The Message Column

Understanding lyrics can be a dangerous thing. One can misunderstand with great surety and make oneself look like a fool. When confronted with the awesomeness of poetic music, one might say 'what is poetry, what is music, do I need to use words to tell you? What does it mean? How does it make you feel!

How does it make you feel.

So 'what does it mean' isn't always part of the poetic or lyric assessment of performance. The feeling evokes is what often one goes for as wordsmith.

I can go into a very long discussion about theories of literature, and I could discuss various arguments about audience and about the necessity of 'playing to the crowd'. I could devolve into pseudo-scientific rantings about personality and addiction and drug use and homosexuality. I could talk about sex and violence and how susceptible people are to falling into an abyss when various personal decisions are force upon a person in a way that makes them feel that they've fallen into peril. The point: a song must make the audience 'feel'. Audiences don't 'feel' in mass, but each person does. And each person might feel it a different way. The audience that loves the music 'gets it'. In the sense of a song that is mostly just music, and the words have no meaning with no feeling associated, and do not evoke any kind of memory in the listeners, they hear it just as sound and they move to it as that. The 'meaning' of the words is a void. The song writer was not also a story teller. It's just sound and it doesn't have a didactic political or socially conscious message that puts out a vibe that breaks into someone's safe space and lets them act out the angst from the fear or pain that the words of the song make one feel from memories of the brutal way that some people force feed to others their sick urges and brutalize others just because they can get away with it. How inhuman we can be. War and murder. Robbery and kid napping. These are all topics of stories and movies. And then parts of songs, why not? The song writer must tell a story or else it's just a chant with only the sense of sound and no one looks for a 'message' or tries to solve some vexing puzzle of consciousness that helps them to abide other people better and not bum out so bad when days of rain won't go away and family seems void, all abandoned and lost and alone after having been disposed of. Is this a metaphor for the modern world? Let's hope not.

So a song writer picks the themes and then thinks of a story. And it has to all make sense within the music. And then there must also be the story teller aspect, word bombing concepts through short and poetic blurts of sound. blurt? It's not a blurt but it's an aria with a guy like Chris Cornell. A vocal range like that allows one to use one's voice as an instrument. Melodic and hypnotic are perhaps very close concepts. Vague? There is nothing vague about a lyric like 'I shot my love today. Won't you cry for me?'

What does it mean? What is it expressing? What is the purpose of the lyric?

How does it make you feel!

Meaning and purpose aren't real in that sphere. If you don't understand that the emotion of the song is there even without the words, then maybe you don't know what kinds of words to write? What kind of words? And does meanness and kindness even enter into it? You are the song writer who the kids all hear and you don't want them going off and jumping off a ridge just because they thought to hard about what you are saying in your songs. But if you write a lot of hard emotive songs that sing of the horrors of how people are so damn mean and sometimes channel evil and do brutal horrors to their contemporaries, and piss all over everyone, people who we love we get brutalized by and that is the subject of the songs and the necessary message of redemption must somehow be there . . . too.

Why? Why does the message of redemption need to also be there? one reason: to keep the teenage-angsters from jumping off of the ridge.

How does the singer who has to bare his soul in depressive lyrics night after night abide channeling all of that pain?

A 'good singer' is not always the same as a 'good person'. Both of these are ridiculous concepts in some sense, like when one is singing hymns. But if one were to be on stage night after night and choosing those deep heart crunching songs, many of which were written by the singer himself, how does that singer not 'feel' all that pain over and over, choosing ever more depressing songs, and watching people in catharsis from the stage and not feel all of that collective pain? Collection of very sad soul songs. Some joy in understanding the pain in the sense that one can try and reach out a hand to those who dig their own grave and then go and live in it. The sad song seems to screech out the realities of this world. Happy bunny eaten by a hawk. They don't all get eaten. They don't go out and hang themselves. Rabbits don't commit suicide (of course are there studies? never say never?).

The point: the best 'voice' of a generation? Come on, we know that Chris Cornell was a voice that needed a lot of other voices too. He was never really solo, and always in a band. There were always other super performers as well. And what did the music do? The catharsis for those who feel it? When your driving through the wild lands of this life and you hear the pleative howl of those many voices in awesome harmony. Can you believe why the music was loved so very very much? You either get it or you don't. But we are the bunnies. And the world, the world sends in hawks to eat us up and chew us up spit us out. And we love those who can channel the angst of those in the throws of understanding that the circling hawk, off in dark clouds, is often the product of the over active mind and that the brutality of life is often a reflection of our own brutality. We get what we give and sometimes the world isn't nice. Sometimes we aren't nice. Some times we look at ourselves and say 'have I become one of the bad people?'

A poet who is also a rock star maybe didn't ever think it would be anything more than Seattle homebuds getting famous enough to just tour some weekends, drive to Spokane or Portland and do a small club two or three nights a week, keep the kids at home, drive to the beach on a nice day. People not knowing you unless you are in your Rock Star garb. Just being an ordinary person on an ordinary day and trying not to be suck-faced sell out. Isn't that what we all saw the 'grunge star' being? But any good movement (good? really, you use the word 'good') (the author ignores his self censor)

Any good music movement must have a mock funeral. Back then some branded the 'grunge movement' with the name 'alternative music'. And so some of the groups who were lumped in there (with that moniker) put out a collective album called 'No Alternative' perhaps as a way to say 'uh oh, no, we aren't calling ourselves 'alternatives'. Or, for example, Nirvana put out a video tape (VHS) that was call 'Sold Out'. Was this a little bit of self deprecation? They used the double entendre of being a 'sell out' in the title. Perhaps Nirvana could have been accused of being sell-outs except that we (their fans) all really did love them and were happy for their success and the music and their 'we are not stars but just talented and gifted' point of view.

But the world says, when a person survives, like Dave, and he's still doing it (Dave Grohl, very very famous, look him up), when a person survives, and they are still the best of the best (there are very many of those) we do, we do, the public, the fans, we say 'yes Dave is a star'. Why is he a star? Not because he tried to be a star. He wanted to be a musician and he pulled it off and people still love to hear him and love to see him perform. And he's very famous. it's not just him and Kurt and Krist and all of their posse (who were a tight nit group back in the day), Dave is a luminary.

But I'm not really writing this today because of him. I'm writing because of Chris Cornell, who is said to have . . . and he has passed away and I need to write about it because I was listening to him earlier and realized how much I always loved his performances. Very awesome performer.

But I have to ask, I must ask: what toll does it take on the soul felt whaller when he whales his pleas and screams and channels the pain? Like when Heath Ledger did The Joker? He is said to have descended into the roll. But Chris? An obvious empath you can tell because of how much raw emotion he channels in every song. Some of his songs are like if emotion were dammed up behind a high mountain deep water dam, and you let it all loose at once, dam burst. Dam burst of emotion. Burden in his hand.

Repressed angst that had been dammed up by the meannesses of everyday dissipation suddenly burst and flood the happy valley of delusions.

How does one let a burst of emotion flood through one's voice in every song and not feel it at the end of the performance? How does one play the roll of Hamlet without going a little crazy oneself?

The answer? If there were answers clear and sure maybe grunge wouldn't have been a phenomenon? The answers? They come from somewhere, maybe? for questions of a certain time. But existential questions might have an answer for one, which one can never share with anyone else, with surety. With surety. We can't channel it. We can't put it forward and know that people will get it. Nirvana wrote 'Polly' after hearing about horrible news, and then heard about someone playing the song while . . . assholes who didn't get the music, didn't understand that the message of the song wasn't to be that bastard who uses someone else to 'go on a ride'. The message was just a channelling of the horror to expose it. Not to be it. It's a hard lesson to learn as a poet and a song writer that some people just don't 'get it'. People who rape people? You can say 'do not be my fan', but that can't really stop anyone from following a band or connecting with your lyrics.

So bands get followers and followers aren't always great in what they do.

Awareness? Looking for answers? How about being human and caring? But what does that mean? People who are 'nice' often are also very very mean when you don't give into their 'reasonable' demands.

And how do you write about certain types of social crime (involving taboo topics) without also perhaps contributing to it? Some bands even get on 'watch lists' and all of their fans are 'kept an eye on' by those who have lists of some who they keep their eyes upon. Do I tell you the name of that insane band? I say insane but they are not insane, though that word is in their name. And I haven't given them a 'listen to' like I did with Nirvana, Mad Season, and Sound Garden, Alice 'n Chains, Audioslave, Foo fighters, Blind Melon and others. So how does a band get a following? How do they make sure that their followers aren't creeps? Is there a way?

All of this must weigh heavy on the manic genius songwriter who also preforms his material in giant floods of emotive howling.

Whatever happens in a persons head when they have had 'one or two extra adivan' that makes them . . . whatever happens at that moment . . . when they . . . can't we as a world forgive that manic moment? Of course we can. And we have to feel it when the life is gone. Seems like forever keeps ending. A voice that always seemed to know even before you ever heard it. A genius songwriter. A manic depressive on Adavan. How do we save these geniuses from getting sucked into the vortexes of horror that they channel through their hard-edged music? Meanwhile giving us all kinds of understanding that exercises the demons that we harbor. We understand the terror and fear and cathartic agony that the singer conveys and it howls to us about the horrors of the modern age.

But when we get sick of the angst ridden musical performances we can turn them off. We can say 'I'm done with this.' If you are the song writer and the one who performs it 4 nights a week, two days with a noon show matinee, what can you do? Can you say 'no, I know this is one of my best songs from that era but the dark energy that is described within, and animated, in a sense, through the hard rock guitar moshes, is too dark for me to keep performing.' Great, be the genius walking away from his best material at the height of his career. You can do that and be a hero and survive but you won't get your check. And if you don't get that check how can you keep up with the life style? If you got caught up in it? Look it Cher saying, after all of these years, that she's not a fan of Cher. She didn't like 'Gypsys, Tramps, and Thieves.' She wasn't a fan of 'if you could turn back time', her manager had to beg her to play it (I'm just glossing over what I read about her on line this week). She needed her check to keep it all going back in the day. She was much cooler than the music seemed to be. She can be forgiven for putting out what she now sees as sub-par music because she had to be who she was and singing those songs was what the moguls demanded of her. Or else just exit the stage now. She had contracts she'd signed. She needed to produce even if she didn't like the recordings. And if that's too hard to understand than you must not be a student of Commercial Music. Even if you don't like it, very many genres of music have a purpose in the commercial sphere, and people produce things that they don't actually like knowing full well that there is a crowd that will, a crowd with cash who is willing to play. If all of your music speaks to the dead-broke and junk-sick with angst and pathos, then maybe they spend all of their money of junk, so you won't get any of it. The 'square' and the stuffy and introverted still need something pretty to listen to. They don't demand beauty. They don't demand anything. But they do vote with their song purchases. And if the market exists the musicians are in legion to fill it up with music.

So maybe a rock star, at some parts of his/her/? career, doesn't think that there is a choice anymore. They must go and make the gig. The show must go on.

But you will make millions more if you sing it, if you go back into that pit and screech for redemption yet one more time.

But two three five too many happy pills flips over and inverts the emotions and suddenly, due to accidentally over medicating, the artist slips into a temporary funk that seems like permanent dread and . . . well we can all go an read the headlines from Thursday. I don't need to repeat them.

So the guy who you loved to hear sing and you maybe couldn't pick his face out of a crowd, is now passed on to 'Rock-n-roll heaven'. And everyone seems sad, everyone who knew who he was and what his music is like.

And the world is sad.

end of rambles for now . . . 
and always in need of an edit.
May 24, 2017

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Oh tiny font nonsense,
just because your letters are smaller
doesn't mean you have some alternative importance.

  Praise     Praise     Praise
   the        the        the
   Lord       Lord       Lord!
  for    because    
 Easter  He's so awesome! 
  welcome to The Message Column!

      🖐♥♥Love♥♥🖑
      ♥♥🖑Cops🖐♥♥

      

Is it obvious parody or News or both?

 

hover above images for a modification effect.

🖐♥♥Love♥♥🖑
♥♥🖑Cops🖐♥♥

      

     
Vote Once
One Vote
here is a fresh link, a new path to some older content:
   photo pile!
   
 

 
 a sane backup strategy includes . . . 
 

   
Suns gone
don't follow me
Spring falls 
like rain.

If you don't wait for me
I'll never wait for you again.
I'll never wait for you again.
I'll never wait for you again.

All of those dreams I had last Summer
they fade fade fade
with the rain
All of those times I tried to reach out to you
you always act like i'm insane
I'll never wait for you again.

Again
and again
I wait for you 
in the morning
I dream you'll come
to see me
buy you never ever ever
come again.

Again and again
you never ever ever come again.

All of those dreams I had in Summer
they did
fade fade fade
with the rain
All of those times I tried to talk to you
you always acted like I'm insane
I'll never wait for you again
I'll never wait for you again

Again 
and again
I dream
you come
to see me
I dream that
we are walking
down the long and storied lane
and you'll always come again

In Wicked Need of an Edit

🚛 🎓 🎔 🌀

Political and Media Inanity

Kafka wrote comedy. Orwell was a pessimist. Depends who you ask.

Imagine if they both could have lived and made it to Los Angeles, post war, and been collaborators on writing romantic screwball comedies for Hollywood. If we search IMDB for movies written by Kafka, or by Orwell, will we find one? I kind of doubt it.

Truck-u-later

in this column Truck-u-later steps in deeper . . .

The dangers of nuclear arms are clear. Who denies it?

I'm not a fan of knee jerk militarism.

The Military man, however, yes, call me a fan of him. The military man is one who doesn't want what he knows how to deter. The necessity of such a man becomes clear in times of turmoil. The knee-jerk activity of quick at the trigger failed-diplomacy . . . ought not happen in a way that makes grand headlines and draws irrevocable condemnation. Diplomacy without the modivation to behave. That might be called negotiating from weakness. But if, and when, people become unhinged, the negotiation is not as important as a battoning down of hatches, storm is ccoming, acting like a large sea will rise, and every one secure it for the storm . . .

We survive. There is an old film about a boy who told everyone that he knew how to build a bell. But he was lying. And in the end he had to do what he did to survive, and alos to work through the grief of loosing his family to slavers and foreign invaders. This film had some very difficult scenes spliced within, for example one where a horse is being forced out a door onto a balcony in a tower, way up high. the scene, brillient in a cinematographic way, raised eyebrows in the film community when this movie hit the circuit sometime mid century (circa 1960).

We survive. We survived all of that, and the constant suck that has been going on for the last 150 or so years. We've survived.

And if things are lost, they can be found.

April 12, 2017

delight in the delete.

  Praise     Praise     Praise
   the        the        the
   Lord       Lord       Lord
  for his    for his    for his
 unfailing  unfailing  unfailing
   love!      love!      love!



  well, little else now.