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.