“He’s Not the Kind of Wheel You’d Fall Asleep At”

That line is probably my favorite from a song stuffed with haunting lyrics, Tom Waits’ “Dead and Lovely.”

That description punches. It offers a commentary both about relationships in general and this man in particular. It speaks of danger and the need for constant vigilance around him. It implies that he is a force of nature (or mechanics) capable of destroying anyone unwary. It hints that he has a lulling, seductive power. And it says more in ten words than this entire paragraph.

I love that line. And I love the song. It’s dreamy and tragic; I can listen to it on repeat for my entire commute to work, and it puts me in a trance.

Here is a fan-made video for the song, just so you have something more interesting to look at than the album cover.

“And Your Bird Can Sing” about Why Artists Shouldn’t Judge Their Own Work

I’ve been on a Beatles kick lately. It’s beause I have recently acquired 90% of their albums–I had Sgt. Pepper’s since high school on CD, but not any of their others, and the tapes I had previous to that had long since been lost/disintegrated/become obsolete by the means I have to play them–and I’ve been working through their entire catalog of songs, many of which I hadn’t heard despite growing up listening to them with my dad, on my own, and with my best friend’s dad who is an archetypal Beatles Fanboi. I have somewhat unwillingly found myself picking up pieces of trivia about the band members themselves, their attitudes, their inspirations. I don’t care about that stuff (but that’s another post)–I just sometimes see it when I pull up a youtube video of a specific song and it’s in the description, or if I’m skimming their Wiki page to remind myself the year of release for a given song or album or something.

Anyway, one of my new favorite songs is “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and it’s one of the songs about which I accidentally saw some background.

The Wiki entry says something to the effect of “John dismissed it later, called it a throwaway song or a box of nothing in bright packaging.”  One youtube video I watched (just to listen to it at work) lists theories of what inspired the song, and the theories sort of back up Lennon’s point–they are all so lame. The most memorable was ”Mick Jaggers’ girlfriend who was in a band.”

Both of those pieces of information (Lennon’s words and the fan theories) reinforce my belief that, as a consumer of art, you never want to know what actually inspired a piece or what it meant to the artist, and that as an artist you shouldn’t try to judge your own work. It doesn’t matter what it meant to the artist; what matters is what it means to the people who invest themselve in it.

Being dismissive of one’s own work when people love it reminds me a bit of Kaylee in theFireflyepisode “Safe House”:  “If that’s what you think of this life, then what must you think of them that choose it?”  I mean, if “nothing in bright packaging” was what Lennon thought of that song, and presumably some of his other songs, then what did he think of the people who loved them and found meaning in them? Did he dismiss them, too, find them easily fooled by the pretty words and prettier guitar licks?

I mean, I kind of get the whole “I don’t want to be worshipped” thing. In high school I had classmates who talked about me like I was someone special for being smart, but to me, it wasn’t something special. It’s what I was born, it’s what I had always been, and in my own eyes grades or test scores I got as a result of being smart enough to remember facts without studying was not something to be proud of, because it was easy for me. I didn’t want to be admired for what I couldn’t help being. So I can understand the perspective of an artist who sees their work as disposable, as not something to be admired or lauded because it came to them easy, and to see the people who look at it and think it meant something or is something worth admiring you for creating are just…fools. I can see that.

But the flip side is, when someone doesn’t know what depth (or lack thereof) created a piece of art…when they don’t have anything but that piece to look at…it might mean something to them. Its value to them is entirely separate from its value to the artist; the observer cannot see the effort (or lack thereof) that went into the piece. All they have is the piece, and what it makes them as observer think or feel or see.

In my opinion it’s arrogant for an artist to be dismissive of their own work once they have published it. Once it’s in the world, interacting with people other than yourself and those who know you well enough to guess where the work came from, it’s beyond your reach. Whatever meaning it had to you, it can still have for you…as an observer of the piece.  But you can’t control what others find in your work, and you shouldn’t try. I appreciate the authors and directors who create ambiguous or obtuse works and just smile when people ask what it meant. What matters is not what it meant to them that created it…what matters is what it means to those who observe it.

I know for me this song has a helluva lot more meaning to it than nothing in a bright package.  Sorry, John–that wasn’t for you to decide, my love.

The Indie Author’s Credo #2 (with music)

This is 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain, and 100% reason to remember the name.

Of all places, that line is from a rap song.  “Remember the Name” by Fort Minor. I love their breakdown of how you get to be successful–it’s pretty spot on, in my opinion.  Here’s the rap, for those of you who like that sort of thing:

“First, We Got to Create…da Mood.”

Or, Music to Write By.

Gratuitous Little Mermaid link (which I would have embedded except Disney has house elves whose sole job is to make sure their property stays where they want it) to put you in the mood.  Go on.  I’ll wait.

I blogged yesterday about using music as one way to put myself in the mood to write.  I thought some of you might enjoy seeing the music that is currently getting me into that blessed state.  If I continue the analogy from the scene referenced above, I guess that makes me Ariel, and my muse Eric, and this soundscape the song Sebastian and all the lagoon creatures started singing to get him past the state of “boy too shy, he ain’t gonna kiss the girl.”

This is copied straight from my iTunes list so the formatting is not the best, but I didn’t want to remove any of the information (which in some cases is still little enough to explain what the track is or who composed it!).

1. Lacrimosa – Day of Tears    4:06    Zbigniew Preisner    Requiem for My Friend    Classical
2. Opéra    4:04    Emmanuel Santarromana    Revolver    Soundtrack
3. Rinaldo: Aria – “Lascia Ch’io Pianga”    4:52    Academy of Ancient Music, Cecilia Bartoli & Christopher Hogwood    Cecilia Bartoli – the Art of Cecilia Bartoli    Classical
4. Eternity’s Sunrise    10:53    Paul Goodwin & The Academy of Ancient Music    Children of Men (Music from the Motion Picture)    Classical
5. Work    2:34    Clint Mansell    The Fountain (Music from the Motion Picture)    Soundtrack
6. Tree of Life    3:45    Clint Mansell    The Fountain (Music from the Motion Picture)    Soundtrack
7. Death Is the Road to Awe    8:26    Clint Mansell    The Fountain (Music from the Motion Picture)    Soundtrack
8. The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni), Op. 8 – Violin Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, RV 297, “Winter” (L’inverno): II. Largo    2:01    Camerata Antonio Lucio, Emmy Verhey & Alun Francis    The 100 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music    Classical
9. Pièces de Clavecin, Book 2: 6e Ordre No. 5 – Les Baricades Mistérieuses    2:28    Angela Hewitt    Couperin: Keyboard Music, Vol. 1    Classical
10. Bach’s Fugue a La Gigue (1928)    3:18    Eugene Migliaro Corporan & North Texas Wind Symphony    Composer’s Collection: Gustav Holst    Classical
11. Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351: III. La réjouissance    2:25    Berlin Symphony Orchestra & Isaiah Jackson    The 100 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music    Classical
12. Symphony No. 23 In D Major, K. 181: I. Allegro Spiritoso    4:41    Academy for Ancient Music Berlin    Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 21 and 23 – Bach, J.C.: Symphony In G Minor, Op. 6, No. 6    Classical
13. Symphony No. 23 In D Major, K. 181: III. Presto Assai    2:11    Academy for Ancient Music Berlin    Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 21 and 23 – Bach, J.C.: Symphony In G Minor, Op. 6, No. 6    Classical
14. Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759, “The Unfinished”: I. Allegro moderato    13:42    Slovenian Radio Symphony Orchestra & Anton Nanut    The 100 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music    Classical
15. Water Music Suite No. 2 in D Major, HWV 349: II. Alla Hornpipe    4:10    St. Petersburg RTV Symphony Orchestra & Stanislav Gorkovenko    The 100 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music    Classical
16. [Violin] Concerto In G Major, RV 310: I. Allegro    2:13    Alison Balsom & Scottish Ensemble    Italian Concertos    Classical
17. Gloria in excelsis Deo    2:24    Ensemble Vocal Raphaël Passaquet, La grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy. Jean-Claude Malgorie.    Bach: Magnificat. Vivaldi:Beatus vir, Gloria    Classical

And this is what muse and I look like by the time the mix is through:

Minus, it is to be hoped, the unfortunate and devastating interruption just as the mood comes to fruition….

Just Because It’s Obvious Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Profound

Or, The song I can’t stop listening to

I’ve been listening to the Beatles a lot lately, now that their catalog finally went digital.  I grew up with them, but hadn’t listened to them regularly outside of maybe five songs since…oh, gosh, junior high?  Half a lifetime ago. 

One of the things that is standing out to me now, is how great they were at stating the obvious in a way that made it profound.  This includes songs like “Yesterday” and “Strawberry Fields” that aren’t love songs, but one of my favorite examples is a love song.  “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” specifically.

Had it been another day

I might have looked the other way

And I’d have never been aware

But as it is, I’ll dream of her 

T0night.

I mean, that is totally obvious. It’s a truth of every single choice that we make, that choosing one path by necessity closes off others, and that we don’t always understand what those others are.

And yet the way they put the song together makes that notion haunting, because it’s this guy glorying in the fact that he’s just met his dream girl, and that he met her by what feels to him a happy accident, and that if he had made just one choice differently than he wouldn’t even have known what he was missing.  But he did meet her, and so we can be happy for him, and with him we can experience that retrospective fear of “what if anything else had happened instead?”

Brilliant.