Soothing?
Seriously? Soothing?
Okay, look… like many of you, I suspect, I have asked my good friend Google Alerts to eavesdrop on the internet for me and let me know if my name comes up. Which, occasionally, it does. Usually it’s nothing all that interesting.
Sometimes, though, what I find out from Google Alerts is downright confusing.
It’s not that someone is playing my music. I’m not topping any charts, but finding out that someone, somewhere has gotten hold of my stuff is not horribly weird. I’d like to mention, by the way, that I always appreciate it when someone is listening to and sharing my music.
It’s that this person is playing the song “Magician” and has categorized it as “soothing.”
The song is here–feel free to give it a listen. It does sound like a lullaby, I’ll grant, but that was done for a reason and the reason is not soothing.
Here are the lyrics:
Hold still and close your eyes.
It’s magic when you swallow knives.
Don’t look, and don’t cry,
`cause they like it.
Cast a line and hold on.
I’ll put a blade between here and gone,
the difference as thin as I slice it.
My baby, my love, you’re white cloth become a dove,
beneath it all and above it.
There, there, now, don’t cry.
You’ll make oceans of your eyes,
and you know there are nights
when I love it.
So, people, I have to ask you… soothing? Is it just that people don’t listen to lyrics? Or is it that, to someone who doesn’t know what the song was written about, it doesn’t come across as anything unpleasant? (The song, like pretty much all my songs, was written in character rather than from my personal perspective–just so you know.)
When you write music… or books, or whatever, but I think more so with music because you’re working with fewer words… you can’t really be sure what people are taking away from what you wrote. I don’t expect people to know exactly what my songs are about, unless they’re familiar with the source material that inspired the song. And, even then, the songs can be pretty oblique. I know that.
But I would have guessed that, whatever people did get from the songs, it would be a mood or a type of scenario that would be somewhat like the one I wrote from. So, Dance Card, for example, is a song where someone is asking someone else to stop playing “are we or aren’t we” and get exclusive. There’s more going on, but that’s the heart of it, and I don’t think you need to know who the song is about to get that. Maybe I’m wrong, though. I only have my perspective to go on, so it’s difficult for me to be sure about these things.
What do you think Magician is about? And do you think it’s soothing? I’m not trying to trap or trick anyone… I sincerely just want to know.
Current Bedside Reading: Alan Derickson, Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
Commentary: Derickson is pretty good at compiling and ordering information, but he doesn’t make this a human story… which it should be. Instead, his telling of this story is boring, and that’s something it definitely shouldn’t be.
My iPod Is Singing: “No, no, don’t hang your head down. No, no, no turning around.”
Comments
James Brown (Oct 26, 2009)
I haven’t listened to it yet, with the being at work and all, but from the lyrics, it appears to be about hurting someone close and/or about reassuring someone that being hurt like that is OK.
I’m probably not the best choice for evaluating the soothiness or lack thereof, however, given that Switchblade Symphony is in our rotation of “relaxing, fall asleep while listening” music.
James
James Brown (Oct 26, 2009)
And as a postscript: Having google notify you when your name comes up is not necessarily of unilateral usefulness. I’m just sayin’.
James Brown
(No, not him. Not him, either.)
Gayleen (Oct 26, 2009)
Yeah, basically you’re on the right page. Not sleepytime music, as far as I’m concerned, but I get what you’re saying re: Switchblade Symphony. Once, when I had a bad cold, the DPCS came home to find me curled up in bed watching Alien and Aliens because, as I apparently told him, they’re “comforting.”
Gayleen (Oct 26, 2009)
When people used to go around saying “Free James Brown”, did you feel undervalued?
James Brown (Oct 26, 2009)
The most annoying it ever got was when that horrid “James Brown is dead” mix was popular in clubs.
Gayleen (Oct 26, 2009)
I can see where that would be unsettling. You probably didn’t appreciate Don Was bragging about how much better than you he felt, either.
Recovering STV Staff (Oct 27, 2009)
It’s funny you mention that…
I’ve been transferred to the moon.
Worse pay, better hours.
Gayleen (Oct 27, 2009)
Worse pay, better fellow workers.
DPCS (Oct 27, 2009)
Can I get transferred to the moon, please?
Recovering STV Staff (Oct 27, 2009)
I was attending Mardi Gras with Fidel Castro
Bucksome cross dressers threw fake gold coins at our feet
As we discussed the fate of the revolution
Suddenly, CIA men dressed in bikinis
Tried to stab us with fountain pens
Fidel blew mustard gas from his cigar
And immobalized the lot of them
19 tequilas later we had a deal
Havana goes back to the mob
And Fidel and I open a chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken shops
/I [do] feel GOOD
gayleenfroese (Oct 27, 2009)
Buxom.
Shut up, Kenn.
James Brown (Oct 27, 2009)
I dreamed about Ray Charles last night.
DPCS (Oct 27, 2009)
I dreamed of Lyle Waggoner. I dream of him often.
Gayleen (Oct 27, 2009)
Your Lyle Waggoner obsession is really starting to freak me out.
Recovering STV Staff (Oct 28, 2009)
Lyle Waggoner? Yeah, I gotta go with G on this one DPCS – that’s a little weird.
James (Oct 28, 2009)
I can’t usually make out the lyrics when I listen to songs. I haven’t listened to Magician, but when I read the lyrics they do not seem soothing. If it’s sung like a lullaby I might call it soothing though.
DPCS (Oct 28, 2009)
Lyle Waggoner was Colonel Steve Trevor, by God! You will show respect!
DPCS (Oct 28, 2009)
Lyle Waggoner was Colonel Steve Trevor, by God! You will show respect!
Gayleen (Oct 28, 2009)
There’s an echo in here again.
A truly disturbing echo.
DPCS (Oct 28, 2009)
Hey, don’t pretend you didn’t like the Carol Burnett show, you.
Gayleen (Oct 28, 2009)
Lyle Waggoner is no Tim Conway.
DPCS (Oct 28, 2009)
What’s a Tim Conway?
Gayleen (Oct 28, 2009)
About fifty bucks, same as in town.
Recovering STV Staff (Oct 29, 2009)
Lyle Waggoner is no Tim Conway.
Seconded.
/about 150lbs