24. Lovers In Japan - (Coldplay)

"I have no doubt / One day the sun'll come out."

In our last entry, we dove headlong into the melancholy end of the swimming pool and sized up F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and the Counting Crows "A Murder of One." The moral of those stories? Life is hard and far too often wasted, so quit wasting yours watching other people waste theirs.

(Perhaps we should say "waste" one more time. Ahh, that's better).

In the interest of fairness, I thought it only fitting that we spend today's entry tackling a track that seems to be something of a thematic opposite to the stuff we covered in our last go-round. True, life may indeed be long and hard (that's what she said?) -- but this isn't anything to get all worked up over.*

(*Ending sentences with prepositions, however...)

But as far as Coldplay is concerned, the simple fact of the matter is that while yes, it might well be raining today -- one day the sun WILL come out, ya' know. And so sets the stage for our ensuing discussion on the perpetual optimism of this man:


Chris Martin: Quite possibly a space alien.

The Great Gatsby and "A Murder of One" tackled some pretty heavy thematic elements. Sex, death, wasted potential -- the whole nine. But literature and pop music needn't always be so gosh-darned Debbie Downer in order to rise to the level of certifiably awesome. In fact, Chris Martin and his Coldplay brethren have actually carved out a pretty respectable niche in the world of rock and roll by singing songs that are anything BUT depressing. True, they do lovez themz some ballads -- but just about every single track that Coldplay has ever penned typically ends up finding some small glimmer of hope in even the saddest and strangest of situations.

Sample lyrics include:

"When you try your best, but you don't succeed... I will try to fix you." (Fix You)
"Nobody said it was easy." (The Scientist)
"I don't wanna' follow Death and all of his friends." (Death And All His Friends)
"Death will never conquer us." (Death Will Never Conquer)
"Everything's not lost." (Everything's Not Lost)

Long story short:


Chris Martin and company are "glass half full" kinda guys.

*(Bonus fun fact: Coldplay actually released a B-side track called "Glass of Water" in 2008. Neat, huh?)

But anyway...

The band's perpetual optimism is made particularly evident in their 2008 track, "Lovers In Japan" -- a plucky, uptempo breeze that sails through the riddles of life while buoyed by an underlying belief that things usually end up working out for the best in the end. As Chris Martin begins:

"Lovers
Keep on the road you're on.
Runners
Until the race is run.
Soldiers
You've got to soldier on."

(Toldja' they were optimists)

True, individual patches of stuff might not always make sense along the way (Martin admits: "sometimes / even the right is wrong"). But this fact is neither anything new nor indeed cause for concern. Heck, Shakespeare's Hamlet famously grappled with precisely the same questions of relativism and self-doubt some 400 years earlier when he said:


"'Tis nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so"
(Act II, scene ii).

In short: you can waste a whole lotta' time thinking yourself into or out of just about anything. But in the bigger picture of life? There's really no point in allowing yourself get hung up in such mental gymnastics, especially since Coldplay is pretty convinced that things will turn out alright in the end. Martin says as much right there in the chorus:

"I have no doubt
One day the sun'll come out."

And then later in the song...

"But I have no doubt
One day we'll work it out."

Translation: "Don't Panic" (hey look -- another Coldplay song title)! Or as Max Ehrmann might say:


"And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."
- Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata" (1952)

Coldplay's bottom line?

No point in stressing about the here and now -- simply trust that there is, in fact, a bigger plan in place, then stay the course while letting life unfold around you as it always has. After all, the glass is half full, and thus there should be "no doubt / [that] one day we'll work it out."


"Problem Play?" More like "problem solved."

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23. A Murder of One - (The Counting Crows)

"You don't wanna' waste your life, baby..."

Last week, I was talking with a friend of mine who teaches high school English. He also just so happens to be something of a huge nerd for music. Needless to say, we've got more than a lot in common -- and so I was delighted to wax philosophical on the subject of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the awesomeness that is the Counting Crows.

Particularly pertinent example of awesomeness? The Counting Crows critically underrated "A Murder of One"

How awesome is this song? Just look at the title. Right off the bat, we've got ourselves an archaic word AND a double meaning. It's like Christmas come early! Check it out:

"A murder" (translation: flock) "of one" (read: singular crow)

VS.

"A murder of one" (as in, "the death of a singular person"-- ahh... but *WHO?*).

Presumably, the "singular person" who's dying here is the girl toward whom the song is addressed -- or so we're lead to believe. Basically, the gal -- let's call her "Maria" -- is trapped in a dead-end relationship with a guy who's a total zero (Adam Duritz asks: "are you happy when you're sleepin?" Survey says: "nope").

In true hopeless romantic fashion, the ever introspective Duritz implores the girl to break things off with her boy-toy. Doleful and dejected as ever, our dreadlocked balladeer even takes to playing songs outside of her window, Say Anything style. There, he pours his heart out and urges her to "change, change, change" (after all, "you don't wanna' waste your life, baby," now do you?).


Clever -- but John Cusack totally beat you to the punch.

The irony here, of course, is that our protagonist is wasting *his* time pining after someone who simply is in no place to reciprocate. Rather than living his own life, the dude is just moping from the sidelines as he watches the lives of others unfold around him. And while urging them to "change, change, change" is all well and good, it seems our narrator would be well-served to take his own advice and actually -- ya' know -- *do something* with his own life besides whining about how screwed up the lives of others might be.

Because if you don't start living, you might as well start dying. And to that end, maybe the "murder of one" is actually a self-referential and ironic commentary on the fate of our unknowing narrator himself.

Say, I've heard that one before...

The Great Gatsby (1925)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Though widely dismissed as a trivial relic of a bygone era at the time of its original publication, Fitzgerald's Gatsby has gone on to achieve near boundless acclaim in the 80-plus years since, arguably to the point where it has become a regular fixture among most informed discussions of "The Great American Novel" if there ever was one. It's heartbreaking. Universal. And timeless.

Here's the Cliff's Notes:

A plucky young narrator (Nick Carraway) relocates to the old-money end of New York and finds himself simultaneously fascinated and disgusted by the high society life of excess of a man named Jay Gatsby and his socialite ilk. In Nick's eyes, Gatsby is the living embodiment of everything that's wrong with West Egg: the parties, the booze, the lies, the revelry, the love-without-sex, the sex-without-love -- you name it. For all of its gilded sheen and promise, the place turns out to be nothing more than a moral cesspool. Man, what a friggin' waste of life.


Adam Duritz: "You don't wanna' waste your life now, darlin'..."

Fun fact: speaking of "wasted" lives, F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American expat living in Paris at the time of Gatsby's publication in 1924. And like most of the Lost Generation, he was equal parts disillusioned with the U.S. and enamored of French culture of the time. So what does this have to do with "waste?"

Check out the French translation of the phrase "the waste."

"je gaspiller"

And the name of Fitzgerald's protagonist?

Jay Gatsby.
This guy = genius.

But in spite of the wasted life, wealth, and debauchery (or perhaps because of it), Nick encounters two clearly identifiable (though equally intangible) symbols that yes, gosh darnit -- there really *is* some good to be had in this crazy, crazy world.

The object of Gatsby's desires: An elusive green light that shines waaaaay off in the misty horizon, and a thoroughly unattainable girl-next-door named Daisy, who (surprise, surprise!) is trapped in a loveless relationship just outside of his very own window.

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

Daisy (like Maria) is smack-dab in the middle of a crappy relationship. Sure, she and her hubby run in the same social circles, but emotionally? They're worlds apart -- to the point where they literally sit at the same table and barely even manage to hold a simple conversation. And Daisy's beau doesn't just take her for granted and "tell her when she's wrong" (though he does plenty of that, too) -- he's a flat-out adulterer, to boot.

Enter Adam Duritz -- err, I mean -- Jay Gatsby: the sensitive outsider with a far-off dream and a heart of gold. It's obvious -- he's a better match for Daisy and they both know it, so Gatsby spends the better part of the novel throwing elaborate parties while trying to convince the poor girl to ditch her lesser-half. Gatsby's goal? Get Daisy to leave her old life behind to sail off with him towards that far-off green light and new world of promise that it represents.

Whoah -- "a glowing light" that inspires you to change? Let's get back to the Counting Crows again, for a second:

"I walk along these hillsides / In the summer 'neath the sunshine
I am feathered by the moonlight...Change, change, change!"

Dang.

First we've got two stories of dudes crushing on a girl who's stuck in a dead-end relationship. And now both protagonists are looking to ethereal, far-off sources of light to help them get their heads straight. Sounds like Gatsby and Duritz have a heckuvalot in common, eh?

More than you know.

Tell you what: let's wrap this entry up by looking at an excerpt from each of the pieces we've discussed. Keep an eye out for the tone and imagery throughout, and I think you'll see just how kindred the spirits of Mr. Duritz and Mr. Gatsby really are. We'll start with some Gatsby:

"This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight."

Ok -- so we've got: smoke, hills, impenetrable cloudiness, and an inability to see beyond the horizon and express what really needs to be said. Still with me? Good. And now, some Counting Crows to bring us home:

"Well I dreamt I saw you walking,
Up a hillside in the snow
Casting shadows on the winter sky,
As you stood there, counting crows

One for sorrow, two for joy,
Three for girls, and four for boys,
Five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret, never to be told

There's a bird that nests inside you,
Sleeping underneath your skin
Yeah, when you open up your wings to speak,
I wish you'd let me in."

Hey -- *I* see what they did there.

Heartbreaking. Universal. And timeless.

(Toldja' the Counting Crows were awesome).

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*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.

22. Laughing With - (Regina Spektor)

"No one's laughing at God in a hospital / No one laughs at God in a war."

I don't think one has to be a particularly religious person to agree that if -- in fact, there *is* a God -- then The Almighty probably has a funny sense of humor. After all, this world is full of all sorts of crazy stuff that just doesn't quite make any logical sense -- almost to the point where it seems, at times, that certain things have been specifically designed for the sole purpose of making people laugh.

Take, for example...

Exibit A: The Duck-Billed Platypus
But when we're not chuckling from the sidelines at waddling punchlines, humans tend to do a whole lot of laughing at other things, too. Stuff like random coincidences, happenstance meetings, other people's misfortunes (e.g. "fat man fall down go boom"), and the rest of the crazy curveballs that life tends to throw our way at any given time.

And every now and again? We can't help but find ourselves laughing at God Himself ("Herself?" "Itself?") -- which is precisely where Regina Spektor's song picks up. I mean seriously -- how can you *not* laugh at God from time to time, especially in those moments where life makes virtually ZERO sence and yet God is (as she says):

"Presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini /
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus"

After all: when what we see unfolding in front of us is just so silly and senseless at times, it can seem kind of far-fetched to surrender to the notion of some bigger, broader, higher organizing power who's supposedly floating out there above the clouds and making sense of this crazy mess that we call life.

Voltaire would agree:


"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Long story short: life is silly, and we don't always do so great a job of appreciating the bigger picture. To that end (so says Voltaire), we can't help but think that there's simply GOT to be something larger than ourselves watching over this whole crazy charade in order to keep things running as they should. Otherwise, what meaning could our lives possibly have?

As far as Regina Spektor is concerned -- not much.

With this in mind, Spektor notes how it's mighty suspicious that all of this laughing at God nonsense seems to screech to a halt whenever something legitimately bad seems to be lurking just around the corner. And for all of our big, blustery cracks at The Big Man's expense -- the jokes do tend to fall off in short order when things get serious.

In a hospital...

In a war...

When the doctor calls after some routine tests...


Dr. Nick: Hi, everybody!
Well ok, maybe we're still laughing when the doctor calls... but only if it's Doctor Nick.

And even then, we're probably just doing like Regina Spektor sings and "laughing with God" -- not at Him.

(Because let's face it, even God would agree that Dr. Nick is pretty freakin' funny).

21. Even If It Breaks Your Heart - (Will Hoge)

"I can hear 'em sayin' / Keep on dreamin' even if it breaks your heart"

Last week, I had the opportunity to sneak on over to Washington D.C.'s famed 9:30 Club and catch a live performance by the phenomenally talented Will Hoge (picture a young Tom Petty. Yup, that's about it). I've been a fan of Will's music for a while, now -- but it wasn't until I had the chance to see him perform in front of a live audience that I actually managed to appreciate just how raw, honest, and introspective a songwriter the guy really is.


Will Hoge: A "working-man's Jason Mraz," if you will.

The centerpiece of Will's latest album? An intensely personal, uptempo track called "Even If It Breaks Your Heart," which recounts the story of a young boy growing up in Memphis, a burgeoning fascination with rock and roll music, and a crazy dream to take a shot at superstardom in spite of the staggering odds that might stand in his way.

Here, I'll let him tell you:

"Way back on the radio dial
Fire got lit inside a bright eyed child
Every note just wrapped around his soul
From steel guitar to Memphis all the way to rock and roll"

From an early age, our songwriter seems to have developed a pretty special place in his heart for this crazy bidnizz we like to call "rock and roll." And as the song rolls onward, Hoge makes it pretty clear that once the seeds of his rock and roll dreams began to take root, there wasn't really much that could be done to shake the fact that he knew he'd just have to buck up and try this whole "musician" thing for a living.

... even if it breaks his heart.

Again, as he says:

"Some dreams stay with you forever
Drag you around and lead you back to where you were
Some dreams keep on gettin' better
Gotta' keep believing if you wanna' know for sure"

In short (and as the chorus echoes)? "Keep on dreamin' even if it breaks your heart." Or as our favorite Sweet Transvestite might say:


Dr. Frank N' Furter: "Don't dream it, BE it."

Hoge's message is clear: dreams aren't merely passing distractions from the day-to-day grind of everyday existence. Instead, they stick with you, and they hurt for a reason -- because they challenge us to strive for the really good stuff that might just be waiting around the bend if only we're brave enough to take the shot and chase them.

(Even if it breaks our hearts).

Since we're on the subject of heartbreak and dreams, however -- betcha' didn't know that American Gothic uber-genius Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) actually devoted a whole lot of his poetry to precisely such a topic, now didja'?


Yes, *that* Edgar Allan Poe (as in "That Guy Who Wrote 'The Raven'").

It's true: his "nightmare" stories are the ones that eventually earned Poe his reputation. But when he wasn't yammering away about pits, pendulums, tell-tale hearts, and unopened casks of Amontillado -- the nineteenth century Baltimore balladeer actually spent a pretty sizable chunk of his canon musing on the simple and happy stuff that we call dreams.

Here's a sample:

A Dream
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream - that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

Translation:

Dreams are like "lonely spirit[s]" -- they are "purely bright," but often as elusive as they are beautiful. And our inability to capture them is precisely the sort of thing that can leave a man "broken-hearted." But this isn't a reason to give up on them. For as Poe suggests, dreams can still lead us "throu[gh] storm and night" so as to draw us closer to bigger and better things in the long run.

In the end? Perhaps it's best to stick to the advice of our buddy Will Hoge:

"Keep on dreamin...'"

And whatever you do --

"... don't let it break your heart."

20. 100 Years - (Five For Fighting)

"Fifteen there's still time for you...
Time to buy and time to lose yourself within a morning star."
"Carpe diem," kiddies. That's Latin for "seize the freakin' day."


Horace (65 B.C. - 8 B.C.): "Hey - I never said 'freakin'"...

(Quiet, you).

The ancient fella's advice is as sound as it is age-old: you've only got a finite amount of time on this planet. So don't just let life happen to you -- take a chance, roll the dice, and savor each new opportunity wherever it may be.

Coincidentally, that's also the theme of John Ondrasik's "100 Years," and it just so happens to be one of the most powerful and recurrent messages in the entire canon of Western literature. Heck, the metaphysical poets (John Donne and his ilk) created an entire sub genre dedicated to this motif waaaaay back in the 1500's -- and thus the literary world ended up with a boatload of "DO IT NOW!" poems, plays, and stories popping up all throughout the Elizabethan era and beyond.


Ahhhnold: "GET TO THE CHOPPA!!! DO IT NOW!!!"

(Oh come on -- you never saw Predator?)

Anyhow -- the "carpe diem" tradition continued well into the modern era. And for well over 2000 years, writers and thinkers of all walks of life simply couldn't help but implore their audiences to take hold of whatever moments the world might present them in order to live our finite lives to their fullest potential. Need a contemporary example? Why just ask the ridiculously talented (though recently deceased) Saul Bellow:


(Doesn't get much clearer than *that*, now does it?)

But let's get back to the song:

"100 Years" tells the story of a man looking intently at different flash points of his life (past, present, and future) and recounting how -- at each of these given moments -- the problems of the world seemed to be just so gosh-darned important and all-encompassing that he simply couldn't help but get lost in the thick of things. In short: life moves so fast that his brain can't quite ever seem to catch up. And since he's either looking ahead or looking back, it's a perpetual challenge to make sense of things as they happen.

At "fifteen?" The songwriter is "caught in-between ten and twenty," but dreaming his life away.


Taylor Swift: "Cuz' when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you / You're gonna' believe them..."
*(True story: the chorus to Taylor's "Fifteen" sounds a whole lot like Five For Fighting's "100 Years." Crazy, huh?)

At twenty two?
The balladeer is "on fire," falling in love, and wondering what the future might hold.

At thirty three?
He's got "a kid on the way" and "a family on [his] mind."

At forty five?
He's "heading through a crisis / chasing the years of [his] life."

And so on, and so on...


Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855): "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward."

On and on the cycle continues until the protagonist ends up at "ninety nine, for a moment" -- and finds himself (what else?!) DREAMING his life away all over again. Except this time? He's dreaming *backwards* -- making sense of the events that brought him to that point and "dyin' for just another moment" (or more specifically, the chance to go back and enjoy each of those moments simply in their own time and for what they were).

As he says:

"Fifteen, there's never a wish better than this...
When you've only got a hundred years to live."

It's a classic paradox of human existence: young folks dream of what life will be like when they're old, and old folks reflect on the missed opportunities of their youth. In the end, we see that life is really no more than a series of moments along the way, and thus we're implored to "seize the day" as each new wrinkle arises.

In other words:

"Carpe freakin' diem."

Hmmm -- this sounds oddly reminiscent of a fellow American balladeer by the name of Robert Frost:


Robert Frost (1874 - 1963): Only had just shy of a hundred years to live.

Robert Frost is likely as beloved, influential, and ballyhooed an American poet as you're likely to find. And in the (not quite) hundred years or so of the man's long and storied career, he wrote a heckuva' lot of material about making the most of life and seizing each new day as it came along. Case in point:

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

Moral of the story?

Don't sweat the small stuff, and do your best to appreciate every moment simply for what it is. But as Frost writes elsewhere -- this sort of thing is much easier said than done:

"Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward,
He waited, (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it.
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing-
Too present to imagine."

Translation: Age bids us all to "seize the present." But there's just no getting around the fact that each new moment in life sure can be an awful lot to process when we're right there going through it.

Incidentally -- the name of this poem?

"Carpe Diem," of course.

Because when it comes right down to it, there really never was a wish better than this. After all:

"You've only got a hundred years to live."

19. One Of Us - (Joan Osborne)

"Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus... tryin' to make his way home"

In March of 1995, few people on this planet were more controversial than Kentucky-born singer/songwriter Joan Osborne. See, in addition to playing Lilith Fair and serving as an outspoken advocate for the ever-polarizing folks at Planned Parenthood, Miss Osborne had the nerve -- nay, the audacity! -- to flip the pop music world on its head with these seven little words:

"What if God was one of us?"

Needless to say, this kinda' talk was practically blasphemous to conventionally religious folks like William A. Donohue of The Catholic League (whose sole mission in life, it seems, is simply to exist for the sake of being offended whenever a mainstream entertainer dares to broach the subject of organized religion). Isn't that right, Bill?


The Catholic League's Bill Donohue: "Get behind me, Satan."

Anyhow --

Being a devout Catholic and a firm believer that Jesus was indeed fully divine AND fully human for a good thirty-some-odd years or so way back in the day, Donohue took offense to Osborne's lyrics (though in Joan's defense, the song was actually written by Eric Bazilian -- formerly of "The Hooters," and probably best known for the awesomely-melodica-heavy 1986 single, "And We Danced").


(side note: Melodicas? Freakin' amazing).

But regardless of who actually wrote the song --

Donohue got bent out of shape at Joan Osborne's idea of a radio-ready pop ballad that presented a God who was incarnate in such a flawed way that it might cause people's faith to be shaken. After all, the Almighty is essentially perfect, right? So how could He *ever* possibly be reduced to anything along the lines of a "slob like one of us" or a mere "stranger on the bus?"

Definitely a tough question. And to that end, "One Of Us" managed to provide many a soul-searching pilgrim with a beautiful mystery and one killer headache all at once.

But if Joan Osborne's God talk makes you reach for the Bible (or worse, the Aspirin), then perhaps I should go ahead and caution you outright against ever picking up The Sound and The Fury by this man:


William Faulkner (1897-1962): Nobel Prize-winning Author, genius.

Because for as frustrating as it may well indeed be, at least Joan Osborne's question ("What if God was one of us?") was simple.

But in Faulkner's master work? Not so much.

In The Sound and The Fury, readers are presented with the story of Benjamin ("Benjy") Compson -- a moaning, speechless, 33-year-old manchild with severe mental retardation. In Shakespeare's words (from which the novel's title finds its origins)? Benjy's story is little else besides "a tale... [t]old by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

As Joan Osborne might say: Benjy's "just a slob like one of us."

Far from being glorious or redemptive, Faulkner's protagonist becomes a total inversion of the Christ figure and thus morphs into something of an ironic commentary on the fallen state of man. Here, the author challenges his readers to ponder how the modern world might receive The Almighty were He to somehow find Himself utterly helpless to (in Osborne's words) "make his way home."

To wit: The Sound and The Fury's question is right along the same lines as "One Of Us," but Faulkner's is clearly more nuanced and complex. His "God" isn't just a slob on public transit -- he's a full-blown "idiot" on the proverbial short-bus of life.

(Guess that means the Faulkner Estate should probably be expecting the a nice deluge of hate mail from Bill Donahue in 3...2...)

18. Colorful - (The Verve Pipe)

"We live in drama but we'll die in a comedy"
True story: turns out that The Verve Pipe (of "The Freshman" fame) actually wrote more than just one song. Bonus true story? Turns out some of those other songs are actually quite good. Crazy, right?

Double bonus true story: The Verve Pipe's lead singer (Brian Vander Ark) also just so happened to star as the singing, dancing, zombie narrator in one of my favorite direct-to-DVD schlock horror movies of all time:


Portia De Rossi (a.k.a. "Lindsay Bluth" from Arrested Development was in the film, too). You can't make this stuff up.

But getting back to the subject at hand: one of The Verve Pipe's lesser-known (but equally impressive) tracks is the song "Colorful," which hit the airwaves way back in 2001 -- some six years after they'd all but disappeared from the national eye after witnessing the chart-topping success of their Villains album and it's ubiquitous single, "The Freshman." So in a way, the band had seen all sorts of highs and lows by the time this new record dropped. You might even say that they'd played more than a few parts in the five years between their two albums.

And thus it seems kinda' fitting that we're making our inroads to this afternoon's blog entry by way of such a long winded dramatic tangent. After all (as Shakespeare says):

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"
- As You Like It
(Act II, scene vii)

This lesson seems to be well-learned by The Verve Pipe in "Colorful," a poignant retrospective wherein the balladeer recounts all of the crowds he's played in front of and waxes nostalgic as he plans to face a life away from the stage and spotlight. In a Frank Sinatra-esque "My Way" reflection, Vander Ark suggests his band's retirement is just around the bend and that their best days have come and gone. Heck, he says as much the song begins:

"The show is over close the story book
There will be no encore
And all the random hands that I have shook
Are reaching for the door"

Kinda like a big deal, no?

What's really great about this song, however, is just how beautifully it manages to convey a broader sense of wisdom. Like Shakespeare's As You Like It, "Colorful" makes it clear that life is really little else besides a grand stage -- and every player has been given a unique and particular role to play in their relatively fleeting time upon it. In other words? You only get one life to live, and regardless of how that life goes -- when "the show is over... there will be no encore."

Or as the venerable Thomas Hobbes might say: "life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."


(But this is probably why Thomas Hobbes had no friends.)

But The Verve Pipe isn't going as far as to suggest that our lives are predetermined to be so downright awful at the outset, mind you. True, they do mention the fact that we "stay for drama though [we] paid for a comedy." But by the time the song reaches its crescendo and swells into the final chorus? Vander Ark and company have backed off on such a claim, arguing instead that:

"We live in drama though we'll die in a comedy."

In layman's terms:

Some days we're "colorful." And some days we're "gray." But when everything's said and done, in spite of all the rough patches that we may encounter, it's kind of hard to look back on your life (or your band, or your career, or what have you) without some broader sense of comfort, peace, and abiding wisdom. After all -- if you've done it properly? You will probably have learned a few tricks along the way. And if you're *really* lucky? You might just end up leaving one chapter behind with something (or someone) who "will love [you] either way" for you who you've become as a direct result of your efforts.


The Verve Pipe:"'Nasty, brutish, and short'" my ear."

Take THAT, Thomas Hobbes.

17. Hallelujah - (Jeff Buckley)

"Remember when I moved in you? / And the holy dove was moving too / And every breath we drew was Hallelujah"

True story: Christians aren't really supposed to say the word "Hallelujah" during the 40 days of Lent. Needless to say, I've been looking forward to writing this particular entry for quite some time. After all, Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is arguably one of the greatest cover songs in the history of pop music.

And as an added bonus? It's all about sex.


Do you know how hard it is to find a family-friendly image when Googling the word "sex?"

But wait a minute here -- the song's called "Hallelujah," no? So isn't it all about -- oh I dunno -- biblical stuff? Well yeah. Kinda. Except for the fact that there's a whole lotta' sex in the Bible too, ya' know.

Exibit A:

"You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you"

Biblical reference? Bathsheba (the onetime wife of Uriah) who was bathing on a roof one day and caught the eye of a young King David. And since David was the king (and kings can pretty much do whatever they darned well please), he decided to have Uriah killed so as to steal the beautiful lady for his own.


You stay classy, King David.

Crazy the lengths even a religious man will go to for some sweet, sweet biblical lovin', eh? Sometimes, it gets even kinkier. Take for example, Exhibit B:

"She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair"

Yowzers. That'd be the age-old story of Samson and Delilah: he of superhuman strength, and she of hair-cutting infamy. Turns out The Big Man Upstairs wasn't quite down with their whole freaky-naughty S&M nonsense. And giving it up to a biblical temptress (wink) ended up costing Samson a lot more than his luscious and flowing locks.

"Guys you know you'd better watch out /
Some girls, some girls are only about..."

So once again, we see faith and sex getting awful friendly with one another, no? But let's get back to the Jeff Buckley source material. Exhibit C:

"But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah"

Whoah there, pal -- "remember when I moved in you?" Now we're just being filthy. Clearly, the religious imagery is giving way to something a heckuvalot more (ahem) "primal," if you will -- and sex has now moved to the forefront of our balladeer's mind. In other words: Jeff Buckley's hallelujah is actually quite suggestive, when it comes right down to it.

Kinda' reminds me of...


Saint Theresa of Avila (1515-1582): Poster Girl of the "Divine 'O' Face"

Like most holy rollers, Saint Theresa (bless her heart) kinda' had a thing for Jesus. But she didn't just have "a thing" for Jesus -- I mean she had a THING for Jesus. Her particular brand of spirituality was such that she actually found herself "slain in the spirit" with visions of the Savior that bordered on the ecstatic (read: "orgasmic," though she wouldn't quite put it so bluntly).

In her own words, here's Saint Theresa of Avila's cold and broken hallelujah:

"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it..."

Hey wait a second -- spears? Thrusting? Piercing? Moaning? (not to mention "sweetness" and "love"). Why if I didn't know better, I'd say that sounds a lot like a biblical bow-chicka-wow-wow. So for as sensual as Jeff Buckley's rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" might well indeed be, it turns out he's hardly the first to compare sex to spirituality. In fact, this whole "carnal knowlege meets faith" tradition actually dates waaaaaay back into the 16th century. And that includes such luminaries as our beloved St. Theresa of Avila, and this guy:

John Donne (1572-1631): Jacobean jiggolo (Well ok, not really).
To put it bluntly: John Donne spent a good chunk of his life breakin' young girls hearts and getting all sorts of action (proof once again that chicks totally dig poetry). But about halfway through his sex-fueled youth, the guy found Jeebus and decided to make the jump to full-on religiousity (yeah, I can make up words, too).

And since the best frame of reference the guy had was a lifetime of skirt chasing? His "holy sonnets" actually ended up sounding a heckuvalot like good old-fashioned sex stories (kinda' like Jeff Buckley, as a matter of fact).

Here's his most famous work (for your viewing pleasure, I've bolded the pertinent-and-sexy part):

Batter My HeartBatter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me

Holy seduction, Batman!
Hallelujah indeed.

16. Run This Town - (Jay-Z, Rhianna, & Kanye West)

"I'll keep doing my own thing /
Walkin' tall against the rain"

Hip hop is a funny thing. At its best, the genre speaks to a rich, complex, and storied cultural identity -- and manages to soar as one of the purest forms of self-expression in all of modern music. At its worst? The integrity of the verse collapses under the weight of nothing more than an inarticulate mess thug rap and gimmicks, and hip hop ends up becoming as mass-produced and disposable a commodity as you're likely to find.

More often than not, the genre seems to strike a fine balance between these two extremes: so a decent chunk of hip hop songs are equal parts inspiring and absurd, essentially raw yet inexplicably transcendent, and simultaneously powered by social upheaval and plagued self-parody. In short, there's a lotta' stuff going on in these little ditties.

Or as good old Charles Dickens might say:


Charles Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Today, we'll give Dickens a tale of two cities of our own (well okay, more like "two boroughs") -- namely, Brooklyn and Harlem.

For starters? We're headed to Brooklyn (STAND UP!):

"Run This Town" (2009) is born of a convention that is as old as the rap game itself. At its most basic level, the song is a statement track: a chance for the Brooklyn-born artist to represent his roots, rattle off his accomplishments, and announce his presence as king of the industry -- all while offering up a throwdown for any other sucka MCs who might dare to stand in his way.

Time and again, the refrain asks the question "who's gonna' run this town tonight?" And in emphatic fashion, the ridiculously talented J-Hova and his crew steps up to the plate and says:


"We are, yeah I say that we are."
But Jay-Z and company aren't just representing their 'hood -- they're forming a "Roc Nation:" a worldwide collective of like-minded soldiers who can "get [their] fatigues on" while "walkin' tall against the rain" regardless of the curveballs life might happen to throw their way. Their struggle is universal, and their battlefield extends far beyond the edge of the five boroughs. To that end, they are single-minded, battle-tested, and ready to confront whatever obstacles might lie ahead.

In other words: "they're not in Brooklyn anymore, Toto."

Kinda' like this guy:



Langston Hughes (1902-1067): Poet, activist, and voice of the Harlem Renaissance

Hova may well indeed be the Greatest Rapper Alive (just ask him), but the Brooklyn Boy from the Marcy Projects would barely be a blip on the radar were it not for the earlier efforts of game-changing poets like Langston Hughes and his Harlem Renaissance ilk.

Regardless of whether or not he actually lived in Harlem (hint: not so much), Langston Hughes certainly found a way to speak to the world in a way that summed up so many an urban American's experiences during this particular chapter of United States history.

Simply put, the guy knew what it felt like to be different.

He was black, he was poor, his critics called him a communist, and he was (in his own words) "queer" and "effeminate." But rather than caving to societal pressures and quietly fading into obscurity, Hughes stepped right up and churned out his own version of a "statement" track in the form of volume after volume of some of the greatest poetry in all of 20th century literature -- often times, using his poems as a vehicle to speak to the simple, broader human experience about just how it meant to feel and be different.

Here's my personal favorite Hughes poem of all time:

Still Here
"I been scarred and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz' me
Sun has baked me.
Looks like between 'em, they done
Tried to make me
Stop laughin, stop lovin', stop livin' --
But i don't care!
I'm still here!"

The message is clear: life gets hard and throws a lot of crap your way, but you soldier on in spite of the setbacks and frustration. And going back to the second chorus of "Run This Town?" This Hughes poem sounds mighty familiar:

"Life's a game but it's not fair
I break the rules so I don't care
I keep doin' my own thing
Walkin' tall against the rain.
Can't be scared when it goes down
Got a problem? Tell me now.
Only thing that's on my mind
Is who's gonna' run this town tonight"

Oh I see what you did there, Jigga Man.

I see it, alright.

15. The Man Who Can't Be Moved - (The Script)

"I'm not broke / I'm just a broken-hearted man."

The world would be a heckuvalot easier if everybody who ever fell in love decided to follow The Script's example. I mean, if nothing else -- it'd certainly be a whole lot simpler to find people when you needed them.

Their angle?

Pledge your undying love for the girl of your dreams. Head back to the very corner where you first met, then plop right down in that very spot, grab a sleeping bag, and wait for her to come back. How long do you wait?

Umm, well... forever, if need be.



Maroon 5's Adam Levine: Ok, that is SO not fair -- I totally came up with that idea first! You remember "I don't mind spendin' every day / out on your corner in the pourin' rain," don't you?!

Silly Adam.

Waiting forever on a girl who might never come back around is hardly a new concept. Take, for example, the story of The Script's fellow Irishman:


William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): Asked the same woman to marry him more than two dozen times.

When it came to the fire-haired vixen known as Maud Gonne, it's no secret that Yeats had it bad... REALLY BAD. Willy's heartbreak is the stuff of legend -- but dozens of rejected marriage proposals (and quite literally just shy of a HUNDRED separate poems imploring the poor gal to give him a chance) seems to pale in comparison to the steadfast example set by this guy, Yeats' psuedo-neighbor to the south of just one hundred or so years earlier:


Robert Burns (1759-1796): Scottish balladeer, 18th Century Ladies' Man

Adam Levine's gestures are noble, Yeats' perserverance is legendary, and The Script's efforts are admirable, but none of these lovestruck composers have anything on the original Man Who Can't Be Moved. Just how committed to true love was our boy Bobby Burns, you ask?

A Red Red Rose (1794)"O MY Luve 's like a red, red rose
That 's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve 's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune!

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile."

Are you getting all of that down?

This dude is willing to put his heart on the line until "a[ll] the seas gang dry," and "the rocks melt wi[th] the sun." We're not just talking about standing outside in the pouring rain or camping out on some broad's corner here, folks -- that's some serious Book of Revelation-level commitment, right there. In short, he's actually willing to wait it out until the End Times, if need be.

So if you ever find yourself pining up and down for a lost love or a romance that never quite seems to turn out the way you'd planned -- at least it's good to know that you're hardly alone in your plight. If you're standing in the pouring rain? Keep standing. If you're waiting on a corner? Keep waiting. And if there's still water left in the seas? Hang in there -- because you've still got a long way to go.

Or, in the immortal words of Winston Churchill:


"If you're going through hell, keep going."

14. Lightning Crashes - (Live)

"I can feel it coming back again..."

WARNING: Today's blog entry is gonna' get kinda serious in a hurry. How serious, you ask? Well, we're talking about a song by a band called "Live," and a poem called "Child Burial" -- so one might even say that today's discussion is actually a matter of (wait for it...) life and death.



Hey, nothing like a well-placed wisecrack to keep things light before we get into all of that heavy stuff, no?

Alright, here goes:

"Lightning Crashes" ended up being the biggest radio hit of Live's career. It recounts a particularly poignant birth narrative, waxes philosophical about how life sometimes seems to move in fast-forward, and establishes a brilliant counterpoint between the sadness of watching as "an old mother dies" while at the same time celebrating the "glory" of newborn child opening its eyes at precisely the same instant.

Like I said -- it's some pretty heavy stuff.

Fun fact: "Lightning Crashes" was also one of the first songs that lead singer Ed Kowalczyk ever composed -- and he did so waaaay back when he was just a humble twenty-something living at home in his parents' house in York, Pennsylvania.

Not so fun fact: Kowalczyk and the band would later dedicate the song to Barbara Lewis, a friend of the group who was killed by a drunk driver shortly before her 20th birthday.

Not-quite-sure-if-it's-a-fun-fact-or-not: Barbara Lewis was a registered organ donor. And her death actually made it possible for a number of other individuals to receive a second chance at life. Including? A life-saving liver donation that ended up going to a ten-month old child.

Moral of the story?


"It's the circle of life."

In death, there is unavoidable sadness. But death is also an intrinsic part of the human condition. Just as that which is new must be born, so to must that which is old eventually die. True, many of these changes can be heartbreaking along the way. But sometimes (as in Barbara Lewis' case), one person's death triggers a chain reaction of events so that others might live. And in this regard, the circle continues as it always has. Or, as Kowalczyk sings:

"I can feel it coming back again / like a rollin' thunder chasin' the wind."

Hey, that's actually kind of uplifting, when you put it that way.

Sometimes, however, the upshot of this whole life-and-death conundrum isn't nearly as hopeful or fleshed out. Sometimes, in fact, it seems to spin in the complete *opposite* direction.

Take, for example, "Child Burial" by the venerable Irish poet Paula Meehan:


(sadly, no relation to the blogger)

Unlike the 10-month-old organ recipient in the case of Barbara Lewis, for the subject of Meehan's poem, there was no last-minute salvation. And to that end, the poet confronts the very real (and very sad) story of the death of her infant child. Normally, I'd excerpt some highlights and sum the verse up in a sentence or two. But this one is just so freakin' well-written that it is absolutely worth the full read. Here's the first chunk of the poem:

Your coffin looked unreal,
fancy as a wedding cake.

I chose your grave clothes with care,
your favourite stripey shirt,

your blue cotton trousers.
They smelt of woodsmoke, of October,

your own smell was there too.
I chose a gansy of handspun wool,

warm and fleecy for you. It is
so cold down in the dark.

To borrow a line from Ed Kowalczyk and company, Paula Meehan can certainly "feel it coming back again," alright. But what she feels is not an inner calm or a broader sense of the circle of life unfolding as it should. Instead, it's a complete inversion of the usual course of things (e.g. -- "new" dies before "old"), so all she's left with is a world of hurt. Take a look:

No light can reach you and teach you
the paths of the wild birds,

the names of the flowers,
the fishes, the creatures.

Ignorant you must remain
of the sun and its work,

my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,
my cub, my kid, my nestling,

my suckling, my colt. I would spin
time back, take you again

within my womb, your amniotic lair,
and further spin you back

through nine waxing months
to the split seeding moment

you chose to be made flesh
word within me.

Perhaps Meehan is justified in her backwards-spinning brain here. After all, "Lightning Crashes" sings of the natural rhythm of things and a case of an old mother dying as a new child is born. But in the case of "Child Burial?" Time is out of joint (as Shakespeare might say), and the older generation is left to pick up the pieces while the new one is taken to the grave well before their time.

Not surprisingly, since time already seems to be unraveling in reverse, Meehan takes this chronological about-face to its logical extreme to close out her poem. Heck, she even goes as far as to say:

I'd cancel the love feast
the hot night of your making.

I would travel alone
to a quiet mossy place,

you would spill from me into the earth
drop by bright red drop.

Dang. Talk about someone who can "feel it coming back again," eh?

In the end, "Child Burial" talks about the circle of life spinning backwards on itself, to the point where Meehan's poem actually winds up being a direct inversion of Live's "Lightning Crashes." In the opening lines of Live's song, the life cycle proceeds according to natural order: so the song starts with a verse describing how new life is born from old death. But since "Child Burial" talks about the natural order of life unfolding in reverse? Fittingly, it is the closing lines of Meehan's poem that deal with her child's birth and conception, and thus the narrative ultimately has little choice but to end at the very last moment before the child's life even began.

Kinda' mind-blowing, no?

Well, you know what they say --

".efil fo elcric eht s'tI"

(See what I did there?)

13. Happier - (Guster)

"One more inch, you son of a bitch."

"So close... and yet so far": that's pretty much the message of Guster's "Happier" in a nutshell.

And so ends today's blog entry. After all...


"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
- Ernest Hemingway

Ok, ok...

With due apologies to the old man ("and the sea?"), this really wouldn't really be much of a "literature of lyrics" blog if I simply left today's entry at just one sentence, now would it? But I will take a cue from dear old Ernie and try to keep the typical barrage of adjectives to a minimum, wherever possible.

So here we go.

Like we said above, Guster's "Happier" tackles a pretty basic theme: "so close, but so far." Two people (presumably onetime lovers, but this could just as easily be applied to would-be-business-partners or erstwhile friends) gave it their best shot, but things ultimately broke down in the end (as they so often do).

As the song begins:

"Say goodbye, lose your friends
Make them go, you don't need them around
'Cause it's time, lose your friends
Make them go, it was never supposed to be like this"

Clearly, our narrator is at a crossroads. Beseiged by some force greater than himself, he's forced to settle accounts in a hurry and get to steppin' before he gets sucked down the vortex of broken relationships. How broken are these relationships, you ask?

"They were too weak, too prone to break
Their needs too deep, their skins too thick
By now you took what was to take
Tear it apart and start again."

In short: real broken. And it's gone past the point where trying to fix them will do anything to remedy the situation. The narrator simply must accept that it's broken, then "tear it apart and start again."

Or, as our buddy Ernest Hemingway so famously puts it:

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-A Farewell to Arms (1929)

In Guster's words?

To "bend 'till ya' break" is simply to "make the same mistakes... always."

When it's broken, it's broken. No matter how close you think you were to making it work -- "one more inch" or not -- what is done is done, and being "gentle" or "brave" about the matter doesn't make one lick of difference in the end.

Accept the inevitable.

Know when to say when.

And for God's sake man -- let it go.