"I met this girl, when I was 10 years old And what I loved most, she had so much soul."
Welcome to the world of the extended metaphor. Population? This guy:
Common:'Sup, ladies?
The extended metaphor is one of the trickiest and most effective conventions in all of poetic writing. Through the extended metaphor (also known as a "conceit,") the author will take one simple line's worth of a flowery comparision, and stretch that sucker out over the course of each of the lines to follow.
Here's a handy Wikipedia example to hammer the point home:
If one starts with the metaphor of "The seeds of discontent have already been sown", an extension could be "It remains to be seen whether weeds or flowers will spring forth."
Basically, the extended metaphor allows the author to use a bunch of familiar and related images in quick succession in order to convey a much bigger and much broader message. And when executed properly, it's wickedly clever.
Since this blog is of a musical and pseudo-literary bent, we'll pick a brief contemporary example of the extended metaphor as we make our way into today's analysis. Please welcome...
Sylvia Plath:Why are the best girls always crazy?
In addition to being something of a headcase, Sylvia Plath was an absolute master of the extended metaphor technique. Throughout so many of her poems, Plath takes what might otherwise be a simple, throwaway line of comparison and borrows against it two, three and four times in the stanzas thereafter -- each time compounding the richness of the original imagery, and taking her readers further into the complexities of the figurative language at her disposal.
Plath's most famous poem?
"Daddy" -- a scathing, heart wrenching epic in which the poet paints herself as a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp while likening her long-dead father to a goosestepping Nazi soldier. She's like a foot in an old shoe, or a captive waiting execution, trapped in a violent and oppressive world beyond her own creation, with no chance of escape save for death itself.
(In a grim but tragically fitting end to this story, Plath's "trapped like a prisoner in a Nazi camp" poem just so happened to be written shortly before the poet took her own life in 1963, by -- get this -- sticking her head in an oven and cranking up the gas).
Yeesh.
I think that's enough about gloom and doom for one day, yes? After all, extended metaphors needn't always be so somber and macabre. So let's switch gears and get back to Common's "I Used to love H.E.R" -- which is, thankfully, an extended metaphor of love and admiration, with a killer beat and a much-needed upshot of hope, to boot.
On the surface, "I Used to Love H.E.R." is a simple tale of growing up and falling in love with a girl with some crazy talent and some mad skills.
Lauryn Hill:Proof that the best girls are always crazy, exibit B. Common starts the song with a Springsteen-esque reflection on his "Glory Days" of yesteryear. Not suprisingly, we soon find ourselves smack-dab in the middle of a story of young love:
"I met this girl, when I was 10 years old And what I loved most, she had so much soul She was old school, when I was just a shorty Never knew throughout my life she would be there for me"
At first listen, this boy-meets-girl story is pretty straightforward, really. And in the lines that follow, Common brings up a few additional traits about this gal that he likewise happened to admire from back in the day. She's "not a church girl," she's "not about the money," and even though she's occasionally found herself mixed up "in the park" with the wrong crowd -- she's still "underground / original, pure untampered and down."
In short -- she's real. And it's no wonder that Common comes right out and says he "respected her."
Over the course of the second verse, this "respect" blossoms into enlightenment, and the songwriter finds himself learning all sorts of stuff about himself, his people, and his heritage as he gets closer and closer to this mysterious stranger. It's a pretty great gig, really -- and the singer and the girl seem to be growing together as they grow older. He follows the girl from the schoolyards to the "clubs" and "house parties," and it seems like things are really starting to click. But then life throws him a curveball and they're forced apart.
Common "went away to school" while "she broke to the West Coast" -- presumably to follow her dreams. But the funny thing about big cities, however, is that so many folks can end up losing sight of themselves as they get caught up in such a brave new world.
Gratiutous photo interruption. Helps break up giant walls of text, ya' know.
Such was precisely the case for the girl in Common's verse, whose move to Los Angeles results in a complete change of character, as she ends up shying away from her roots only to say that "pro-black, was goin out of style" and that "Afrocentricity, was of the past." Something's changed in this girl -- and perhaps it's not entirely for the best (Common actually comes right out and calls it "foul" just one line earlier) -- but life goes on, and the songwriter knows when to back off so as to let his erstwhile lady love find herself in due time
(Personal growth, of course, is a funny thing. And right about this time, the girl's earlier missteps actually pay off as she ends up "becomin' well-rounded" thanks to a burgeoning interest in "R&B, hip-house, bass, and jazz" -- not to mention that all-important "freestyle shit." In other words -- yeah, she's changed, but the respect is still there.)
But respect is the kind of thing that can take a lifetime to build and only seconds to destroy, and the third verse does a pretty fine job of demonstrating how quickly this girl came close to falling out of favor with our balladeer once the big city'd had her way with her. As he says:
"I might've failed to mention that the chick was creative But once the man got to her, he altered the native Told her if she got an image and a gimmick That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy"
Translation?
Common ain't impressed by the girl's increasingly transparent attempts to appear "real." He sees her talking out of both sides of her mouth, and swearing up and down "how hardcore and real she is," but he's not buying it. After all, Common's known the girl for years, and still he can't help but remember that "she was really the realest before she got into show-biz."
For all intents and purposes, the girl has prostituted herself to the lowest bidder (to the point where she's getting "slamm[ed]" in "the sewer" -- classy, no?). And Common knows that she deserves a whole lot better. Presumably, that's why he closes the song with a pledge to make one final attempt to save his girl from this inauthentic waste of an existence that her life has become. Yeah, she's sold herself cheap -- but like he says:
"But I'ma take her back hopin that the shit'll stop Cause who I'm talkin bout y'all is hip-hop"
Wait wait wait -- HE'S TALKING ABOUT HIP HOP!?!
And one more time, the extended metaphor rears its gorgeous head.
Common wasn't singing about when he "used to love her" (as in a real, live, actual girl) -- he's talking about when he "used to love H.E.R." -- a metaphorical female stand-in for all that is, was, and has become hip-hop music (some interviews suggest that Common's "H.E.R." acronym actually stands for "Hip-hop in its Essence is Real," while others have argued that it may simply be shorthand for "Hearing Every Rhyme").
In any case -- the conceit delivers on its intended purpose, and the deeper message of the song is well-taken:
Hip hop music was born of the soul music tradition. It started humbly in the streets and the parks. It rediscovered its roots in the house parties and the clubs. It jumped to the West Coast and gave way to all sorts of freestyle and R&B influences. And then it ultimately sold out its very nature by becoming a self-parody through endless scads of thug rap and gimmicks.
For Sylvia Plath?
The world had become so screwed up that her hope of escape was death itself.
But for Common?
Hip hop has indeed become a parody of what it once was -- but it can still be saved by way of a soulful, heartfelt, and authentic re-examination of its roots.
"When you lay your dream to rest / You can get what's second best... but it's hard to get enough." Ahh, the duality of meaning. And talk of a hurricane, no less.
Seems like the perfect subject matter for a rainy day, wouldn't you agree?
After all, when they're not busy grading scads of undergraduate midterms or getting their jollies to the lesser-known works of Franz Kafka, graduate students and literature dorks pretty much live for this stuff. You know, extended metaphors, cleverly crafted allegories -- the whole nine.
Simple translation: "there's a story BEHIND the story, and some things can actually mean two very different things at the same time." Often times, we see this in "story songs" -- ballads recounting actual (or loosely fictionalized) events. That way, we manage to get two tales for the price of one.
But if singer/songwriters aren't careful, the duality of meaning gives way to full-on event-specific sappiness, and these bad boys can quickly descend into an uninspired mess of self-indulgent dreck. You know the type:
"Hey everybody! Here's something sad that happened to me! Gosh, it's really sad, wouldn't you agree? Yeah man, really sad stuff. By the way, have I told you how SAD this is?!?"
Ricky Nelson: "Oh where oh where can my baby be?!?"
Gah -- we GET it, already. "You're a self-important emo princess. Here's a tissue. NOW MOVE ON ALREADY."
(That's right, Ricky Nelson -- I'm talking to you.)
Thankfully, today's song doesn't make the same mistakes:
Instead of simply offering up a "story song" with little more to it than your basic trip down woe-is-me-mory lane, David Wilcox's "Eye of the Hurricane" busts out the full-blown two-tales-in-one, duality of meaning approach. And by so doing, we've got ourselves a perfectly acceptable stand-alone surface story AND a frustratingly tangled subtext.
You know, like that "simple" little children's tale of The Lion who returns from the dead to defeat the forces of evil...
(Oh I'm onto you, Lewis.) But getting back to the Eye of the Hurricane...
ON THE SURFACE: Our friendly neighborhood singer/songwriter encounters this free-spirited biker chick at a crappy roadside bar. It's night time in the summer. Let's say some place warm -- like the seedier end of Tampa. The girl's a total heartbreaker and he knows it (think Penny Lane in "Almost Famous"), but she's a looker, and he's totally smitten. They strike up a conversation, likely along these lines:
Lovestruck songwriter:"So, you like motorcycles, eh? Tell me about it."
Freespirited biker babe:"There's a lot about life that you just can't control, and I don't like that very much. But when I'm on my bike, it's just me and the open road. And I like that. That's why I call the bike 'The Hurricane.' Because when I ride it, I feel like I'm flying." Immediately, our hero starts to read between the lines: clearly, this girl has been through the ringer. She is both brazenly confident and instantly tragic. A modern-day Rebel Without a Cause, "Leader Of the Pack" type, if you will (vroom! vroom!). Obviously, this can't end well.
Ghost of James Dean: Too soon, man. Too soon.
Singer/songwriter's surface reaction? "Wow, this chick is DEEP. Me wantie."
But since we're talking about the glorious DUALITY OF MEANING (that is, that some things can work both as a stand-alone story and as a deeper commentary at the same time), our author immediately leads us nicely into the subtext:
IN THE SUBTEXTGuy meets girl. Girl is fascinating, but undeniably screwed up. She always seems to be running from something, and if that ain't bad enough, she comes right out and says cryptic stuff like this:
"When you lay your dream to rest You can get what's second best, but it's hard to get enough."
What. The. Crap.
That's not just a "red flag," my friends, that's some full-on foreshadowing: this girl is CRAZY, and she's got a "need for speed" (wink wink) that will probably claim her life if she doesn't get it under control in a hurry.
(SPOILER: She doesn't, and it does).
Fittingly, our song ends with a tragic coda to trammel up both levels of interpretation:
"Riding quick the street was dark / The shining truck she thought was parked It blocked her path, stopped her heart / But not The Hurricane...
She saw her chance to slip the trap / With just the room to pass him back But then it moved, closed the gap / She never felt the pain..."
SURFACE LEVELBoy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl loves motorcycle. Motorcycle meets truck. Boy loses girl. The end.
SUBTEXT Get yourself straight. Because if you keep running from something, it's bound to catch up with you.
Yeesh, what a downer. I could really use a breath of fresh air to help lighten the mood.
"If I only could make a deal with God / Get Him to swap our places..." In my spare time, I like to think of myself as something of a runner. Not a future Olympian, mind you -- but I do enjoy a solid 5K or a distance run. Actually, I've been training for a 10-miler, of late, and so four days a week, I can usually be seen trotting up and down the streets of my neighborhood in a desperate attempt to make up for a long night of drinking and/or kick myself into a proper "performance" shape.
Good news? My split times are improving.
Bad news (a.k.a. "my worst enemy?)
(Yeah, I totally just went there). Ok, so maybe not quite "The Hills" frequented by Brody, LC, Speidy, and the like (dear Lord, why do I know their names?!) -- but real life, actual hills -- as in the giant masses of land that seem to throw an unnecessary obstacle in my otherwise level playing field. Hills are like nature's own personal trainer: they make you sweat, they shred your muscles, and they kick your butt.
For today's blog entry, we're talking about hills.
We'll do this first by looking at Placebo's 2003 cover of "Running Up That Hill," originally titled "A Deal With God" and made famous by the phenomenally talented but largely forgotten Kate Bush way back in 1985. Now in Kate's version, the infamous "Deal With God" is actually a pact between two lovers to try and swap genders for a bit -- which is kinda' freaky naughty, when you stop and think about it.
Brandon Flowers:"Somebody told me / that you had a boyfriend / Who looked like a girlfriend / that I had in February of last year..."
Yup. It's kinda like that.
But when Placebo decided to put their own personal twist on Bush's gender-bending deal with The Big Man Upstairs, they ratcheted up the darker imagery throughout the song so as to take what once sounded like a whimsical deal with God and instead twist it into something that sounds a whole lot closer to a full-on pact with The Devil himself. Suddenly, "Running Up That Hill" became a whole lot heavier, and a heckuvalot more important.
Personally, I prefer Placebo's version to the original (if only because they used it on an old episode of The O.C. -- dang, there I go again). But let's see why --
Today, we're talking about hills, right? Right. And since we mentioned my homespun running regimen, let's see if we can't take some workout advice from our friends in the band:
Placebo's Three-Step Hill Workout1) Make a deal with God 2) Get Him to swap our places 3) Be runnin' up that hill. Rinse, repeat.
The way Placebo tells the story, they've got this friend who's hurting, BAD. (kinda' like an out-of-shape runner, really). In short? The metaphorical "hills" of life are absolutely killing this runner-friend. And so when the lead singer sees his pal hurting, he immediately wants to help; so much so, in fact, that he's willing to "make a deal with God" and step right into his buddy's shoes in order to keep "runnin' up that road... runnin' up that hill" on their behalf.
It's a nice gesture. But the ominous tone of the instrumentation that underscores this line makes it pretty clear that our singer's efforts are not only in vain, but likely to be doomed, as well. At worst? He's forced to watch his friend suffer in silence. At best? He can trade spots with his runner pal, but he'll still be forced to run up what sounds like a absolutely torturous "hill" once the swap has been made.
And it sounds like he'll have to keep making that run over and over again. Maybe even to the point where it will eventually drive him mad.
Say, that reminds me of somebody I met waaaaaay back in a middle school lesson on Greek mythology:
Ladies and Gentlemen, say hello to Sisyphus. Sisyphus, of course, is the rascally Greek fellow whose flagrant abuses of power earned him the ire of the gods themselves. As punishment for the guy's treachery, Sisyphus ended up with his own bizarro version of "a deal with god," as Zeus decided to condemn Sisyphus to a life of pushing a giant boulder up a hill -- OVER AND OVER AGAIN -- only to watch it roll right back down the hill every time he came mere inches away from making it to the top.
So basically, if we had to break it down according to Sisyphus' training regimen, it might look something like this:
Sisyphus' Three-Step Hill Workout1) Make a deal with (the) god(s) 2) Push a giant rock up a hill 3) Watch it slide back down. Rinse, repeat.
Sure, it's a fantastic workout (you should see how toned the dude's quadriceps were), but it's really a futile and ill-fated effort no matter how you slice it. Every day, Sisyphus was no better off than he was on the day before. And after a long enough stretch of time? It might even be the kind of thing that would drive the poor guy into madness.
Thankfully, there is one other literary voice of reason with a makeshift hill workout plan of his own.
Enter the genius that is:
William Freakin' Faulker
Faulkner's take on hills is perhaps best summed up by this ridiculously insightful line from his landmark 1930 novel, As I Lay Dying:
"Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down."
Faulkner seems to have learned from Sisyphus' mistakes.
As he says elsewhere, "the past is never really past," and today is really little else besides more of the same from yesterday. Hills are merely the biproduct of all of the stuff we never quite sorted out in the first place. So rather than fight the inevitability of obstacles and find ourselves consumed or destroyed by life's maddening repetition, perhaps it's best simply to tackle each new hill one at a time, and savor every new challenge as it comes.
Instead of "running up that hill" over and over again only to descend further into despair, perhaps we'd be better served simply to make the best of those rare moments where we're on top of the mountain and everything is going well -- mainly because we know there is bound to be another hill that'll require our full and careful attention waiting just around the bend. Take it slow, and enjoy the ride.
So one last time, for those of y'all keeping score at home:
Faulkner's Three-Step Hill Workout 1) Walk up hills 2) Ride down them 3) Get mind-numbingly drunk. Rinse, repeat.
But then again, Faulkner was a raging alcoholic -- and so perhaps we should take his workout advice with a grain of salt.
After all --
There really is nothing worse for a runner's training regimen than trying to tackle a major hill while you're wasted.
(Not that I'm speaking from personal experience, of course).
"The rain came down where I made my stand And the cyclone rose with a wave of my hand."
Well la-dee-da.
"Look at me! I'm Bruce Hornsby! I can make the weather do stuff and... stuff." Prospero:Been there, done that.
Yup, it's another hidden Shakespeare reference in pop music. This time? We're tackling The Tempest -- widely believed to be the *last* surviving play penned solely by The Bard and The Bard alone during his lifetime. And it's a doozy, at that.
The Tempest tells us the story of Prospero, the erstwhile Duke of Milan, whose dabbling in the dark arts end up earning him a good old-fashioned ousting and a 12-year-long exile on a tropical island, Castaway-style. But Prospero is something of the defiant type who tends to learn lessons the hard way, and so rather than repent for his sins and learn from the error of his ways, he decides to spend his days brooding about revenge while conjuring up all sorts of magical spirits, spells, and (wait for it!) storms.
Fittingly, Shakespeare's "late career" masterpiece also just so happens to tackle some equally serious "old age" subject matter: the veteran playwright reflects on his own life and tells a story of a similarly veteran, storm-wearied protagonist who likewise gazes back on the mistakes he's made, the lessons he's learned, and the life he has led.
Jimmy Buffett:Did somebody mention "A Pirate Looks at 40?" Quiet you.
We're still talking old man Prospero and his quite-possibly-senile weather-driven revenge, dag nabbit!
But let's not forget about his grumpy old man partner in crime that just so happens to be one cyclone-spinning son of a gun named Bruce Hornsby (no spring chicken himself, of course). "Cyclone" is a standout single from Hornsby's 2009 Levitate album, but lest we forget -- the author's closing in on age 60 at the time of the song's composition, and so the track has got a pretty decent chunk of life experience behind it.
After all, Hornsby's first major hit initially appeared on the airwaves WAAAY back in 1986 ("That's Just the Way it Is"), and in the quarter century since? He's released dozens of studio albums, picked up three Grammys, and toured the country countless times over as part of The Noisemakers, The Range, AND The Grateful Dead.
THE GRATEFUL FREAKIN' DEAD.
So yeah, he's got some years on him. Indiana Jones:It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage ... Heck, Bruce says it himself right there in the text, telling the audience he often thinks back to "when I was a boy," as he "just can't see [storms] so well" these days on account of his "fading eyes." As it rolls along, this song paints a pretty clear picture that our protagonist is older and wiser, but still a little hardened by the life he left behind. He's contemplative, alone, occasionally angry, and fixin' to kick up an honest-to-goodness mess of weather to show for it. You might even call him Prospero-esque:
Most of our years have flown away with nothing much decided Except the board we′re playing on, how it′s to be divided Will more years yet die alone? The question′s many-sided Got no answers of my own and none have been provided
When I was a boy there was nothing to know The wind followed me wherever I′d go Rain came down where I made my stand And the cyclone rose with a wave of my hand
Like the Shakespearean hero, Hornsby's Cyclone-spinner doesn't seem to have learned his lesson all that well. Instead of respecting nature and obeying it in his old age, the protagonist foolishly attempts to summon up a squall and bend the elements to serve his every will. It is a lonely life, and an angry one -- and neither man seems to be any better off today than he was yesterday (or the day before that, or...) by virtue of only having made the same mistakes over and over again.
Wow -- that's kinda' bleak, huh?
Thankfully (SPOILER!): both The Tempest and "Cyclone" are not without their broader messages of hope. In the case of Shakespeare's play (after much introspection, seemingly unrelated subplot activity, and -- of course -- the sudden arrival and promise of love and redemption), our weather-wearied protagonist finally learns himself a valuable lesson, throws the magic book away (lean back! lean back!), and releases all of the captives of his storms free. For as Prospero ultimately says:
"The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance"
In other words: Sure, Prospero *could* keep conjuring storms and seeking revenge, but that'd only leave him feeling empty and alone -- and he'd rather give love a chance. Kinda like Mr. Hornsby himself, as a matter of fact:
"You know if it wasn't for love / I might just be a wandering man I believe I've made the better choice / To sing about it with this band."
Or, in other words:
Sure, Bruce's narrator *could* keep conjuring storms and getting himself all worked up, but... ah, you know the rest.
"Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now."
Dang, what an inspired line.
Has there ever been a more well-conceived and well-concealed breakup song than Steven Stills' "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes?" For my money, this soaring seven-minute epic is quite possibly one of the smartest pop songs ever written. Rolling Stone seems to agree -- they named it as one of the top 500 songs in all of rock and roll history.
Although, if you wanna' get technical -- it's actually more like *four* miniature songs in one (needless to say, today's post will be a bit longer than most). But yeah, four-in-one -- such is the beauty of a "suite:" a collection of loosely affiliated sub-portions of one, larger whole.
Now if this was a strict poem, we'd probably group this under the same "theme with variations" category as Yeats' "Crazy Jane" writings (which we talked about here). Or perhaps we'd lump it in with the lesser-known subgenre of the sonnet crown: a seven-poem set written on a single subject (usually, a lover) where each new sonnet borrows a line or two from the last one in order to explore a different aspect of the original topic.
How YOU doin', Lady Mary Wroth?
But anyway -- getting back to good old "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"...
Our boy Steven Stills reportedly penned this not-so-little-ditty just as his relationship with the venerable Judy Collins was hitting the skids. Basically, he knew that a breakup was imminent, and so he sat down and banged out four demo songs in quick succession to tell her how he was feeling about the whole thing.
And when you think about just about any breakup you've ever had (especially the really complicated ones), it's kinda' hard to fault the guy for churning out multiple musings on the exact same event. Dude's got a lot to say, after all. And Judy Collins was quite a catch (well, I mean, at the time). Heck, when your emotions are all over the map -- four songs might even fall short of covering the full gamut, right?
Right.
Now then, let's see just how broad this spectrum of subtext can be. Accordingly, we'll proceed to the sub-song(s), in order:
MINI SONG NUMERO UNO: "I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are..."
This first section is the most conventionally "pop" of the whole lot. It's structured around a simple, repeating chorus, written from the perspective of the soon-to-be-used-to-be-boyfriend, and it recalls just how stale things have gotten between the couple ("It's getting to the point / where I'm no fun anymore") in spite of their best efforts. The poppy guitar helps mask the inherent sadness of the ordeal -- but the text (much like Shakira's hips) don't lie.
In other words: "no hard feelings, sweetie... but we're done here."
Fittingly, this section wraps with the repeated incantation: "you make it hard," as if to say "I know what I *have* to do... but dayyyum, gurrrl -- you sure don't make this any easier."
MINI SONG NUMERO DOS: "What have you got to lose?"
Ever have that "one last makeout session," or a wild night of breakup sex?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to song numero dos (which kicks off at just around 2 minutes and 50 seconds in, or so). Sure, old Stevie Stills made up his mind to call it quits in the first chunk of the song -- and once again here, he reiterates his decision and tells Miss Judy Blue Eyes to hit the bricks ("Tuesday mornin', please be gone -- I'm tired of you"). But then throughout this slower, second section, he seems to second-guess himself:
"What have you got to lose?"
Do we break it or do we give it a shot? Do we try and stay friends and keep seeing each other, or do we rip that Band-Aid right off and go our separate ways? Dang, if only things could be so cut-and-dry. Or, to borrow a line from Macbeth:
"If it 'twere done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." - Macbeth: Act I, Scene vii
Ahh breakups.
('ish just got real...)
SONG NUMERO TRES: Gratuitous poetry? You know it. Steven Stills was emo before emo was cool. And like any self-respecting emo kid -- at the first sign of self-doubt, he paints his fingernails black feels the immediate need to launch headlong into a full-blown maze of deep, obscure and introspective poetry.
Case in point, right around 4:43 into the song:
Chestnut brown canary / Ruby throated sparrow Sing the song, don't be long / Thrill me to the marrow
Voices of the angels, ring around the moonlight / Asking me, said she so free How can you catch the sparrow?
WTF?
THIS MEANS NOTHING.
Well okay, maybe not "nothing" -- but it's a pretty clear indication that there's a whole lotta' big issues swirling around all at once, and our songwriter's attitude has clearly shifted away from one of:
"Relax, man, I totally got this..."
to one of...
"Dude, I have *NO* clue what's going on here (ps: cocaine's a helluva drug)."
SONG NUMERO CUATRO (or is that "catorce?"): Nonsensical Spanish -- GO! Bono wasn't the first rock star to butcher the Spanish language. In fact, the guys from CSN&Y beat him by a good forty years or so with the nonsensical mishmash that closes out "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." Here, take a look at the closing lyrics to this song (6:25 to the end):
Que Linda me la traiga cuba La reina de la mar caribe Cielo sol no tiene sangre alli Y que triste que no puedo vaya Oh va, oh va, va
For those of y'all who don't quite habla Espanol, a rough translation -- courtesy of Babelfish:
Such beauty brings me back to Cuba The queen of the Caribbean Sea Sky, the sun has no blood there And how sad that I cannot go. Oh, go! Oh, go!
Whoah whoah whoah -- wait, what? So he's in Cuba now? And the sun has... bled itself dry?
Even with the most liberal of translations, we're looking at something that barely passes for "English" here. The individual words? Maybe. But the sentences? Not so much.
The balladeer has gotten so caught up in everything that he's completely lost sight of what all he was talking about in the first place. The cheery music helps mask the message, but in four short movements (and in just under seven minutes time), he's gone from knowing where he stands to jabbering virtual nonsense -- in a garbled hodgepodge of Spanish, no less. Style imitates substance: the audience can barely understand the songwriter because he can barely understand himself.
Say --
Remember waaaaaay back in the beginning of this post when we called "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" one of the smartest pop songs ever written?
"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).
