Chorus Blues

(A housekeeping aside, apparently the comment filters on this thing got a little more stringent a few weeks ago, I just discovered I had a half dozen comments sitting in the moderation queue that I almost never look at and almost never needed to before.  So I’m not, you know, purposely out to silence anyone’s voice.  One stranger who commented shut down the personal blog they linked from in the meantime!  Bad vuggum).

Whatever this is supposed to be it’s not supposed to be the subsite for mulling over the ongoing struggle of the Song of the Day (it’s weird, there’s little direct connection, beyond the alleged weekly status report on how well I’m keeping up,  and the songs I’m posting on that blog, which were written almost exactly ten years ago now.  But somehow when the current writing is afflicting me it ends up shaking through to the blog too, and I stop posting).

It isn’t that I’m not keeping up with the songs, despite a lapse or two I’m keeping up fine.  The writing isn’t exactly harder than its ever been.  It’s the new project I started, a hundred song series.

There isn’t much chance of getting around the fact that one of the central questions (if not the central question) of the ongoing writing is why I continue to lash myself to write lyrics day in day out when the pleasure I take in it is minimal, when (more relevant than anything) I have all but given up any dream of ever doing anything significant with music.  In fact something other than that even, I have given up any belief in a future for my music, which exists however I might belittle and disdain it, and yet dreams persist.  Dreams I don’t believe in, dreams I pity and despise.  Must I really toil in my inadequacy, just to dish thin gruel for disowned dreams?

I was never much of a consumer of hits and I certainly never fancied myself as a producer of them, even in the most abstract perspective of potential. But since I set myself to this task of producing something that has been virtually absent from my output to date, an almost perfectly consistent no-show for thousands of songs, the Chorus, I find myself poring over this shit, trying to understand, what it is, what takes a phrase of flawless banality, of simplified thought crystallized into near semantic emptiness, and transforms it into a perfect memetic weapon, an earworm.

We can work it out, I’m picking up good vibrations, I can’t see me loving nobody but you, come on baby light my fire, let the sunshine in, ah sugar ah honey honey, no sugar tonight in my coffee, Mama told me not to come, ain’t no mountain high enough, like the tears of a clown when there’s no one around, you keep me searching for a heart of gold,  I’m on top of the world looking down on creation, I’m a joker I’m a smoker I’m a midnight toker, love will keep us together, see that girl watch that scene digging the dancing queen, you light up my life, I will survive, we don’t need no education, it’s still rock and roll to me, your kiss is on my list, don’t you want me, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, every breath you take every move you make, you might as well jump, take a look at me now, what’s love got to do with it, shout shout let it all out, I just want your extra time and your kiss, the greatest love of all is happening to me, I can live with or without you, I think we’re alone now, never gonna give you up, don’t worry be happy, every rose has its thorn, if you don’t know me by now, nothing compares to you.

Da do ron ron ron, da do ron ron.

“You were wrong when you said

Everything’s gonna be alright

You were wrong when you said

Everything’s gonna be alright
You were right when you said

All that glitters isn’t gold

You were right when you said

All we are is dust in the wind

You were right when you said

We are all just bricks in the wall

And when you said manic depression’s a frustrating mess
You were wrong when you said

Everything’s gonna be alright

You were wrong when you said

Everything’s gonna be alright
You were right when you said

You can’t always get what you want

You were right when you said

It’s a hard rain’s gonna fall

You were right when you said

We’re still running against the wind

And life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone

You were right when you said

This is the end”

Built to Spill, “You Were Right”.

So it goes.  I have to write a song.



originally posted at spiritofsalt.com May 17, 2009 at 12:42 AM