesn’t really stick, and things continue to deteriorate along the old lines for the rest of the song. The notion of life’s resistance to a rewrite is what leads me to the next song that I want to discuss, “You’re the Beautiful One” by The Posies.

I’m not sure how much I can say about what “You’re the Beautiful One” means as a whole because it is rather cryptic, or at least more impressionistic and tonal than explicit in its meaning. It seems to be directed at someone going away—probably dying, probably sick from something judging from one of the last lines: “Funny how you can cure yourself / But what made you sick’s still there” (and then there’s the devastating line that follows: “Funny how you detach yourself / When you want to show you care.”).

But maybe the beauty is beyond understanding, since the final line of the song does declare that “What’s so beautiful about you is, / You didn’t have to explain it to me.” Anyway, what is clear is that much of the song proceeds by negation:

There's no kiss, no kiss I'd trade for you
There's no kiss, no disciple I wouldn't betray for you
You're the beautiful one, of course you knew
And the wind it blew smoke circles around your eyes.

I can't teach you, I can't tell you
I can't know you but I want to
I can't sense you, I can't move you
I can't kill you, I can't stop you
There's no tailor-making a four hundred dollar disguise
(not this time)
Just an unhappy wind blowin' smoke in your eyes

All of this negation points to the idea that there is no relationship that is sacred (all of the Judas kiss and disciple imagery), and no action or relationship that ever fully connects (the whole second stanza.verse). There is only this negativity, the wind that blows in our eyes, obscuring our vision while it blows everything away. And yet from within that, and maybe because of it, there is beauty; perhaps all this negation is a kind of clearing away of everything, a saying goodbye to all of the inessential to get at the essential.

In getting to the heart of this process, the most interesting of these negations is the following sequence which is focused around the inappropriateness of the metaphor of writing/fiction being applied to life:

There’s no backspace, there’s no comma,

There’s no hyphen, there’s no ribbon,

There’s no tab skips to the place where it writes out,

“All is forgiven.”

There’s no accusation that comes as a big surprise,

Not this time.

Just an unhappy tire throwing dirt in my eyes.

No backspace means no undoing what has been done; no comma means no pausing; no hyphen means no arbitrarily or forcefully or externally or easy linking two things together; no ribbon (I guess we’re back in typewriter days here) means no underlying continuity or source or background; and no tab skips to a final “All is forgiven” means that there is certainly no easy or instant resolution to be had, and perhaps no final or total resolution at all. As the part about the lack of an “accusation that comes as a big surprise” suggests, endings in life are messy and we can rarely avail ourselves of the same kinds of tropes that guide a fictional story to its end like a big reveal. And despite all of this—again, perhaps only with it, because of it—there is still beauty to be affirmed in life. And in the tradition of my treatment of “Vital Signs,” I want to include a link to a really excellent live version of this song and point out some of the highlights of it.

This version starts at 1:22, before that you get some foreign language (Dutch from the looks of it) exposition of the joke behind the title of Ken Stringfellow’s album title “Danzig in the Moonlight” and a cute little rendition of Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” The playing in the song itself is gorgeous throughout (their version from the live album Alive Before the Iceberg is also excellent, with more musical muscle backing it compared to this acoustic version), but the standout moments include Ken’s delivery of the line “Just an unhappy tire throwing dirt in my eyes” at 4:34, and the repetition of “You’re the beautiful one” starting at 5:30 and culminating in Ken’s “You’re the one” at 5:56. It’s the beautiful one.

And as a final note, The Posies are releasing a new album, Solid States, this friday (May 20th), so as far as days go that's going to be a beautiful one. From the sound of it (both the release commentary and the song samples released so far: http://www.mymusicempire.com/#/artist/theposies#artist-intro ) the album is quite a departure from what we've heard from them before, particularly because of the death of their long-time drummer Darius Minwalla. I'll be interested to see how it all goes.