One Likes to Believe in the Freedom of Music

I can never seem to stay attentive with only one thing going on. It's rare that I can. I love to sit and listen to music, but I google games to play, and play whatever boring arcade game I can with it's sound muted. I just need something to take up a little more of my brain space I guess. Unless something really demands my full attention because it's particularly interesting or difficult, I'll lose track of it if I don't have something else going on too, which seems odd. There are times when all I want to do is sit and listen to music. Times like now, where the music is just hitting me, songs that just go straight to an emotional level. Tonight there have been a few.

"You're Going Down" by Sick Puppies
"Fall To Pieces" - Velvet Revolver
"Wasting My Time" - Default
And pretty much anything by Bullet for My Valentine, especially off of the album "Fever."

For some reason Rush's "Red Barchetta" has been getting to me off and on lately. It took me a little while to figure out why. I mean, besides the fact that it's a beautiful song, which it is. It's a song about a car. Which seems like it would be typical pop-rock fluff. Girls and cars, booze, yeah sure whatever. It's not though.

In a society where motor vehicles are banned (which today is eerily realistic) and "eyes" are watching everywhere (again, frightening.) A man eludes the cameras, hops the turbine freight and heads to his Uncles place, which used to be a farm, before the motor law. Where his uncle has preserved for him an old car, from "a better, vanished time."

So he takes this old car out, races through the countryside. He doesn't just take any car, though, he takes a brilliant red Ferrari Barchetta. And if anyone can paint a picture with lyrics, it's Neil Peart.

Wind
In my hair
Shifting and drifting
Mechanical music
Adrenaline surge...

Well-weathered leather,
Hot metal and oil,
The scented country air.
Sunlight on chrome,
The blur of the landscape,
Every nerve aware.


The man is eventually approached by a "Gleaming alloy air-car," an Orwellian police vehicle, 2-lanes wide, shooting towards him.


Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car
Shoots towards me, two lanes wide.
I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase.

While screaming through the valley the man is "Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I've got a desperate plan." And he leaves the "giants" stranded as he crosses a 1 lane bridge over the river, and returns to drink with his uncle by the fire side.

It took me a while, to think about it, and figure out why I'm loving this song right now. Sometimes I'd think of it, but choose another song because I wanted something I could explicitly connect with, lyrically. Silly me. But I do LOVE the fact that I really had to think about it. I love the fact that it's metaphor, and it is also a literal story. That's part of the reason I hate pop music. It's too easy, it's too simple, like they assume I'm stupid, and I need to be spoon fed. Case in point, I've looked up some music I used to listen to. It is pedestrian. I've found two songs, about basically the same thing, and the contrast is stark.

Here's how pop music says it:


To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life

It's too easy. It comes off like whiny little kids. It makes them seem stupid and me feel stupid for listening to it. I can't connect with that. Here's how Metallica says it:

Where do I take this pain of mine?
I run but it stays right by my side

So tear me open and pour me out
There's things inside that scream and shout
And the pain still hates me
So hold me until it sleeps

Just like the curse, just like the stray
You feed it once and now it stays
Now it stays

So tear me open but beware
There's things inside without a care
And the dirt still stains me
So wash me until I'm clean


There's SO much more meaning in those words. The image of pain as a stray, something you allow in once, you let yourself dwell on and "feed" one time and now it stays. Something deep inside, something that can't be easily let out, something that requires you to be TORN open, something that stays inside and screams and shouts at you. And if someone else is going to try and help they have to watch out because those things inside don't care for them either. THAT is music. That has meaning. That has power. It's the beauty of vague and metaphorical lyrics. I can listen to a song James Hetfield wrote about the death of his mother to cancer, and I can hear it singing about whatever I'm dealing with.


This is why I love "Red Barchetta." Because it's about freedom. In every sense. It's about escaping an oppressive tyranny and it's about escaping yourself. It doesn't make your problems go away but it leaves them behind for a time. He escapes and tears through the mountainside and the valley at high speed. He doesn't just take a small black sedan. No, he takes a gleaming, bright RED Ferrari. He takes a car that is the essence of luxury. Something that in it's nature and even in it's color screams defiance. It screams defiance of the motor law and it screams defiance of his troubles. He takes something that is forbidden to him and runs with it, for no reason other than his own selfish pleasure. You can smell the well-weathered leather, the hot metal and oil and the country air. The escape, the freedom of driving, and driving that car that fast. Even when he's confronted by the huge, bulking air-cars, that surely mean imprisonment and probably death, he laughs, he laughs in defiance of what they are and their inability to ever touch him. He laughs because the air-cars, his troubles, whatever he is running from can never catch him. That feeling of just driving, the wind in your face and hair, and the idea of "every nerve aware" is incredible. Even when he's being chased, the feeling of freedom and happiness remains.


Sometimes it almost seems like cheating to use these lyrics here, so often like I do. Because then I don't have to think of the words, they're already there. I do it because I really can't say it any better myself. They already have, and the medium that they've done it in is much more powerful than my rambling. It would be cool if I could (and I probably can I'm just lazy) post the music too, and get the full impact.  So if English teachers want to nail me and say THIS is why poetry is important then fine. They just picked the wrong ones for us to study. When the music, the vocals, the lyrics, all come together and create an emotion and a message, that is a great song. I don't care if they swear, I don't care if they scream, I don't care if they are straight up 4/4 every song or hitting the weirdest time signatures in my collection. I care about the emotion.

Even if it weren't for this kind of connection I get with songs in my headphones, music is still outrageously important. I don't think there is one single decision that has influenced my life more than joining band. I challenge anyone to find one that's affected more. A lot of the other big decisions were consequences of that one. Not even what decision I made but the fact that whatever it was even came up, probably was the result, however removed and indirectly, of that decision. It's especially the people in it, it always is with anything. That's why I jumped up and down in the stands at the IU game today and wanted to hug somebody when Goshen got 2nd at State. That's why I still care how well they do. I mean, I literally can't think of something that would definitely be the same if I hadn't joined band. I mean, all the people I know closely, which shapes who I am, and even the utter shit that I've been dealing with for a while is the result of band. That sounds like a complaint, but it isn't. It's because of the good that I deal with crap, sort of. And so much of the good, separate of this situation is the result of band. Even when times are difficult it's even harder, for me at least, to wish things had gone differently, or to think about changing a long ago, far reaching decision. Because who knows where you'd be? And eventually I have to think that it is going to be good.

This turned out a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would. I just started writing, ironically, as a distraction while I listened to music, because I got tired of the games I was playing. So I'm going to continue posting lyrics in these, because there's power in them, and they're often much better with words than I am. Every once in a while, too, you get the perfect song, to sum everything up. Even a song about music:

Begin the day with a friendly voice,
A companion unobtrusive
Plays the song that's so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood.

Off on your way, hit the open road,
There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers,
Undemanding contact in your happy solitude.

Chorus
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antennae bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free

All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open-hearted.
Not so coldly charted
It's really just a question of your honesty, yeah,
Your honesty.
One likes to believe in the freedom of music,
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity.

Chorus

"For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall,
Concert hall
And echoes with the sounds of salesmen, of salesmen, of salesmen!"
"The Spirit of the Radio" - Rush