Tower of Babel

I found it funny how you can construe song lyrics as your own, without even thinking that the writer has gone down an entirely different path with the message. I hear them and automatically think, “Well, obviously it's about this/that/the other. It's typical though. We all do it. We (and I'm no exception) will butcher the message anyone is trying to send us by translating it into something we can understand. It's why was constantly mishear what others say. We all understand just our own foreign language that runs in our heads and have to interpret others to make any sense of them. But in the translation we hack it, change the meaning. All information that we receive, gets slightly changed until it makes sense to us. I've never have had a major operation. I can only fathom it perhaps, from some past medical experience I have had, say major dental work. But that's a feeble rendering. It in no way can that bring me to what it's like to have your chest cracked open for heart surgery. Welcome to the Planet of Babel.

I”ve always like Jackson Browne's music (his true first name is Clyde, how about that?) and have been on a jag with it for a few days. I like how he can allude to, but not entirely plagiarize, past literature or ideas. When he does reach back to the past for enshrined literature, he doesn't wrap himself in it, try to equate himself to it, like Gordon Sumner (Sting) whose aped “Ten Summoner's Tales” nearly equates Gordon to Geoffrey Chaucer himself. In all honestly though, I like that album as well, even though it seems to borrow a bit too heavily from Chaucer, in feeling anyway.

Browne's “The Pretender” album I love, including the song by the same name, which is pretty much to the point about life. The song's title, when I first heard it, invoked my memory of Tarot cards, the Fool card. It's also known as the pretender, misero, the beggar, and is actually YOU in the Tarot spread. You stumble through life with the same talent as an incompetent clown. Another name for that card is called “checkmate.” That being life ultimately checkmates you. I thought that was comedic when I found out.

Here's the Fool card, also known as YOU. You are gadding about life not even aware of the future and the precipice that awaits you if you don't wake up.

Browne doesn't blindly lift nor rip off the Tarot idea, he takes a piece of it, the one card, and builds his lyrics that can apply to everyone. It may be in fact, that he borrowed nothing at all from Tarot. It's more probable that I think he did. And once again, it's my translation of what he's trying to accomplish. Anyway, here's a snippet of The Pretender.

Caught between the longing for love

And the struggle for the legal tender.

Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring,

And the junk man pounds his fender.

Where the veterans dream of the fight

Fast asleep at the traffic light,

And the children solemnly wait

For the ice cream vendor.

Out into the cool of the evening

Strolls the Pretender.

He knows that all his hopes and dreams

Begin and end there.

Ahhh...ain't that the key though? Learning that you can only go so far in life. At my age, I ain't about to become President of the United States one day.

What's typical for song interpretations is that you can totally misread and misunderstand them. Many writers will hold back on telling anyone just what they meant by a song or two, leaving it up to the listener to interpret it in their own way. That song, “At Seventeen,” written by Janis Ian, was a typical example. She never once said that it was about her personally, but you can think what you want and Ian does want you to “adopt, adapt and improve it” to your life.

I've always thought Browne's “For Everyman” was a small lifting of that old Medieval morality play called “Everyman.” Everyman was ethics play at how to gain heaven, happiness and some sort of balance in this life and the next. I come to find out that Browne's For Everyman was written in response to CSNY's “Wooden Ships.” When I re-read For Everyman in that light, I came to see the message Browne was writing to himself. Browne longed for “everyone else” to join him in a world where we belonged. A world not full of shit. Wooden Ships was about leaving that world of shit behind for another Providence, whether anyone else came or not.

For me, the message was similar but I had to hark back to the Medieval Everyman to make sense of it. That's how I understood it, and probably there was no other way for me to grasp it. It's my way.

You have yours...

Now there are other songs that don't need much translation...like this old Kenny Login's song:

Everyone, gather 'round

Let me tell you all about it.

You see, I pulled into a drive-in

And I found a place to park.

We hopped into the backseat

Where it's always nice and dark.

I'm just about to move

Thinking to myself, Mmm, bet this is a breeze.

Then there's a light in my eye and a guy says:

“Out of the car, long hair!”

Oowee, “You're coming with me.”

Said the local police!

Click and Hear The Pretender