This week: a brand-new song, finished on Monday. They say musicians always think their most recent work is their best work, and I’ve found that to be often true. So, for the moment, feel blessed to be listening to my best work. ;-)
A footnote for my devoted footnote readers.1
The time was right, You never loved to fight, I never wondered why, I guess I love what's right. Some people say, It's not the time To give up on dreams, But I’ve got my needs. And I know what's right, And I know what's wrong, That's something you got to feel for. It's not about the truth, It's not about your proof: That's something you get a feel for. It is a homeward feeling, That you can't forget. When the seas are in and the walls are up and I'm under your old skin again, When the streets are beach and the deserts freeze and you give me your old name again, Will the social democrats die the day you let me taste your breath again? Or should I sit and wait and hope the nerds'll find a way to grow this pie again? And I know what's right, What's wrong is right, And I know what's wrong. Or do we stop it now? Is degrowth a lie? Sometimes it feels like A clever word for crucify. Or is that you to me? Who's lying to who? Give it up, stop it all? Start afresh, fail anew? Perhaps the center holds...forever. You never forgave me, Well I never forgave me anyway. But it's too late now, We had to start back then. And now all we have is words — Agreements rarely serve — You gotta apply some force, You need to feel the hurt. Mmmm yeah, That's right. Nothing matters, so they say, And hope is over, anyway, You used to say you used to pray, But that's no way to waste away, Your day to day's a mundane Monday, And Sunday carries too much weight. That's right. What's black is white. You'd lost that homeward feeling. C’mon baby keep me humble, when I tell you my side, You wanna take me by the fireplace and burn me alive! There's nothing you can do, Beyond helping me from helping you. They say at current rates the state will never provide, The hope and homes and touch that we will need to survive. So sit by my side, Watch tomorrow die. Come on it's right, What's wrong is right, You never felt like that? Join the winning side. Remember Kyoto 97 and your lists and guidelines? It was cutting out the middleman that helped us survive. You always liked the truth, But it was good to you. Come on it's right, What's wrong is right, Sit by my side. Yeah there were feelings to pay for and cars to feed, Fear to nourish and fields to seed, Homes to clean and lives to lead, And that's alright. That's right, Oh that's right, That's right, What's wrong is right, Oh for sure that's right. You say "get away from me!" "You're no good for me!" "You know people have felt like this before, Have stared into the void before, So please, let me be, So please, let me be."
First, a little background: I’ve recently started working through the films of Richard Linklater, largely because I fell in love with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset on first viewing. I’m no film buff, so there are probably countless other examples of this, but I hadn’t seen conversations depicted so honestly on screen before. The movies felt like life. Or at least what I enjoy most about life: long, rambling conversations that go until exhaustion finally sets in just before dawn.2
This tune is some kind of tentative experiment with portraying that sort of real-life in a musical way. It wasn’t directly influenced by Linklater, but those kinds of ideas were running through my mind, along with ideas about responsibility, self-deception, and desire. Do we really know what we desire? Do we have access to that part of ourselves, can we shape it, or are we always in service of it? Psychologists demonstrate that we constantly lie to ourselves about basically everything, including our own motives. Is there a way to account for that? We speak of ‘getting to know ourselves’ as if there’s something there that we don’t understand. And indeed that’s true: as I sing in another, unreleased song, “There are things that think in you.”
This is a song about an apparently long-decayed romantic relationship and a song about climate change. It is about both at once, each theme functioning as a mini-allegory for the other. The song is thematically concerned with loss, hope, truth, political responsibility, meaning, boredom, and the passing of time. At one point, the couple seems to have shared an environmental politics and to have worked together on some key political developments (“Kyoto ‘97”). The inability of the world to properly confront the challenge of climate change is mirrored in the couple’s inability to continue their relationship. The question of the limits of responsibility — for ourselves and for others — looms large in the penultimate verse: “Yeah, there were feelings to pay for and cars to feed / Fear to nourish and fields to seed / Homes to clean and lives to lead / And that’s alright / That’s right / Oh that’s right / What’s wrong is right.”
It’s true that no individual is responsible for fixing the world,3 and anyway, the day-to-day realities of life get in the way of most big plans. But to what extent is that also just a comforting fiction? “You always liked the truth / But it was good to you” — how nice to be making a difference. Is it the wider political system that turns “what’s wrong” into “right”, or is it our own denial?
The song is told from the perspective of one partner, apart from the final verse in which the other responds.4 The primary speaker seems to want something from the other. Sex? Comfort? Love? A return to better days? Perhaps just the thrill of an argument? It is not clear what the primary speaker is committed to anymore. Have they really renounced their old principled politics and truly adopted a ‘pragmatic’ moderate position, or have they just given up? “So sit by my side, watch tomorrow die” — is this a sign of defeat or an erotic come-on? Both?
The vocals were recorded free-form over a basic loop of the main riffs.5 When recording each new take, I muted what I had done previously so I wouldn’t be able to copy what had gone before. The goal was not to effectively perform a pre-existing song but to let lines emerge and fall into place haphazardly, like a conversation. Most verses could be placed elsewhere in the arrangement without the song losing meaning.6 Sometimes we have reasons for why we do things, and sometimes we come to have reasons after the fact.
Substack doesn’t seem to allow you to footnote words in what they call ‘poetry blocks’, but if I don’t insert the lyrics in a poetry block, I get a paragraph break between every line. So here are all my footnotes for the lyrics:
“Deserts freeze.” Yes, I know deserts are often already freezing. But it flowed nicely, I couldn’t think of anything better, and ANYWAY we’re dealing with an unreliable narrator here — a wonderful, wonderful get-of-jail-free clause.
“Social democrats die…this pie again.” In many ways, social democracy seems like the nicest form of government we’ve yet hit upon, but it’s an open question as to whether it can function at all without a global supply of cheap labour and high economic growth rates.
“Is degrowth a lie...clever word for crucify.” Another open question. Infinite growth could well be impossible, but what exactly is the political constituency for lower growth rates? Is it just self-flagellating activists in rich countries?
I read in an interview with Linklater, which I can’t find now, that the movie-making ‘rulebook’ supposedly emphasizes showing not telling and photography over dialogue, but he was like fuck that, I love dialogue, I’ll just tell the story through dialogue. Love that. Everyone has something to say.
Discussing the Tao te Ching (click here new readers), Ursula Le Guin says, “We should not be humane either, in the sense that we should not sacrifice ourselves for others. Now that’s going to be very hard for Christian readers to accept, because they’re taught that self-sacrifice is a good thing. Lao Tzu says it’s a lousy thing. This is perhaps the most radical thing he says to a Western ear. Just don’t buy into self-sacrifice. Any more that you would ask somebody to sacrifice themselves for you.”
One day, I’d quite like to get someone else to sing that verse to make the change in perspective more obvious.
For the audio nerds among you, I used James Holden’s Group Humanizer Max for Live patch on the strings and electronic drums to help give things a more organic feel. Almost all other audio was played in.
Similarly, instead of individual sounds and instruments having their own distinct effects, I applied the same delay effect to almost every sound to help create a hazy, vibey soundworld.
I smiled all the way through this Steve - felt like an easy chilled out dance thing - dunno if that's what you intended but that's how it affected me - at least today. I'll listen again and again and see if that changes. And maybe I should focus more on the words too. Today I just chilled into the music. Keep going!
That was great! Just for "the thrill of an argument"... I'll remember that for next time I feel like you're just arguing against something I'm saying for the sake of disagreeing. "Is this turning you on, Steve?"