Never Do It With A Singer
I have subconsciously installed a level of distance in many corners of my life. I write to my audience, rather than speak to them in person. I offer recordings of my songs, so that my work might be enjoyed and judged when I am not present. I deliver blood for a living, fulfilling an abstract desire to help people, but do so by never seeing them. I dwell in the halls of analysis, trying to understand behavior —mine or others’— through the lens of psychology, attempting to objectify the emotional side of behavior, where it is least capable of causing me harm.
In “The Denial Twist” by the White Stripes, Jack White sings, “Make sure you never do it with a singer because he’ll tell everyone in the world.” It’s true that singers will do things like craft songs and parades of journals to explain the events of life, but there is a part of me that can't quite rise to meet that claim. I wish that I had the sharpened edges to call out the people who have hurt or humiliated me. I wish I could sing and write with guns loaded and knives sharpened. Perhaps in my own way, I do, but I am in the business of armor, not weaponry. I would rather protect myself than harm someone else. I would sooner add another layer of distance than to engage in the blood and muck of the battlefield.
I don’t mean this as a strength or as a weakness, because I don’t know which one this behavior falls under. Like most of our traits, I imagine it falls under both umbrellas at different times. Rooted in kindness and compassion on the good days; rooted in broken self-esteem and self-respect on the bad ones.
In my earliest songs, I wrote of darker moments with such broad language that the songs often rang hollow. I seemed incapable of calling out the specifics of a situation, and of hiding those specifics in passably interesting language. I was fearful that someone might understand that they were the subject, and so the language was often watered down into platitude-laden nonsense. My journey as a songwriter has seemingly been one long lesson in knife-sharpening, becoming an assassin capable of killing without anyone knowing, most of all the victim.
But songs have a way of changing. Eddie Vedder spoke of Pearl Jam’s “Alive” —a song rooted in incest and abuse— becoming an anthem of endurance solely from years of audiences bellowing “I’m still alive!” across the song’s chorus, overwhelming the lyric’s original meaning that being alive after such horrible hardship was a curse, not a blessing. Now, he said, “Alive” stands forever as a celebration, not a lament.
I wrote “Let Us Watch” in the latter part of 2010. If my song list is to be believed, it was the fourteenth song I ever wrote.
During my years cycling through local open mics, I met a girl who was an outstanding singer. We became modest friends, and it did not take long before we started performing together. What followed was a brief time of rehearsals and dreaming of bigger things. “Let Us Watch” appeared in that brief moment. Had I written it even a week later, it would have been a vastly different song.
The possibilities of our collaboration quickly faded. They faded not out of conflict, but in the way so many things in life fizzle before the proper momentum is achieved to ensure longevity. She began performing with others, and my disappointment and feelings of rejection fossilized on top of “Let Us Watch,” turning a song that was born out of hope and possibility into a song that now had an unavoidable melancholy forever tied to it —figuratively, the way that when someone hears the words “Pearl Harbor,” they associate it with December 7, 1941, and not the equally true fact that it is also a beautiful Hawaiian port.
Ironically, “Let Us Watch” became the only song of mine to ever be performed in a wedding ceremony (twice!). In particular, the third verse:
Meetings they’re chance at heart but blossom to a fate For they never would have happened once if a moment one were late But it eases apprehension when you’re sure you’re meant to see That someone’s in control no matter who that someone be But darling be thankful that we were meant to be
It doesn’t take much analysis as to why that verse might be appropriate wedding fare, but the requests for this song helped change my association to it. Perhaps that melancholy will linger in some form forever, but the initial feeling when I begin to play those first few notes is no longer one of disappointment, but one of new possibility. Much like a wedding, I suppose.
I can’t, in a million years, believe that girl ever knew this song was about her. As I always did, my songs of that era constantly attempted to take that thirty-thousand-foot view. I believed that was because I was imparting lessons through what I thought were deep life observations, but it turns out that, even from the beginning, I was burdening my art with my obsession with distance.
As Oedipus ran from the game, to bring what he thought was change Darling, let us watch, while the others do the same.
A call to watch, not to engage. To remain safe at a distance. To watch as the others crumble, and we, by implication, survive. But of course, we didn’t survive. The battle found us just like it does everyone. And when it does, all that’s left is to tell the story of it. I guess Jack White was right: A singer will tell everyone in the world. But if that singer is anything like me, no one will ever know.