Never Do It With A Singer
I have subconsciously installed some level of distance in countless 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, or interacting with them in any way. 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 most capable of causing me harm.
All of that is to say nothing of the distance I place within my work. When it comes to many events within life, and the perpetrators of those events are often those to whom I have some degree of loyalty, I have no desire to publicly humiliate them through a piece of writing. Even those who potentially deserve such things, I find myself incapable of sniping from my perch.
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 like myself will indeed do things like craft songs and endless parades of journals to explain the events of our lives, 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 to 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 honestly I don’t really 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 not only incapable of calling out the specifics of a situation, but also incapable of hiding those specifics in passably-interesting language and imagery. 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 so skilled as to be capable of killing without anyone knowing, most of all the victim. The better I have gotten at such a skill, the better songwriter I have become.
But occasionally, songs change. 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.
My songs must rely on the quieter moments of everyday life in which to transform. I wrote “Let Us Watch” in the latter part of 2010, and, if my song list is to be believed, 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, not out of conflict, but the way so many things in life fizzle before the proper momentum is achieved to insure 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 surrounded by the magnificence of the Pacific Ocean.
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 after all: A singer will tell everyone in the world. But if that singer is anything like me, no one will ever know.