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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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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"And he seems so close as he reaches out his hand / We are never quite as close as we are led to understand."
Ahh, Adam Duritz. Self-proclaimed Rain King and modern-day master of the metaphor.
I mentioned it in passing in the last blog entry, but this is precisely the kind of song that T.S. Eliot would love. After all, Eliot practically wrote it in the first place, ya' know. But perhaps imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery. Or as the poet himself once so famously put it:
"Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal."
Make no mistake about it -- the Counting Crows' "When I Dream of Michelangelo" is an undeniably *great* song, but it is just as undoubtedly a stolen one, to boot.
Stolen from source numero uno: Their own freakin' catalogue.
Longtime fans of the band might recognize this song's title as something of a throwaway line from an earlier Counting Crows track, titled "Angels of the Silences," which appeared as the first single off of the group's second album waaaaaay back in 1996. For the sake of historical accuracy, that lyric went a little something like this:
"I dream of Michelangelo when I'm lyin' in my bed Little angels hang above my head and read me like an open book..."
Turns out Adam Duritz has been dreaming of Michelangelo for a good, long while, but it took him a full 13 years to hammer out just exactly what this dream just so happened to mean. This probably explains why the line has snuck into more than one of his songs.
So what does it mean?
His latest explanation (courtesy of a quite-possibly-chemically-enhanced deluge of pre-song stage chatter):
"When I dream of Michelangelo" is a story about spending your whole life wanting for something. Like a child in a cradle who sleeps underneath a spinning mobile; from the moment we are born, we can't help but find ourselves reaching for something that just seems to elude our grasp. A mobile. A dream. A girl. A painting -- you name it. You spend your whole life chasing after this one thing.
On rare occasion, we might even capture it and make something truly great in the process (kinda like the ceiling of Sistine Chapel, for example). But for the most part, all of our reaching really doesn't make a lick of difference, and so we end up losing sight of everything around us along the way. Sure, it may have *felt* like we were just seconds away from finally getting it right. But maybe (just maybe?) -- it was never really all that close to begin with.
Ouch.
Ah well -- lesson learned, and I supposed we'll take the message to heart and move on all the wiser next time. Don't spend your life staring at the ceiling. Don't let the same girl break your heart twice. And "don't get fooled again" right?
Not so fast.
See the funny thing about patterns is that they usually end up repeating themselves if you wait long enough. Or as Adam sings:
"And I know that she is not my friend. And I know... [but] there she goes walkin' on my skin again and again."
Hey now wait just a second here -- a lovestruck protagonist who stares at Michelangelo but keeps finding himself distracted by the same heartbreaker over and over again?
Hey whaddayaknow... we're right back to T.S. Eliot and J. Alfred Prufrock (1917)
Thematically, Eliot and Duritz are handling the exact same subject material: longing, self-awareness, and self-doubt. And to top it all off, both artists have a thing for Michelangelo, to boot. Take a look at this twice-repeated excerpt from Eliot's poem:
"In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo."
(Toldja' the song was stolen.) Stolen from source numero dos: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" Adam Duritz may well have been dreaming of Michelangelo for the better part of fifteen years, but he was hardly the first man in history to watch an existential crisis unfold while pondering the mysteries of a pizza-loving hero on a half-shell.
Prufrock's poem takes us smack-dab through the middle of an art gallery, so the narrator can't help but weigh his own indecisive self-worth against the sheer size, grandeur, and impressiveness of the monuments that surround him. As "the women come and go" while chit-chatting about just how gosh-darned great this Michelangelo feller is (and let's be honest here, he is pretty flippin' amazing) -- Prufrock retreats further and further into himself, ever reminded of his own failures.
So close... but so very, very far.
Time and again, Prufrock *almost* seems to build up the courage to say what he means -- but without fail, he ends up second-guessing his own resolve, and things fall apart. Just like Adam Duritz can't seem to kick this tendency to let this girl who's "not my friend" come right back into his life and start "walking on [his] skin again and again," J. Alfred Prufrock finds himself similarly plagued by indecision, saying:
That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.
In the last blog entry (you know, the rockin' good time that was excerpted from the Counting Crows' "Saturday Nights" collection), we looked at how these two protagonists mused openly on their similarly unrealized and violent potential. Here's a one-liner recap:
Duritz: "I wanted to change the world. What's as easy as murder?" Prufrock: "There will be time to murder and create."
Today, we've entered the "Sunday Morning" side of the spectrum -- a period of quietude and reflection. The violence may have dissipated, and the anger may well be gone, but the sense of self-doubt and longing still weighs heavy on the heart. Duritz has learned a valuable lesson only to turn right back around and forget it. And Prufrock has "seen the Eternal footman hold [his] coat and snicker."
"In short, [he] was afraid."
Like Prufrock, the Counting Crows frontman "seems so close as he reaches out his hand...." But in the same vein as Eliot before him, Duritz' deep-seated longing remains in spite of his newfound self awareness. It's something of a paradox, really. After all:
"We are never quite as close as we are led to understand."
"This is a list of what I shoulda' been / but I'm not... "
Last week, an old friend of mine commented on the contents of this blog (hooray! Someone is actually reading this darned thing!). His exact quote?
"dude, you might not have heard, but a few new albums have been released since we were in college. What's with all the nostalgia?"
Fair enough, and point taken. And since you asked so nicely... I'll tell you what I'm gonna' do: JUST FOR YOU! -- we're flashing forward right up through 2008, and we'll be spending the next two (count 'em, TWO!) entries tackling an outstanding pair of tracks from Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, the latest studio effort by the staggeringly talented tribe of troubadours known as the Counting Crows.
Here's the scoop on the SN&SM album:
Whereas so many of their mid-nineties alt-rock contemporaries have faded into obscurity (remember Seven Mary Three? Didn't think so), Adam Duritz and the gang have kept pumping out quality new material even now, well over a decade and a half after the release of their breakthrough August and Everything After first arrived in 1993. Their latest release is a mix of hard-driving rock songs and a country-infused array of introspection. It's fast, it's slow -- it's new, and yet it's familiar all at the same time. In short? It's the same old Counting Crows.
But they've certainly come a long way since "Mr. Jones." Adam Duritz: For the last time, NO -- that song is *not* about my penis. Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is a clever little double album (of sorts). Even though there's only enough material on the disk to fill a scant 80 minutes, the tracks are divided thematically between six edgier, "Saturday Night" rock & roll songs and the eight slower, more contemplative "Sunday Morning" ballads that close out the set. Effectively, this is the artist's way of telling fans:
"Saturday nights are for rockin' -- Sunday mornings are for reflection."
Say... I kinda' like that. After all, you can't have one without the other, right?
So over the next two blog posts, we'll be tackling the two tracks that best exemplify each of these same phases, respectively. And fittingly (since the tracks are, in fact, no more than divided halves of the same, larger, and themeatically unified piece) -- we'll likewise be sizing them up against an equally complex, divided, and giant-sized poetic predecessor by none other than the late, great T.S. Eliot.
Today's track? The crescendo of the hard-driving "Saturday Nights" chapter. An awesome little song called "Cowboys:" No, not you, Tony. You are the antithesis of awesome. PS: Die in a fire. - Everyone
Now then -- to the Counting Crows' "Cowboys." And boy, does this one hit the ground running:
"Cowboys on the road tonight, cryin' in their sleep / If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand / There's some promises to keep..."
Right off the bat, there's no denying it: Adam is *PISSED*. Dude is storming through the streets, contemplating "what's as easy as murder" and brandishing a firearm. The adrenaline is pumping. His mind is racing. And bidness is about to pick right on up in a hurry. Heck, before the night is through? It looks as if our ever-doleful vocalist might just be fixin' to put a bullet in somebody else's head.
(Or worse -- his own).
See this is why Cowboys is such a fantastic piece -- throughout the song, we've got these hard, driving guitar riffs and these desperately embittered vocals. So naturally, we're supposed to think that something wicked this way comes, and our boy Adam Duritz is just one verse away from shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, yes?
No.
Because when you look at the lyrics, there's a whole lotta' "if," "and," and "but" scattered at every turn -- which totally undermines the song's otherwise strident intentions. Sure, the singer's got some serious (and perhaps indeed violent) passions bubbling right there underneath the surface, but he never can quite seem to bring himself to act on these motives in spite of himself, which means we're left with lines like this:
"This is a list of what I shoulda' been, but I'm not. This is a list of what I shoulda' seen, but I am not seein' ... I'm just turning away from what I shouldn't see Because I am not anything."
He wants to make a difference, but he can't. He's dying to make a change, but he won't. He's got the best (and worst!) of intentions, but zero capacity to act on them. In other words --
Adam isn't a cowboy... he's a coward. Kinda like... T.S. Eliot:a.k.a. J. Alfred Prufrock
What's that? You haven't read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, " you say? Humbug. Thankfully, that's what the internet is for. Go ahead, I'll wait.
(Alternately: here's a quick recap):
J. Alfred Prufrock: a man with the best of ideas, but zero ability to bring them to life. Has a massive crush on pretty much every woman who passes by his way, but he can't make a decision for the life of him, and so he's forced to sit back and watch as life unfolds around him, all while making ridiculous mountains out of even the tiniest of life's incidental molehills (e.g. -- "which way to part my hair?" "Trousers: rolled, or unrolled?" "Do I dare eat a peach!?" etc.).
Like our buddy Adam Duritz, Eliot's alter-ego is loaded with passion (it's kinda' heartbreaking, actually), but he remains absolutely crippled by the words that he can't quite ever bring himself to say. So instead of doing something about it, he chickens out and writes his thoughts down on the page, and we see just how sad and screwed up the poor guy really is. Riddled with indecision, Prufrock looks at his life as a waste:
"I should have been a ragged pair of claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas...
In short, he thinks his existence would have been better spent if he were a hermit crab. He's the type of dude who might make "a list of what I shoulda' been but I'm not."
And why?
"Because I am not anything."
Man, talk about your self-confidence issues.
Next time, we'll see how Adam Duritz and J. Alfred Prufrock's egos fare when stacked up against a certifiable giant of the Italian Renaissance.
(SPOILER: Might wanna' keep our emo balladeers away from sharp objects and firearms).
