03/04/2023 00:47
When asked what a song ‘means’ to them..
some people just ‘love the drums’.. or ‘the flute’.
What about the words?
“Nah. Don’t listen to the words mate.. Fuck that.”
Which beggars belief really, but then again who am I to judge?
I mean, I would’ve thought the words were vaguely important.. They’re there after all.. they have shape and form.. even if you don’t get it..
Forgive me if I stretch the point but there is a connection between the words of a song.. and it’s meaning. Just a bit.
Still, some very strange things have been said to me over the years, about songs I’ve written..
or more accurately, songs I thought I’d written.
based on rumours, distortions and lies, lurking in the fog of history
New meanings passed on between friends and enemies
like the person who came up to me in a Darlinghurst bar who I’d never laid eyes on before.. and claimed I’d stolen the words out of her head..
or how I’d written about a certain ‘issue’ and shouldn’t have..
“Were you referencing the Freudian death wish?”
No.
Were you alluding to… err.. contemporary gender fluidity?
“Hmm. That’s very good. . but it’s news to me I’m afraid.”
Then again, does it really matter? Where a song gets to? Or how it got there?
I have no control.. but see, there are people who hate that idea.. of not having control.
See, if a song’s got legs, as they say, it’ll walk around the room on its own, one way or another.
With unintended consequences.
A couple of good lines, a phrase that reached beyond whatever it was you were thinking at the time, that felt charged in some way and for that very reason, you thought it might do the same to others but you were never too fussed how closely anyone might scope the detail. Not then anyway, just as long as the feeling was right at the time..
‘cos it’s feeling that matters most. Really.
And that’s it. Pretty much.
But then again, if people start singing it! Well, that’s a whole other can of worms right? Once that starts happening, there’s no end to it is there?
No long winded explanations, opinion pieces, surveys of cultural worthiness, conducted in rooms full of radio priests and culture bureaucrats, trying to decide if a song is ‘worthy’.. or not..
Will it make the world a better place? Will it sell Chocolate flavoured milk?
People who had no hand in the writing of said piece, pawing over the licencing spoils to decide whether there’s enough money on the table.. to go round.
All the Loaves and the fishes..
In the meantime, invisible human beings, who just happened to be passing by the entrance to JB HI FI and heard it getting blasted out into the mall..
Whoever those people are..
Punters have this uncanny ability to get the drift, regardless of what they are told to think..
Of course, repetition helps, if a thing has already ‘broken through’, as they say, elsewhere, in another market, for whatever reason, but still, said programmers don’t know..
What the song really means…
That’s because everybody’s guessing. Including me. Which is why, if a song explodes, and they do..
That only proves one thing..
Transcendence happens.
And no analysis by the hoards of cultural priests who are out there, bestowing said tune with the credibility it has already acquired simply by
getting sung.. in rooms, by thousands of punters in escalating numbers..
will make a jot of difference to what it actually means!
But you know what? I really don’t care if a song is misconstrued. What difference does it really make in the end?
As a writer, I can bang on about my own truth ‘til the cows come home. Famous people do that a lot. Just look around you. There’s this tendency in modern culture, to ‘analyse’.. to go looking for the big ‘reveal,’ the intriguing secret.. know what I mean?
To ‘elaborate’..
Oh.. Yes! He’s a reformed alcoholic, or she dabbled in heroin back in the day. Oh how deeply interesting. What intriguing insights can we draw from said disfunction?
What colour shirt were you wearing.. at the time… when you wrote it? All this wallowing in the legend, long after the dust has settled..
And oh how the poet protested.
“It’s the work man.. it’s all about the work.”
but then blurts all the secrets anyway because well, you know.. everyone needs to be loved don’t they?
“Yeah man. I was damaged. The writing was truly cathartic.”
God. Spare us..
IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER ..
And all the while, the song just keeps on keeping on..
doing its job
walking on its own..
And the strangest thing is.. it’s always the best known songs that make the biggest targets, the ones that have stood up and told the best stories.
Sometimes it’s better to just leave them alone.
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