#06 Lyrics

Music is one of the most important things in my life to me. Sometimes, just the opening bars of a song are enough to bring back memories; to re-kindle emotions; to inspire. More often, it is the lyrics of the song - what it is actually trying to say - that have the most profound effect.

Again this week I've been reading, and continuing my theme of reading the books that have inspired films. Monday afternoon's book was Jeffery Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, not perhaps the most obvious choice for a Hollywood adaptation. By its very nature, the tale of manic teenage depression in stifling suburban America doesn't sound like an entertaining movie. True to form I haven't seen the film and probably don't want to now, either. But the book, for all its morbidity, investigates some interesting areas of though: most prominently, the ways our lives are chronicled.

The story of the five star-crossed Lisbon girls (their surname, not home-town), is presented by an un-named group of men once boys who spent their innocent summer evenings 'spying' on the mysterious girls who lived across the street. As well as the obvious mystery surrounding the opposite sex as they become teenagers, the boys are also intrigued by the incredibly harsh regime forced onto the girls by their mother. Such repression is ultimately blamed for the girls' fate (and if you haven't guessed that by now, the title of the book is sadly self-explanatory), and also results in the true story of the girls' remaining a mystery. 'Exhibits' - photographs, doodles and diary entries - are used to piece together the 'best-guess' story, but what led them to somewhere "deeper than death" is taken with them.

Such is the boys' collective determination to put the Lisbons 'to rest' through the realisation of their history that they can never forget. Whilst the physical remains of their life can be removed - their house sold, gutted and refurbished - emotional artefacts cannot be cleansed so easily. "You never get over it," says the girls' grandmother: "But you get to where it doesn't bother you so much". In a graceful return to the opening of this blog, the boys find that music remains as an indelible stain even after catharsis.

That, I think, is the 'problem' with music. Even if you don't want to remember, such is its emotive power, you can be back in the place you never wanted to return to within only a few of the beats per minute.

This extract is taken from The Virgin Suicides: it's 'Make It With You', by David Gates:

Hey, have you ever tried
Really reaching out for the other side
I may be climbing on rainbows,
But, baby, here goes:
Dreams, they're for those who sleep
Life, it's for us to keep
And if you're wondering what this song is leading to
I want to make it with you

Compare it with a song released 33 years later, 'Cannonball', by Damien Rice:

Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to lie
Life taught me to die
So it's not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball

Apart from the obvious similarity in lyrical content, the sentiment is the same. Human emotion does not change. In 33 years, music may have changed, but I'm certain those words will still mean the same to me as they do now. I'm sure they'll mean more too, but they'll still remind me of the things they do now. There's no escaping music's power to remind: on reflection, surely that's a good thing? Perhaps the 'problem' with music is in fact what makes it so powerful in the first place. Lyrics - forever woven within our music collections, whether in vinyl, iPod, disk or as fragments in our brain's music library - chronicle our lives.

I'm glad I got rid of my Ms. Dynamite album, now.