"Heaven or hell, I'm goin' there with the GrooGrux King." The elegy is one of the oldest and most widely accessible forms in all of poetry. What's an elegy, you ask? Simply put, an elegy is a poem of loss and remembrance -- and one that typically begins with a mood of lamentation before shifting toward one of consolation.
(In other words, it's an "I miss you" poem -- usually addressed to a deceased loved one -- which starts off sad and ends up hopeful).
The Dave Matthews Band's "Why I Am" is a fantastic contemporary example of precisely such a poem. In it, the band is waxing philosophical on old times and dedicating their verse to their recently departed saxophone player, the late, great LeRoi Moore:
Like any good elegy, "Why I Am" starts off by looking backwards and recalling a bunch of memories both happy and sad from yesteryear. To that end, it's no surprise that we encounter a whole bunch of verbs that are presented in the past tense: Dave sings about where he "grew" from and where he "was," then he recalls some of the crazy adventures (and mind-altering escapades) that brought him to this particular place and time.
As he retraces his nostalgic sojourns on the chemical frontier, Matthews talks about a "ghost" and makes repeated references to a mysterious "GrooGrux King."
"King of men? It makes no sense."
You're not kidding, Dave. But speaking of "makes no sense" -- just *what*, exactly, is a "GrooGrux King" anyhow?
According to DMB drummer Carter Beauford, "GrooGrux" was the band's made-up word to describe the overall vibe and energy of their sound. And since their late, great, saxophonist LeRoi Moore was at the epicenter of the "GrooGrux" vibe -- it seemed only natural to honor him with the title of "GrooGrux King."
"You're the Banana King, Charlieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."
Anyhow --
As the elegy unfolds, Dave recalls the good times he's shared with the newly-dubbed GrooGrux King, and proceeds to inform his listeners that even though the King's passing "makes no sense," he remains convinced that he'll see the big guy once more when all is said and done. Here, take a look:
"And when my story ends it's gonna' end with him Heaven or hell, I'm goin' there with the GrooGrux King"
No longer is Dave simply mourning the loss of his storied bandmate. Instead? We gradually observe his shift towards a mindset of quietude and comfort. This is where the elegy really shines, as he stays true to the elegiac form by moving from lamentation to consolation, ultimately ending his refrain with the repeated chorus of:
"Don't cry baby, don't cry."
Say -- that's kinda' nice.
*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.
Fun fact: Anna Nalick, like, totally has a thing for similes.
(Similes -- for a quick refresher -- are comparisons using the words "like" or "as." To dust off an old joke -- one might even say they're "like" metaphors.)
See what he did there?
Similes (and metaphors) are a pretty handy tool* for songwriting, too. Since words are at a premium in your average pop ballad, you've really got to put some extra effort in so as to make sure that every last syllable on the page is actually being used to paint the kind of picture** you want your audience to receive. This is where stuff like similes (and metaphors, allusions, etc.) are worth their weight in gold*** -- because they allow an artist to use an existing image (or two, or ten) in order to pack an otherwise tiny track with some really big, broad imagery to get the listener's wheels a-spinnin'.****
(Meta-joke/ frame of reference: check out all of the handy examples of figurative language we used in the last paragraph alone!)
* Handy tool = likens an abstract technique to a physical instrument ** Paint the kind of picture = recalls an artist crafting a visual image *** Worth their weight in gold = monetary image to suggest richness, value **** Wheels a-spinnin' = implies momentum, forward-moving thought
As you can see, figurative language is a great way to draw on existing conventions, connotations, and imagery in order to get a really big message across in what might otherwise appear to be a relatively small window of opportunity. Heck, you might even call metaphors "bouillon cubes of brilliance."
Just add water poetry and let the truth soup flow!
Thanks to a steady diet of figurative language, one sees quickly why Anna Nalick's chart-topping "Breathe (2 a.m.)" is absolutely brimming with truth bouillons. Nalick tackles some pretty heavy life issues (unplanned pregnancy, abortion, alcoholism -- you name it). But thanks to the ever-present similes and metaphors? Our balladeer never actually has to come right out and address any one of these particularly loaded issues by name.
Instead, she employs some slick figurative language to draw on existing imagery and offer up repeated images of doubt, confusion, and an almost soul-crushing determinism. And in the end? Her song is all the more thought-provoking accordingly.
Here's a quick recap of the figurative language we encounter:
"And you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable."
"There's a light at the end of this tunnel..."
"I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd."
"These words are my diary screaming out loud."
(and my personal favorite)
"Life's like an hourglass glued to the table."
Ahh, so THAT's why Dorothy didn't just flip that sucker upside down when time started to run out.
(... the more you know... )
*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.
"Hear You Me" isn't exactly a phrase we tend to use all that often in the modern vernacular. After all, it's kinda' Yoda-esque to rearrange words in that particular fashion. "Hear YOU Me?" Wouldn't that be ten times easier to understand if it just said "listen to me" (where the sentence remains imperative and the word "you" is implied thanks to the more active verb)?
Like I said -- kind of unwieldy for everyday conversation.
"What I say what? Now hear you me, Mr. Smarty Pants..."
Funny thing is --
As languages evolve over generations and centuries, certain words, phrases, spellings, and semantic conventions typically end up being standardized or simplified in order to help the spoken and written word keep up with the times. "Colours" become "colors." "Inflammable" becomes "flammable." And longer, more complicated idioms typically end up finding themselves chopped, cropped, and condensed in order to make themselves easier to remember to the common ear.
For example:
"All that gliSters is not gold." - Prince of Morocco The Merchant of Venice, II.vii
"Glister?" Who in the blue hell even knows what a "glister" is these days, anyhow? And thus we end up with a more modern approximation, like so:
Fun fact/ gratuitous pot-shot: "Glitter" was hardly gold OR platinum for that matter. Seriously, this album is terrible.
But anyway --
Words and phrases can change over time. And that means that even while we're speaking quote-unquote "English" today, the language that we take for granted as "standard" is actually a heckuva' lot different from the English that was spoken by our grandparents, our great grandparents, and the countless generations that preceded them all the way back to antiquity.
"Hear You Me" is precisely the type of clunky old phrase that time tends to erase. It basically means "listen up." But to the modern ear? It's almost as if the phrase is missing a word or two. That said -- waaaay back in the heyday of William Shakespeare? This kind of thing would actually sound quite commonplace. After all, when 'ish got real (i.e. -- like, for example, when a bunch of people ended up dead all at once) they were often known to start talking all super-formal and stuff. Kinda' like this:
"Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" - Horatio Hamlet, V.ii.
Wait a minute -- singing to dead folks in sentences that could probably benefit from an extra noun of direct address?
Oh yeah. I've heard that one before:
"May angels lead you in Hear you me, my friends On a sleepless road the sleepless go May angels lead you in."
The syntax is tricky. But the message is clear: "Hey man, I really miss you. And I hope you get to heaven."
Betcha' Shakespeare WISHES he'd thought of that!
*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.
(spoiler: Yes, I realize that the above video is, in fact, Jakob Dylan and very much *not* the aforementioned Van Morrison. But Van is kind of ornery when it comes to letting his material be shared across los intrawebz -- hence the gratuitous Orlando Bloom video and accompanying Wallflowers soundtrack).
Now then...
Van Morrison has a total man crush on William Butler Yeats. He'll deny it, mind you -- but his music tells another tale entirely. Here's Morrison's own half-hearted attempt to distance himself from Ben Bulben's poet laureate, excerpeted from an old Rolling Stone article:
"[Critics would listen to my songs and say] this is sort of Yeatsian,’ and I’d go ‘Really? I didn’t know. I’d never read him.’ So I’d go out and get Yeats and see, but I hadn’t read him before the article.
(Ring ring... Um, Mr. Morrison? I have your bluff on line one.)
Gee, that's strange. For a guy who knows nothing about Yeats' writings, Van The Man "conveniently" found himself cribbing a boatload of the guy's material. Heck, just look at these Van Morrison record titles:
Astral Weeks (1968)
Moondance (1970)
Beautiful Vision (1982)
Cuchulain (2001)
Magic Time (2005)
And then check out these Yeats writings from a full half-century prior:
A Vision -- which deals extensively with which Yeats calls "astral" -- or star-like -- matters (1925)
"The Phases of the Moon" (1919)
Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea (1925)
"Magic: An Essay" (1903)
But why stop there? Here's a verse from Morrison's 1983 song, "Rave On, John Donne" in which the songwriter comes mighty close to flat-out asking "that-guy-I-swear-I-never-read!" out on a man-date. Take a look:
"Rave on, let a man come out of Ireland Rave on, on Mr. Yeats, Rave on down through the Holy Rosey Cross Rave on down through theosophy, and the Golden Dawn Rave on through the writing of 'A Vision' Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on"
Oooh SNAP!
Yeah, you know what you did.
Ok, it's settled: Van Morrison pretty much made a career as a wholesale ripoff of his countryman and poetic forbear. But Morrison's BIGGEST Yeats ripoff of all time? None other than the songwriter’s classic 1970 hit “Into The Mystic.
As Morrison begins his 1970 track, he sets the stage for a song that takes place in a liminal threshold between two realms, singing:
“We were born before the wind / Also younger than the sun”
Just a simple throwaway line, right? Not on your life. We already know that Van Morrison is certainly not above cribbing from Yeats' source material. So let's see how these lines fit into the Yeats canon:
No, no, no -- not *that* Cannon.
"Into the Mystic" tells the story of two lovers who were born “before the wind" but "also younger than the sun." Conveniently (read: plagiarist-ically?) these two symbols also just so happen to rather neatly coincide with two actual events in the life of one W.B. Yeats.
First up: "born before the wind" -- in 1899, Yeats put himself on the map of literary giants with the publication of a collection of poems titled The Wind Among The Reeds. What were the poems about, you ask? Why what else besides all sorts of crazy and other-worldly themes like mist, mysticism, and matters of the occult.
(Hey wait a second here...)
Next up: "younger than the sun" -- true story: Yeats was obsessed with an impressive array of fringe religious sects in his lifetime (heh heh, "sects") -- the most noteworthy of which just so happened to be a quasi-cult known as The Order of The Golden Dawn. The group's philosophy? A full-tilt focus on worshipping (wait for it) the SUN, and a pretty clear-cut obsession with the unending circle of birth and death.
("Born before the..." ooooh, gotcha.)
How fitting that a song about going "Into the Mystic" is set smack-dab "before the wind" and "the sun," eh?
In the lines that follow, Morrison takes his Yeats influence a step further by liftingentire linesdirectly from Yeats' poetry (the NERVE of that guy!). Case in point: check out Yeats’ “Crazy Jane and the Bishop,” where the poet's heroine talks about how she dreams of a day when she can “wander out into the night.” And then Yeats' very next poem in the sequence (“Crazy Jane Reproved”), where as a blustery Bishop shoots Jane down, saying “I care not what the sailors say."
But in "Into the Mystic," Van turns the tables --
"Hark, now hear the sailors’ cry! Smell the sea and feel the sky Let your soul and spirit fly Into the mystic"
Hey! That almost sounds like Van put Yeats' thing down, flipped it, and reversed it.
Missy Elliot:".ti esrever dna pilf ,nwod gniht ym tup I"
Actually, the whole "flip it and reverse it" trick is a move stolen from right of Yeats' playbook, too -- since the man spent pages and pages of his life's work all but consumed by the image of the twisting gyres. Since Yeats' was something of a nutjob, however, his philosophy on the matter can get a bit convoluted -- so perhaps we'll wrap this entry up with a handy visual aid before segueing into our closing remarks:
Exhibit A:The gyre. See the twisting? Literally "it puts a thing down, then flips it and reverses it." In Yeats' estimation, gyres were the ultimate symbol of an interpenetrating universe. He loved the notion of sunsets, twilights, sunrises, moonrises, and foggy periods of uncertainty where one realm gradually gave way to the next. To that end, a huge chunk of his poetry and philosophical writings were dedicated precisely to these "mystic" portals between two realms where fantasy and reality collided and anything was possible.
As Yeats saw things: with all of this liminal fluxuation twisting and unfolding around us, nobody can ever really quite tell you for sure if they are actually sleeping or awake in a given moment. Really, all we're doing is floating "into the mystic."
For Yeats, this was the stuff that dreams (and poems) were made of.
You might even call it "Magic Time." Figures.
*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.
"Losing love is like a window in your heart." Earlier this week, the kind folks over at Spin Magazine compiled a list of what they believe to be the top 125 albums ever to have been released since their little publication debuted waaaaay back in 1985. Noticeably (and dare I say "egregiously") absent from that list? Paul Simon's Graceland (1986).
(Angry face).
SPOILER ALERT: Dynamite comes in small packages. DOUBLE SPOILER ALERT: Expect a good number of "Paul Simon is short" jokes to follow accordingly.
How in the blue hell Spin hopes to be taken seriously after leaving such a monumental album off of its "best of" countdown is anybody's guess. Perhaps it wasn't tall enough to reach the minimum height requirement of their list?
(short joke #1).
But all kidding aside -- Spin's oversight is glaring, and it seems as if they're virtually alone in ignoring just how awesome Graceland really is. Time magazine loves the thing. Paul Simon called it the best work of his entire career. Fellow musicians emulate it to this day (I'm looking at YOU, Jason Mraz). Heck, even His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has listed this little-album-that-could (short joke #2) among his own personal ten best pop albums of all time.
That's right: Paul Simon got a shout out from THE FREAKIN' POPE. How's that for high praise? The man is infallible!
Little-known fact: The Pope also has the ability to shoot evil Force lightning from out of his fingertips. I kid you not.
So for today's entry, howzabout we tackle "Graceland" and show those self-important hipsters from Spin just what they're missing?
Reason #1 Why "Graceland" is Certifiably Awesome: Figurative language!
"Figurative language" is pretty much the blanket term that we English dorks like to kick around when talking about writing that comes pre-packed with a boatload of imagery. Similes, metaphors, allusions -- you name it. Figurative language is the poet's go-to tool for "heavy lifting," as it allows an author to cram a pretty massive meaning (and some pretty big ideas) into what might otherwise seem like a relatively small amount of space.
We'll tackle these things immediately. But the key point to remember is that "Graceland" is absolutely brimming with the stuff.
Reason #2 Why "Graceland" is Certifiably Awesome:Similes.
Metaphors are comparisons that DON'T use the words "like" or "as." And similes are comparisons that do. Or, if you wanted to get cheeky -- one might even say that "similes are like metaphors" (see what I did there?).
Regardless, "Graceland" is full of both. Here's two killer similes to start us off:
"Mississippi Delta was shinin' like a national guitar."
Exhibit A: The Mississippi Delta -- (note: "shinin' like a national guitar" optional) From the opening notes of the song, the pint-sized Paul Simon does a tremendous job of linking real, physical places with figurative and musical images. To that end, the "national guitar" that is so rich and storied in its own musical legacy (southern jazz, blues, and rock music) instantly becomes giant-sized as it seems to "shin[e]" amid the highways and rivers that criss-cross this basin of American culture.
Suddenly, real places take on near-mythic qualities. Open roads morph into oversized musical instruments. Graceland becomes Mecca and the Holy City all rolled into one. And our undersized-singer finds himself "falling, flying, [and] tumbling in turmoil" alongside "ghosts and empty sockets" on a quest to discover the deeper spiritual truths that lie within.
Animated Johnny Cash Coyote:"I'm your spirit guide, Homer." But our pint-sized songwriter is just getting started. And the awesome similes continue throughout the song:
"Losing love is like a window in your heart Everybody sees you're blown apart Everyone can feel the wind blow."
A "window in your heart," you say?
Ok, ok -- so Paul Simon is totally Jewish. Still, the "window in your heart" imagery is kinda' unavoidably spiritual, now that we look at it...
Christian or Jew, all this talk of "a window in your heart" seems to suggest a that our traveling troubadour is embarking on a much broader and more weighty voyage than a mere road trip to that oft-discussed Elvis Presley uber-mansion. And in the metaphorical imagery that follows, Paul Simon bears precisely such an explanation out to its logical end.
Reason #3 Why "Graceland" is Certifiably Awesome: The Grand Allusion (see what I did there?).
Since we were talking about "spiritual journeys," things can get heavy in a hurry -- and so metaphors are a must. As such, let's start with the most obvious, which we hear sung time and again throughout the song:
"For reasons I cannot explain There's a part of me that longs to see Graceland"
Hmm -- if I'm hearing him right, it sounds like Paul Simon keeps finding himself drawn to seek a mythical "Land" of "Grace." But WHY? Who knows. Though I've gotta' say -- I really don't think we're just talking about Memphis, Tennessee anymore, Toto. And this is getting downright heavenly, now that you mention it.
The riddle goes even deeper just a few lines later:
"Maybe I have reason to believe We all will be received in Graceland"
Now sure, Graceland could just be the former residence of The King of Rock and Roll. But when people start singing about how they have this deep and abiding sense that "poor boys, and pilgrims, and families... will be received" in this safe haven -- one can't help but wonder if our knee-high-balladeer isn't *only* singing about the brick-and-mortar resting place of one Elvis Presley.
In fact, this sounds an awful lot like...
(*Actual Heaven may vary. Jewish/Protestant/Buddhist/Muslim/etc. Heaven available upon request. See store for details) Long story short?
"Graceland" isn't merely a tune about walkin' in Memphis. Instead, Paul Simon's musical pilgrimage takes him not only through the cradle of American rock & roll, but down into the very depths of his soul as a singer, songwriter. and a person of faith -- however allusive that faith may be.
Moral of the story:
Paul Simon is one tiny dude, but he can write pop music with the best of them. And in leaving Graceland off of their best albums of the past 25 years list? Spin Magazine missed the boat...
BIG time.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist)
*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.
"Something's growing out of this that we can't control / baby I am dying."
I've noticed that this blog is in some serious need of "girl power," and so today I thought we'd tackle one of the feistiest femme fatales ever to have picked up a six-string guitar. My dear readers (both of you), say hello to...
Liz Freakin' Phair: Best. Ever. Well okay, maybe not "ever" -- but she's definitely towards the top of the list, and inarguably one of the most outspoken female voices in the history of modern music (no offense to Stevie Nicks and the rest). Seriously, her strident Exit in Guyville (1993) remains one of the most groundbreaking albums of all time -- and her gender-defying, convention-shattering swagger has spawned countless scores of imitators in the seventeen years since.
('sup, Katy Perry?).
For today's post, we're tackling "Why Can't I?" -- the biggest (radio-friendly) hit of Liz's career, and a song that has gone on to become a veritable staple of the Phair songbook and lovestruck movie montage cliches ever since. Has she written *better* and more thematically nuanced stuff than this? No question. But try as she might, this song is just so darned popular that it's pretty much become her calling card.
Perhaps this is no surprise, however, as the story Phair sings about here is as touching (trite?) as it is timeless:
Girl meets boy. Girl digs boy. Only problem? Both boy and girl have previously existing romantic entanglements (how's THAT for a "Bad Romance?"). Yet in spite of themselves, both boy and girl are increasingly powerless to resist the fickle finger of fate. As Phair says: "it's just like [they] were meant to be."
Being of a literary bent, one might even call these two puppy lovers "star cross'd."
(You totally know what's coming next, don't you?)
Romeo & Juliet (1597)- William Shakespeare (Bingo)
Like Liz Phair's "Why Can't I?", Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is arguably the single work in the artist's long and storied career that is most widely accessible to a casual audience. Has he written *better* stuff? And *deeper* stuff? Most definitely ('sup, Hamlet?) -- but the sheer enormity of this particular piece is just so freakin' ubiquitous that it has become virtually impossible to discuss the guy without paying at least some due degree of attention to that which has become his veritable calling card.
Fair enough. So here's the PG-version of the plot:
Romeo & Juliet: A tale of two "star cross'd lovers" from rival families who meet, fall in love, and ultimately take their own lives when the weight of the world threatens to destroy their forbidden bond (a.k.a - the prototypical "Bad Romance"). Not coincidentally, both Romeo and Juliet just so happen to meet by chance, and are "kinda-sorta' seeing other people" when they first "kinda-sorta" get together.
Or, as Liz Phair might say:
"Holding hands with you when we're out at night You've got a girlfriend, you say it isn't right... And I've got someone waiting, too."
Now sure, this might sound like simple puppy-love, "kid" stuff. But for those of us who wanna' venture a little deeper into the "adult" themes of this little story, Romeo & Juliet actually deals extensively with some seriously "mature" subject matter -- namely, issues of sex and death. Throughout the play, Shakespeare treats both events as transcendant equals, and puns on the Elizabethan notion that "to die" actually meant "to orgasm" (ahh, so THAT's what Cutting Crew meant when they sang "I just died in your arms tonight"). Far-fetched, you say? Hogwash -- it's right there in the text:
The Capulet boy "worms" his way into the Montague girl's "tomb" (hey wait a second...)
Romeo's "dagger" (wink!) penetrates Juliet's "sheath" (word origin of "sheath?" SCANDALOUS! Google it).
And within mere hours of gettin' it on? The lovers (quite literally) end up "dying" in one another's arms.
Vulgar and obscure though it certainly may seem, it appears as if our girl Liz Phair is actually quite hip to this whole "sex & death" riddle. Heck, it's right there in her song, too. As she sings:
"Here we go, we're at the beginning We havent f***ed yet, but my head's spinning ... Something's growing out of this that we can't control Baby I am dying."
Classy, Liz. Real classy. But still, Shakespeare himself would agree that her point is well-taken:
You're not just "dying" to be WITH someone else, you're *dying* unto yourself by SURRENDERING your body/heart/mind/etc. on over to another person. You can't fight it. You can't control it. And in the end? You can't really do all that much to change it, either.
Joey Lawrence:Talk about your tales of "WHOA." Hmm... maybe *that's* why Liz Phair's been having all of those breathing problems.
For her sake, here's hoping that she gets that stuff sorted out before Act V.
*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.
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."
*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.
