Posts Tagged: Lou Reed

Poetry / Writing — 3 Comments
14
Dec 08

Betrayal Is A Thorny Crown


Prior evidence to the contrary, I have never really had a passion for poetry. I like the romantic poets, especially Keats, but even with them I am only attracted to a few of their most famous works. The bulk of their poems I find inaccessible. When I write my own poetry, it is more as an exercise in language than any deep attachment to the process.

What I do enjoy are epic poems by Homer and Dante and Milton, as well as the verse of Shakespeare’s plays. Even when the language is dense and dated, if the writing is driven by character or story, that makes all the difference for me.

Maybe I have not been looking in the right place, but modern poetry has never drawn much interest from me. I am open to suggestions if anyone has some poetry they especially want to share with me. Until now, though, I have been entirely underwhelmed by even the most famous poets of the last century.

Except for songwriters. My favorite poetry all comes from music. Perhaps it is an unfair advantage, because being able to combine lyrics with music obviously provides for more of an emotional impact. Someone like Michael Stipe or Kurt Cobain can write nonsensical, even unintelligible, lyrics, but you marry it to the right tune, and you get magic. It will bore its way into your soul.

Yet somehow I believe that with the best songwriters–Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Liz Phair–their lyrics transcend the music and work just as well by themselves. All my favorite songs are based on the words much more than the music.

Just recently, I have become deeply entranced by the music of Jenny Lewis. She is the lead singer for Rilo Kiley, but she has also put out a couple solo albums. She’s a supreme story teller, and able to capture an emotion with just a few lines. Her song Rabbit Furcoat feels like a four minute feature length movie.

From the song “Melt Your Heart”:

When you’re kissing someone who’s too much like you
It’s like kissing on a mirror
When you’re sleeping with someone who doesn’t get you
You’re gonna hate yourself in the morning

It’s bound to melt your heart
One way or another
It’s bound to melt your heart
For good or for bad
It’s like a valentine
From your mother
It’s bound to melt your heart

From the song “The Absence Of God”:

And you’re not happy but you’re funny and I’m tripping over my joy
But I just keep on getting up again
We could be daytime drunks if we wanted
We’d never get anything done that way baby
And we’d still be ruled by our dueling perspectives
And I’m not my perspective
Or the lies I’ll tell you every time

From the song “You Are What You Love”:

I’m fraudulent, a thief at best
A coward who paints a bullshit canvas
Things that will never happen to me
But at arms length, it’s Tim who said
I’m good at it, I’ve mastered it
Avoiding, avoiding everything

And from what I am convinced is the happiest break up song of all time, “Breakin’ Up”:

It’s not as if New York City
burnt down to the ground
once you drove away
It’s not as if the sun won’t shine
when clouds up above
wash the blues away

The truth is, I do not know that much about Rilo Kiley and Jenny Lewis, other than how fantastic their music is. I do know that other members of Rilo Kiley have their own side project called the Elected, so perhaps Jenny Lewis is not responsible for all the lyrics. But I am not going to take the time to look up all the liner notes myself. I will instead just recommend all of you to take a listen for yourselves. Just make sure you pay attention to the lyrics.

Lyric of the Day:

Betrayal is a thorny crown
you wear it well
just like a king
revenge is the saddest thing
honey, i’m afraid to say
you deserve everything

-Breakin’ Up
Rilo Kiley

Poetry / Writing — No Comments
24
Nov 08

Magic & Loss


One of my favorite songs, lyrically, is Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss. I think it really encapsulates the human condition.

My favorite line is: “They say no one person can do it all/but you want to in your head/But you can’t be Shakespeare/and you can’t be Joyce/so what is left instead.”

When I first heard this song, I was in University. The idea of conquering the world seemed possible then. This song deals with coming to terms with your own limitations.

But the song also deals with fire, and the passions of our life, and the drive we have to live.

I think this song can be inspiring to anyone. Everyone has a mixture of both magic and loss in their life, and the key to happiness is enjoying the magic as much as possible and not letting the loss hold us back.

Here is the entire song:

When you pass through the fire
you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self doubt
When you pass through humble
the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out
You pass through arrogance you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever present past
and it’s best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light

As you pass through the fire
your right hand waving
there are things you have to throw out
That caustic dread inside your head
will never help you out
You have to be very strong
’cause you’ll start from zero
over and over again
And as the smoke clears
there’s an all consuming fire
lying straight ahead

They say no one person can do it all
but you want to in your head
But you can’t be Shakespeare
and you can’t be Joyce
so what is left instead
You’re stuck with yourself
and a rage that can hurt you
You have to start at the beginning again
And just this moment
This wonderful fire started up again

When you pass through humble
when you pass through sickly
When you pass through
I’m better than you all
When you pass through
anger and self deprecation
and have the strength to acknowledge it all
When the past makes you laugh
and you can savor the magic
that let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
and there’s a door up ahead not a wall

As you pass through fire as you pass through fire
try to remember its name
When you pass through fire licking at your lips
you cannot remain the same
And if the building’s burning
move towards that door
but don’t put the flames out
There’s a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out.

Writing — No Comments
7
Nov 08

Your Cow Wallpaper And Floating Silver Balloons


I was predisposed to like Andy Warhol from the beginning. I had of course heard his name, but I knew very little about him, and his death barely registered on my teenage sensibilities. But by the time I got my hands on the Songs For Drella album by Lou Reed and John Cale, I was already a huge fan of the Velvet Underground. That same year the documentary Nico Icon played at the Vogue in Louisville. I needed to find out as much as I could about Warhol after that, the avante-garde artist responsible for bringing the Velvets together.

A few months later, while on a road trip to New York City, I stopped in Pittsburgh, Andy’s hometown, to visit the Warhol museum. The Campbell’s soup can. The silk screens of Elvis, Marylin Monroe, Chairman Mao. That signature banana. But nothing stood out as much as the balloons and the cows.

One of his shows consisted exclusively of a room filled with silver balloons. The walls were covered with his by then patented silkscreens, this time of purple cows. I cannot think anything else of Andy except that he was totally having a laugh at every art critic’s and investor’s expense. And why shouldn’t he?

I am by no means an expert on art history. But it seems to me that I am not too far wrong if I summarize the history of art thusly: In ancient and medieval times, artists were striving for perfection. They wanted to recreate nature as accurately as possible. Their collective striving culminated in the Renaissance, with Da Vinci and Michelangelo, and they finally achieved this perfection. But once perfection was achieved, artists started working in the other direction, going from the impressionists to the cubists and surrealists until we got to Jackson Pollack splattering paint on a canvas.

Andy Warhol was a 20th century graphic artist who was genius enough to realize that by taking the images that thrust their way into our popular culture, whether from the covers of celebrity magazines, or the advertisements inside them, he could copy them, color them, and sell them for lots of money. The lines between art and commerce, Hollywood and Fifth Avenue, were forever blurred.

Perhaps Lou Reed says it best in his song “Images”:

I’m no urban idiot savant
spewing paint without any order
I’m no sphinx, no mystery enigma
what I paint is very ordinary

I don’t think I’m old or modern
I don’t think I think I’m thinking
It doesn’t matter what I’m thinking
It’s the images that are worth repeating

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