Sunday 3 May 2009

28. 10 Songs about somewhere , sometime, something, someday over the rainbow

Something Changed - Pulp
Speak to me Someone - Gene
Somewhere - Tom Waits
Someday - The Strokes
Some Jingle Jangle Morning (When I'm Straight) - Mary Lou Lord
Over the Rainbow - Judy Garland
I Must Belong Somewhere - Bright Eyes
Someday Soon - Wilco
Something Good - Bic Runga
Somehow, Someday - Ryan Adams

This is a thought that has come to me fairly recently, which all these songs touch on in some way. It's about some moment in the past or in the future, memory and hope, how much is enough to live for, that kind of thing.
These songs are about a moment/person/place which is ineffable, which gives hope and meaning when there oughtn't be any.
I guess, bookwise, I had on my mind The Road by Cormac McCarthy (again) and Straw Dogs by John Gray, which both paint a powerfully bleak picture of mankind's future (one fiction, one philosophy) but end with some kind of light, which, when summed up, isn't that much different from how Gone with the Wind ends i.e. you've just got to keep on keeping on. I do a gross injustice to all works with that summary.
I also had on my mind, as mentioned below, The Great Gatsby and the film American Beauty, not that I'm suggesting they hold comparable places in American culture, but they both end with the protagonist having their brains blown out, and yet, and yet, we are meant to see some beauty, some meaning, something about what these protagonists saw and experienced towards the end or at the every end of their lives which made everything worthwhile.
I've explained all this wretchedly, I'm sorry. In truth, I'm dizzy like Ricky from a pretty paltry portion of white wine, and am also trying to concentrate on MOTD2. Tough times

(I'm tempted to put this into really small type, cos I wrote it in really tiny letters, but I fear that would set a crazy-fonted precedent which no one wants)

You didn't believe me when I told you
there were choirs of angels at my command
or at least some London soul-pop scene
You wouldn't believe me if it was just one kid
playing old folk songs on an old recorder
I don't know what I can do to persuade you

that a moment happened, somewhere, sometime -
pens stopped scribbling and ears stopped burning
There was no depression and no Nashville country
this moment is somewhere in someone's memory
and it makes everything that will happen ok
It's a kiss, or a song, or a smile, or something

It's a family offering a coke can to a stranger
while an old jukebox plays a young Van Morrison.
You know, we joked about coins behind cushions -
but it matters now, every ten pence upwards
Cos' they're coming to just rip that shit up
and burn it down in the same sad instant

You don't believe anything I tell you
You don't believe me when I tell you my tombstone
should read 'I was right about Ryan Giggs
All of this is no surprise to me' but
if i can just persuade you to believe that something,
that something's there inside of someone

A winter sun on a hospital ward or a
calendar ticking over and freezing in time -
this is just me stiffening my resolve
cos that look in your eyes makes me doubt myself
but you've read books - The Great Gatsby, whatever,
you've seen films, say, American Beauty.

Fat lot of use we both are to anyone.
Do I have to tear myself open to see
streams of gold, or some weak CGI?
If I have to, I'll tear myself open to you
for you to just have the start of a feeling
that something once happened worth carrying on for.

Pretty much as explained, wasn't it? Not much more to say on the matter ...

2 comments:

  1. Mr Tolstoy - along with his translator friend - seems to be in your loop, or possibly a loop close to yours, with this wee excerpt:
    "The chief reason for him wanting to weep was a sudden acute sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing within him and the narrow material something which he, and even she, was."

    It seems that he is intrigued by a kind of tension related to that which you were exploring. He probably saw a bit more redemption than your quoted folks: this hints at a consistent noble yearning in people. But I'm still 600 pages from the end, so I shouldn't pre-judge!

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  2. Now that, for me, that is a return to form for this blog: a step up from the glibness of the last few - a return to emotional intensity, perhaps. I guess poems look different from the outside to what they sounded like on the inside, but then may be is, I guess, the point. Maybe I just like this sort of poem more. Anyway. I like it.

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