Head Case: Irregular Song Structure in Action

The time is 12:53 AM, and no reasonable person would be starting a blog post right now.  But here I am, clacking away at the keys, blinking as my contacts dry up on my eyeballs, all because of one little idea, one captivating thought that I could have written about in the morning, but didn't want to.

I didn't really start this post at 12:53, you see.  I started it a few minutes before, when I heard a song called "Red Bandana" for the first time.  Or maybe I started it months ago when the wonder and lonely passion of "Head Case" first met my ears.

This was supposed to be a post about two songs.  I now feel like it should be about one song and one album.

Most songs that you hear have a typical structure, you see.  At its most basic, it goes verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.  I discovered this structure as a young one by listening to the music of Adele.  I didn't know the names of any of the parts, but I noticed the pattern and the different feelings of each of them.  Sometimes there's a third verse instead of a bridge, sometimes no bridge at all, sometimes it ends with the bridge, you get the point.  There's a reason for the popularity of this structure: it works.  It tends to hold the attention well and is flexible enough to build tension according to the needs of the artist, usually slowly culminating in the bridge.

But sometimes, that structure is thrown out the window by artists who typically use it.  Because sometimes, the song demands something else.  It's too raw, too powerful, to be contained in that useful, yet tame, box.

We'll start with Cody Jinks.

"Head Case"

I do believe I cried when I first heard this song.  It comes right at the end of his album, Lifers, and I had heard it referred to as the best song he's ever recorded.  From what I've heard, that assessment is correct.

The thing about irregular song structure is that it has to be necessary, and it has to be true to the song and to the artist.  Cody Jinks doesn't waste his time on a chorus in this song.  He doesn't care to repeat anything, until the end, when he has nothing more to do but cry the same thing out again and again.  He's getting it all out, and it's one tortured, confessional flood of words.

I know it's hard to find the words so often standing face to face.

Sometimes it takes a thin white sheet to put things into place.

The things that I could never say come flooding out somehow upon these lines.

That's your introduction.  That tells you a little bit about the nature of this song.  And then we go right into it.

I'm still fighting the same battles I've been fighting all these years.

A dream is not a dream unless you're living with the fear.

What they say will be forgotten; all that's left will be for naught,

And why?

The first line brings up an important point: all these years, he says.  Both of the artists I'm talking about tonight have been doing this music thing for years.  They know how to use traditional song structure; but they also know when not to use it and how.  

But what is he talking about here?  A dream?  And who is they?

Singers.  Songwriters.  People like him, who have devoted their lives to music.  He's talking about the fear that what he writes, what he's poured his heart and soul into, will be forgotten and come to nothing.  Why? he asks, and doesn't wait for an answer.

And it's been a long time, Lord, since I sat down and had a cry.

It's sometimes overwhelming, and I can't tell you why,

But I remember Jackson singing 'Doctor, doctor, please, my eyes.'

That last line is a reference to Jackson Browne's song, "Doctor My Eyes".  It's about having looked at all kinds of terrible things without crying or feeling pain about them, thinking at the time that that's good, and then coming to a point where he can't cry, and he asks what's wrong with himself.  I think that Cody is saying, he knows what the consequences of not crying about things are, so he's going to sit down and have a good cry, even though he doesn't quite understand why he's doing it.

Then he dives back in even deeper.

My heroes, they're all dying or they're sitting in a cell

Due to years of medicating minds that hurt so well.

There's a thin line, don't you see, between genius and insanity.

Which am I?

We've all seen what's happened to brilliant musical minds.  Jinks is approaching it from the perspective of someone who's frightened that he's on the same path.

Then we have the real kicker.

One thing that scares the hell in me is living with mortality.

And worryin' that I'm insane, talkin' to a God unseen

Must surely make me crazy; but crazy's what I'll be

'Til I'm gone.

Because you see, Jinks isn't talking to us here, or to himself.  He's talking to God.  And what he's really scared of isn't just insanity.  It's death.  Not just the death of his body, but the death of his memory, and the only way he can come to terms with this is by talking to God.  He can't believe in ultimate death.  He just can't.  Life has to go on, he says, and even if he's crazy for believing that, he's going to continue.

The problem is, he doesn't quite feel like he can reach God.  He talks to him, he believes in him, but God just seems so far right now, and Jinks just feels so alone.

And I'll scream out to the sun and to the moon and to the stars.

I'll scream until my voice finds you no matter where you are.

I'll scream until I've got no breath, and all that's left to take is death,

And I'm done.

Listen to the song for yourself.  Listen to the ending, which I haven't written out here.

There's not really a satisfying conclusion, is there?  He doesn't get answers.  Instead, it ends with his resolution to keep crying out to God even until he dies.  That's the only way to make sense of things.  That's the only way he can cope.

The structure perfectly matches the song, and it hurts a little to listen to, because it's just so true to experience.  So much of the time, we don't get answers.  We just have to keep going.

It's 2:06, and far too late to write the rest of this post.  Someday, I'll follow it up.

Right now, absorb that, and yes, definitely listen to the song.  Then read a few Psalms.  They're inspired, and generally end with the answers.

Separation in Art: A Ramble

At work today, an old man came through the drive thru.  I greeted him with my usual cheery, "Hey, how are you?"  He smiled, shrugged, and said, "Well, I'm still...above ground, so..."

It was one of those strange, amusing moments that make it easier to get through an eight-and-a-half hour workday.  A workday that was made harder by the fact that it was my first time back in over a week.

Why was I gone so long, you might ask?  Good question, Clive. 

Bright and early on Friday morning, I packed up my duffel bag, my orange backpack, and my black backpack and departed for John Denver's source of lasting fame, West Virginia, for camp staff training.  While there, my bonds with the other counselors took on a new strength, as did my cold.

Sunday afternoon, I put my orange backpack, mostly used up now, in the trunk of the Mazda, and we three started to drive back down to the South.  While I was gone to Carolina in my mind, that was not our immediate physical destination.  No, we were headed for her neighbor, Tennessee Ernie Ford. 

And now we're actually getting to the point of this whole post; because after spending the night at Virginia's house and eating lunch with her at a charming German restaurant, we drove ten minutes sideways to Elizabethton, and more importantly, Milligan College, location of the Biblical Worldview Student Conference.

This was my fourth year, and I looked forward to it eagerly.  It really is a fantastic conference.  It's interesting going from the small, intimate all-girls group at camp to two hundred fifty young men and women living on a college campus for a week, but the contrast doesn't make either less enjoyable.  I had solid friendships already in place this year, and tentative ones that I was able to build on, and as far as social activity goes, this year was by far the most comfortable for me.

I don't think it was the best year for speakers that I've had so far, but that has less to do with their individual merits and more to do with the tough task of balancing them against each other in terms of what they covered and what they didn't.  I had gone expecting to like one speaker in particular.  Rebecca's all-time favorite from her years of going, and a friend of the best teacher I've ever had.

And you know what?  I did like him.

Mr. John Hodges spoke on Christianity and music in particular, the arts in general.  His lectures went from good to amazing, and the last in particular was glorious. 

I don't know if I'm really an artist, or if I'm just trying to be.  Whatever the case, I was able to think about it more last week.  And it came to a head on Friday night, during the talent show.

A girl stood up and performed a spoken-word piece entitled "Pride" that she had written.  I am not familiar with this medium, but as far as I could tell it was well-written and well-performed.  Yet I found myself thinking as she spoke, This is not enjoyable.

And very quickly, I found two conflicting opinions colliding in my own mind.  Is art communication, or is it entertainment?

If communication, the poem performed its purpose well.  I well understood that giving over to pride that she described, that self-attack as a response to not being perfect.  But if art is entertainment, this piece was anything but.  I was not entertained.  I was uncomfortable.

Let's look at the song "My Confession" by Josh Groban.  Go ahead: give it a listen if you'd like.

Now I feel myself surrender

Each time I see your face.

I am captured by your beauty,

Your unassuming grace.

And I feel my heart is turning,

falling into place.

I can't hide it.

Now hear my confession.

Try and say those words out loud, straight up, regular-like.  They don't sound nearly as nice.  They're awkward, if not downright creepy.

Yet we set them to music, and suddenly they're beautiful.  Why?

In my thinking, there are two possible reasons.  First, because the music acts as a beautiful distraction, a layer of separation between what the words really mean and what you hear.  Second, because the music is actually part of what we feel and thus the message is incorrectly translated without it.

I've thought a lot about separation in my own writing.  Sometimes I'll write a song, and think, I would never perform this anywhere.  Even I don't like it.  And why?  Because it's too close.  

Too honest.  Too raw.  I feel sometimes like I distract people with enough things that aren't me in a song so that I can drown them in the underlying truth that is all me.

NOTE:  It is midnight.  I am tired.  Pardon me, my three readers, for saying vague things and not explaining them.  If it's any consolation, I'm muddling just as much as you are.

But that's not just music.  You can also distract with words.  Humor, in particular.  It's like hiding the medicine in the peanut butter (I think of dogs as I say this); they eat it for the peanut butter, but they still get the benefits of the medicine.

Maybe we're too proud nowadays to accept that which we have not prepared ourselves for.  Maybe the problem with the spoken-word piece wasn't that it wasn't art.  Maybe it was that it was a different kind of art than we were prepared for.  

I'm more confused now than I was when I started, so maybe I should go to bed now.  It feels like anything else I could say would be too disconnected.

So long, 

Anna

18

Yesterday at church, I asked a small child (eleven years old or so) how old she thought I turned last week. 

"Um...fifteen?" she said. 

"No..." I replied.

She tilted her head to the side.  "Fourteen?"

The fact is, despite my youthful visage, I am eighteen years old as of last Tuesday.  Multiple people have asked me how it feels.  It feels quite a bit like being seventeen, except now I'm allowed to do all kinds of things that I have no interest in, like smoke, talk on the phone while I drive, and join the military.

Oh, and I can vote.  So that's fun.