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April 23, 2006

Oh, so that is how a protest song works.

I am feeling detached this weekend and can not get this lonesome g->d->c progression (or maybe a half step down from there - but I barely passed music literacy) out of my head that was in Roger and Out (a song that takes 10-4 good buddy and sics it on you) which I heard at a preview listening of Living With War this past Friday.

And as I play those simple 3 notes over in my head, I finally get it.

Here I am, 44 years old, and apparently I have been ignorant about how protest albums work.

Intellectually, I was well aware of everying in the lyrics heard on Friday. One can go to Neil's site and read the words - technically there is nothing there that has not been in the news before.

Intellectually, I am also well aware of the emotive power of music and all that rot, yeah a good song can choke me up.

I was unprepared however, to experience how that emotive power can be used to force my two brains to reconcile what I have been reading and rationalizing for the past 6 years with what I have been feeling.

Our press is a largely visual and word-based medium. Our newscasters are professional. The net, newspapers, TV news, and blogs all use text and well chosen words to communicate in a way that primarily speaks to our rational minds.

Yet in my day-to-day life I make decisions by waiting for the moments when I can reconcile what I know with how I feel.

Neil's songs merely accelerate this process. The album does not really make a statement and tell us what to do, or say anything that is not previously published fact - it merely forces the listener to reconcile these facts with the listener's own melody-provoked emotions - whatever those might be.

I guess Living With War is not trying speak for us, it is just trying to get us to speak for ourselves.

---

(below are the notes I wrote when I was trying to figure out the above)

I can read the papers, about the dead, and friends and family and things said,
it enters my eyes and goes to my brain to be weighed and measured as textual fact.
But hearing these songs, they go right to my heart, where they mix and mingle with rights and wrongs.
The words in the paper wrap around my own truths, my ears open my eyes and my heart really hurts.
So now I am left standing to brood or do, because try as I might, the songs don't stop.

Posted by mbolas at April 23, 2006 08:44 PM

Comments

Music has the power to communicate directly to our souls, it has immense vibrational powers beyond the sonic compression of substance.

It's hard to tell people what to think, but put them in a green room with a tonal progression playing and you best believe subjective emotion will be provoked!

It becomes a language, understood by many but distorted by the beholder's subjective mindset.

Creating works that let everyone bring thier baggage to the table, and engage with thier own feelings, is a potent potential that needs futher exploration in this post-post-modern era.

Thanks for the poem and great thoughts.

Posted by: SEDinehart [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 26, 2006 10:31 AM

Del Cross B Equals What?

Posted by: T.R.Elliott [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 9, 2006 11:35 AM

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