Carbon Footprint

From Bryan White

In my last post, I gave a few examples of song lyrics that I claimed “created a piece of common ground.” For the sake of giving a more complete picture, I figured that I should also try to give an example of poetry or lyrics that, in my opinion, fail in this regard. It’s not easy to find a really good solid example of this. For one thing, I usually try to avoid bad songwriting and bad poetry. And two, most truly egregious examples usually don’t make it past the purple notebook stage. But there is this:

These wounds won’t seem to heal.
This pain is just too real.
There’s just so much that time can not erase.

This is from the Evanescence song “My Immortal.” In fairness, when you hear it, the music and the vocals carry the lyric, and it does manage to convey all the tragic sadness intended. It’s not a bad song. It does, in my opinion, create that piece of common ground, and it obviously created that piece of common ground for millions of people back when it was a hit song. I just don’t believe it gets there with the lyrics.

With Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, I could post the words alone, and I think there was still something meaningful and moving there. Here, without the context of the song, there really isn’t much to it. The lines seem silly, if anything. You have wounds that won’t heal, pain that’s too real. I don’t know; maybe see a doctor about that. The last line almost gets at something, but it’s really just echoing the line about wounds not healing. The one that really kills me is the middle line. What is that even supposed to mean? The pain is too REAL? As opposed to fake pain? I get the impression that the thought process went something like this:

Well, I’m feeling pain.

It’s A LOT of pain.
It’s like serious pain.
No, it’s like real pain. You know, like when people say they’re in real pain.
But I can’t just say I’m in real pain. That sounds like I have to go to the dentist.

Oooooh, how about “The pain is just TOO real.” That’s good.

Again, Amy Lee is primarily a musician and a vocalist. Clearly, that’s where her talents lie, and it’s safe to say that’s where she’s focused when writing a song. The lyrics are practically an afterthought, good enough to serve their purpose. I would argue, though, that bad lyrics can profane good music. Better to release an instrumental and let its passions remain an enigma. If you must sing a vocal, sing wordless intonations, or channel a language of angels with words incomprehensible to human ears.

Besides, there are plenty of people other than Amy Lee who would write lines like the ones above in a straight poem, no music, no vocals, and they would walk away thinking that they’ve said something. When it’s pointed out that a poem like this doesn’t really communicate anything to anyone, the counter-argument is sometimes made that it doesn’t matter, that it’s “for the person”, that it’s therapeutic for them and allows them to get things off their chest. I don’t buy this argument. When I say that a poem should create a piece of common ground, this is as much for the benefit of the poet as for the reader. Art isn’t just a venue to vent and complain. There’s an element of transubstantiation to it. It’s a way of trying to take the stones that burden your soul and turn them into nourishing bread, nourishing for audience and artist alike. Sitting down and writing “Uggghhh, these stones!!!” isn’t of much use to anyone.

And this is where my head bumps against things like the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. The typical scenario when you talk about someone not “getting” a Jackson Pollock painting is you have them standing there in front of this huge canvas scratching their heads going “It’s just a bunch of squiggly lines,” and someone else is standing in the wings, smiling wryly at this Philistine as he walks away shaking his head, left out of the secret, none of it meant for him. But I have a different problem. I think, “Okay, forget me. Forget what I’m not seeing here. What was Pollock getting out of doing this?” That’s usually the first place I dip my hand when I’m having trouble understanding or appreciating a work of art. And with Pollock, I’m not sure if I’m coming up with anything other than the water that runs between my fingers.

They say that he did a kind of dance when he made his painting. He would lay the canvas out on the floor and prance around its edges, dripping and flicking and drizzling paint on the canvas. I’m sure I’m not doing the process justice, but you get the idea. So, I think, was it this dance? Was that what really meant something to him and gave him joy? Were the “squiggly lines” merely the shadows of the dance? And is that enough to share?

So I try to put myself in that place, tailoring the experience for me. I picture a theater. It’s the middle of the day, but it’s dark indoors. There’s a bank of tall, ornate windows all along the right wall, stage right, and narrow bands of light shine down through the gloom onto all the empty rows of seats. There are no lights on the stage. There’s no need for them. There’s nothing anyone out there needs to see. There’s no one out there to see it. There are only deep shadows. On the floor of the stage a huge white sheet of paper is laid down. It covers almost the entire stage, but not quite. Near the stage there’s a wooden chair, and beside the chair there’s a metal bucket filled with charcoal dust. I sit on the chair and take my shoes and socks off, and I dip my feet deep into the metal bucket of dust, getting as much of the dust caked on my feet as I can, covering my feet up to the ankles, even though it’s only the dust on my soles that will make an impression. And when I’m satisfied with the coverage of the dust on my feet, I go to the stage, to one of the corners of the sheet of paper. I take a deep breath. And then I dance.

Music begins to play as soon as I start. I’m not sure how or from where. Maybe I’ve arranged for it ahead of time. Maybe there’s someone up in the booth, watching after all. But the windows are dark up there, and I let the thought leave my mind. Soon the rest of my thoughts leave as well. I’m just dancing. I spin in place, leap from one edge of the paper to the other. I cartwheel around its margins, getting the dust that’s been left on the paper from my feet on the palms of my hands in the process. I have moments in the air where I feel like I’m going to stay in the air, like I’m going to sprout wings and never touch the ground again.

I could never dance like this in front of people. Only in the dark. Alone. Before an audience, I would trip and stumble; I would blush and run away. So that’s why I put down the paper. The paper bears witness. This is the closest I can come to sharing this dance. When the dance is done, the paper is covered in scattered foot and hand prints. I’ll have the piece of paper framed and I’ll have the whole enormous thing hung on the wall of a gallery. And maybe, just maybe, someone with a vision will take the frame off the wall in their mind’s eye, tilt it on edge, and picture the arcs and spins and twirls that took place in the space above it. And maybe that will be enough. Maybe this dance, maybe some distant echo of this dark hall, this quiet afternoon, will linger in their mind long after I’m gone, long after this theater has been boarded up and abandoned and finally bulldozed to the ground. Maybe that will be enough. Maybe. Maybe….

Nah, I think I’ll just stick with writing.