OK, I made it to February and the blog is still going. If you're keeping up you'll notice that I sometimes write these entries a few days late then put a previous date on them, but so what.
"So what," I say, because that's the theme of today's album. I'm taking a class right now on 20th century Latin American literature and we are talking a lot about existentialiam. The problem with existentialism is that sometimes it seems like its only purpose is to bring us down and show us the hopelessness of the human condition. Kafka woke up as a roach; that has to suck. Now I think these guys are really great thinkers who have opened up some new realities and new ways of thinking, especially to the Western mind, but eventually you have to say, enough, what do we do about it?
"Summerteeth" to me is post-existential. It's kind of like you have the blackest, worst realization, of all the heaviness in your heart, and the first realization that you have the next morning is,
Our prayers will never be answered again
...
You know it's all beginning (it's all beginning)
To feel like it's ending (feels like it's ending)
No love's as random
As God's love
I can't stand it
I can't stand it
In other words, we are on our own.
This album has some pain and emptiness in it, for sure, but it comes out in these songs as kind of "processed" pain, if I can use that word. It's not, "things suck", but more like "things suck and here's what I did". Some of these songs are very straightforward:
How to fight loneliness?
Smile all the time
Shine you teeth 'til meaningless
And sharpen them with lies
...
And the first thing that you want
Will be the last thing you ever need
That's how you fight it
Just smile all the time
And some are a little self-destructive:
Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm
Something in my veins, bloodier than blood
And rash (from "Via Chicago")
I dreamed about killing you again last night
And it felt alright to me
Dying on the banks of Embarcadero skies
I sat and watched you bleed
Buried you alive in a fireworks display
Raining down on me
Your cold, dark blood
Ran away from me to the sea
The point of all this pain is the acceptance of our own mortality and smallness. We can't really do any good in the world until we realize that. And maybe along the way we can "make it back" to a "home" once in a while, even if it is "Via Chicago".
Tweedy gets it, and he says so in the song "Summerteeth", when he points out that his little songs really don't mean that much in the grand scheme of things, and that anyone listens to them at all is just some kind of dumb luck that seems unreal. I would submit that this realization is what makes him a great songwriter:
He feels lucky to have you here
In his kitchen, in your chair
Sometimes he forgets that you're even there
It's just a dream he keeps having
And it doesn't seem to mean anything
It's just a dream he keeps having
"In a Future Age" is probably the most poetic song Tweedy's ever written. It is a good way to close this thought, that we are only here for a while, which sucks, but we aren't the first and hopefully we won't be the last. Oh well. What are we going to do in the meantime?
Genuine
Day will come
When the wind
Decides to run
And shakes the stairs
That stab the wall
And turns the page
In a future age
Some trees will bend
And some will fall
But then again
So will us all
Lets turn our prayers
Into outrageous dares
And mark our page
In a future age
High above
The sea of cars
And barking dogs
In fenced-in yards
cds
No comments:
Post a Comment