"When you lay your dream to rest / You can get what's second best... but it's hard to get enough."
Ahh, the duality of meaning. And talk of a hurricane, no less.
Seems like the perfect subject matter for a rainy day, wouldn't you agree?
After all, when they're not busy grading scads of undergraduate midterms or getting their jollies to the lesser-known works of Franz Kafka, graduate students and literature dorks pretty much live for this stuff. You know, extended metaphors, cleverly crafted allegories -- the whole nine.
Simple translation: "there's a story BEHIND the story, and some things can actually mean two very different things at the same time." Often times, we see this in "story songs" -- ballads recounting actual (or loosely fictionalized) events. That way, we manage to get two tales for the price of one.
But if singer/songwriters aren't careful, the duality of meaning gives way to full-on event-specific sappiness, and these bad boys can quickly descend into an uninspired mess of self-indulgent dreck. You know the type:
"Hey everybody! Here's something sad that happened to me! Gosh, it's really sad, wouldn't you agree? Yeah man, really sad stuff. By the way, have I told you how SAD this is?!?"
Ricky Nelson: "Oh where oh where can my baby be?!?"
Gah -- we GET it, already. "You're a self-important emo princess. Here's a tissue. NOW MOVE ON ALREADY."
(That's right, Ricky Nelson -- I'm talking to you.)
Thankfully, today's song doesn't make the same mistakes:
Instead of simply offering up a "story song" with little more to it than your basic trip down woe-is-me-mory lane, David Wilcox's "Eye of the Hurricane" busts out the full-blown two-tales-in-one, duality of meaning approach. And by so doing, we've got ourselves a perfectly acceptable stand-alone surface story AND a frustratingly tangled subtext.
You know, like that "simple" little children's tale of The Lion who returns from the dead to defeat the forces of evil...
(Oh I'm onto you, Lewis.)
But getting back to the Eye of the Hurricane...
ON THE SURFACE:
Our friendly neighborhood singer/songwriter encounters this free-spirited biker chick at a crappy roadside bar. It's night time in the summer. Let's say some place warm -- like the seedier end of Tampa. The girl's a total heartbreaker and he knows it (think Penny Lane in "Almost Famous"), but she's a looker, and he's totally smitten. They strike up a conversation, likely along these lines:
Lovestruck songwriter: "So, you like motorcycles, eh? Tell me about it."
Freespirited biker babe: "There's a lot about life that you just can't control, and I don't like that very much. But when I'm on my bike, it's just me and the open road. And I like that. That's why I call the bike 'The Hurricane.' Because when I ride it, I feel like I'm flying."
Immediately, our hero starts to read between the lines: clearly, this girl has been through the ringer. She is both brazenly confident and instantly tragic. A modern-day Rebel Without a Cause, "Leader Of the Pack" type, if you will (vroom! vroom!). Obviously, this can't end well.
Ghost of James Dean: Too soon, man. Too soon.
Singer/songwriter's surface reaction? "Wow, this chick is DEEP. Me wantie."
But since we're talking about the glorious DUALITY OF MEANING (that is, that some things can work both as a stand-alone story and as a deeper commentary at the same time), our author immediately leads us nicely into the subtext:
IN THE SUBTEXTGuy meets girl. Girl is fascinating, but undeniably screwed up. She always seems to be running from something, and if that ain't bad enough, she comes right out and says cryptic stuff like this:
"When you lay your dream to restWhat. The. Crap.
You can get what's second best, but it's hard to get enough."
That's not just a "red flag," my friends, that's some full-on foreshadowing: this girl is CRAZY, and she's got a "need for speed" (wink wink) that will probably claim her life if she doesn't get it under control in a hurry.
(SPOILER: She doesn't, and it does).
Fittingly, our song ends with a tragic coda to trammel up both levels of interpretation:
"Riding quick the street was dark / The shining truck she thought was parkedSURFACE LEVELBoy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl loves motorcycle. Motorcycle meets truck. Boy loses girl. The end.
It blocked her path, stopped her heart / But not The Hurricane...
She saw her chance to slip the trap / With just the room to pass him back
But then it moved, closed the gap / She never felt the pain..."
SUBTEXT
Get yourself straight. Because if you keep running from something, it's bound to catch up with you.
Yeesh, what a downer. I could really use a breath of fresh air to help lighten the mood.
Say -- anybody wanna' go for a motorcycle ride?
