33. The Rising - (Bruce Springsteen)

"Come on up for the rising / Come on up lay your hands in mine..."

This is the most deceptively brilliant song I've ever heard.  Musically, it's not Springsteen's strongest.  Not by a longshot.  But lyrically, it may very well be my personal favorite. And from a guy like me who was born and raised in the Garden State? Picking your favorite Springsteen song is like telling one of your kids that you love them more than the rest. So that's saying something.

Let's do today's entry in the form of a guessing game:

Can you figure out what's so special about the narrator of this song before the end of this post?

To help you out, the pertinent clues have been highlighted. And to keep things interesting -- I'll throw in a few lines of smarmy analysis, just to throw you off the scent.

(If you haven't already -- click the video above and give this song a listen BEFORE reading today's entry. Things will make a lot more sense if you have a working knowledge of the piece before reading).

Now then -- let's get to it!

Can't see nothin' in front of me 

Can't see nothin' coming up behind 

I make my way through this darkness 

I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me

From the sound of it, our story starts off like a typical "lone protagonist sets out on a voyage of self discovery" tale, yes?  Judging from the imagery in the first stanza, the world is a dark and spooky place, and our narrator feels like he's inexplicably tied to some force greater than himself.


Darth Vader: "Yes (deep breaths) The Force is strong with this one..."

Fair enough. Back to the lyrics...

Lost track of how far I've gone 

How far I've gone, how high I've climbed 

On my back's a sixty pound stone 

On my shoulder a half mile line

By the looks of things, our wandering hero has been at this "voyage of self discovery" thing for a while. You can hear it from the grit in his voice: he's a workin' man with that all-American toughness to him -- so we'll forgive the rather generic examples of figurative language. "Heavy" baggage, "long" ropes, "high" climbing -- we've heard these things before. It's not earth-shatteringly original, but it's a Springsteen protagonist: blue collar through and through. So we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Moving on to the refrain...

Come on up for the rising 

Come on up, lay your hands in mine 

Come on up for the rising 

Come on up for the rising tonight

Well, so much for that solo voyage for self awareness, eh?  Hmm.  Springsteen's use of the second person pronoun ("your" hands) isn't just an indication that this guy isn't going on this journey alone, it's a flat-out invitation for the listener to come along for the ride.

The plot thickens...

Left the house this morning 

Bells ringing filled the air 

Wearin' the cross of my calling 

On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here

I know, I know -- so we're looking at just another Christian pilgrim chasing the American dream or some other nondescript message along those lines, right?  Not even close. The deeper meaning is simply too good to spoil just yet. But once you figure out what this song is actually about, the very act of re-reading these lines will give you chills. Seriously, it's that well-written.

Now for the freaky lyrics of the bridge:

Spirits above and behind me 

Faces gone, black eyes burnin' bright 

May their precious blood forever bind me 

Lord as I stand before your fiery light

Oooooo -- spooky! Spirits and ghosts flooding the skies! At this point, it's obvious that Springsteen's going a little heavy on "The Waste Land" imagery...


Ghost of T.S. Eliot: Seriously, Bruce -- enough already.

But the deeper meaning is just inches below the spectral surface. Didja' get it yet?  Only one verse to go ...

I see you Mary in the garden 

In the garden of a thousand sighs 

There's holy pictures of our children 

Dancin' in a sky filled with light 

May I feel your arms around me 

May I feel your blood mix with mine 

A dream of life comes to me 

Like a catfish dancin' on the end of the line

If you're keeping score at home, the narrator's story is a sad one since "Mary" is only a "dream of life" now that she's lost somewhere in this "garden of a thousand sighs." Translation: the girl is pushing up daisies.

Epiphany:

"Oh, so he's trying to put together the remains of his life after the death of a loved one!!!"

Gah -- you're ALMOST right. But the final imagery of the song actually reveals a story much deeper, broader, and more tragic than that. It's a classic twist ending -- M. Night Shyamalan style. Wait for it!!!

Sky of blackness and sorrow (a dream of life) 

Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life) 

Sky of glory and sadness (a dream of life) 

Sky of mercy, sky of fear (a dream of life)  

Sky of memory and shadow (a dream of life) 

Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight 

Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life) 

Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life (a dream of life)

And this is where your brain explodes from the brilliance of this song. Ladies and gentlemen...

"The Rising."

Here's the recap, Sixth Sense style:

Song Lyric	Corresponding Image
Can't see nothin' in front of me  Can't see nothin' coming up behind  I make my way through this darkness  I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me	A fireman ascending a rescue ladder into a smoke-filled building, tethered to a fire hose or a safety cable.
On my back's a sixty pound stone  On my shoulder a half mile line	The weight of the fireman's gear and oxygen tanks weighs roughly 60 pounds. Behind him, a safety cable (or fire hose) is anchored to the rescue vehicle
Come on up for the rising  Come on up, lay your hands in mine	The firefighter raises a wounded survivor from the wreckage of the ruined building. (Alternately: he implores fellow citizens to join in the relief efforts.)
Left the house this morning  Bells ringing filled the air  Wearin' the cross of my calling  On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here	The fire fighter left the fire station (affectionately, the "fire house") when the warning bells rang. The "cross of my calling" is not the mark of a Christian -- it's the crest of the fire company, on whose "wheels of fire" (a fire engine) he speeds to the site of the 9/11 attacks.
Spirits above and behind me  Faces gone, black eyes burnin' bright  May their precious blood forever bind me  Lord as I stand before your fiery light	Thousands are dead or wounded. Countless others are covered in heavy, black ash amid the rubble. The fiery light is both metaphorical of the afterlife and painfully literal, as the flames rise from the ruined buildings.
I see you Mary in the garden  In the garden of a thousand sighs  There's holy pictures of our children  Dancin' in a sky filled with light  May I feel your arms around me  May I feel your blood mix with mine  A dream of life comes to me  Like a catfish dancin' on the end of the line	In the days following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, New York City residents held candlelight vigils. Others posted a sea of homemade signs, photographs and posters and all across the city.  These "holy pictures of our children" with images from happier times prayed for the souls of loved ones and requested information regarding the whereabouts of those lost in the attacks -- "a garden of a thousand sighs."

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

7. When I Dream of Michelangelo - (Counting Crows)

"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."

6. Cowboys - (Counting Crows)

"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).