{ a pair of dull scissors in the yellow light }

[delga]

I know I was supposed to do that originals/covers post tonight but I got distracted by apostrophes and the Serenity commentary (which, by the way, I love. You know when I go batty over those Numb3rs exposition scenes? IT'S JUST LIKE THAT! It's so awesome. I need to watch more commentaries). Hey, a geek moment I left out of the last post: the word apostrophe? Not only awesomely Greek (you can tell by the 'phe' at the end; it's like Persephone - per-SEF-o-nee) but a rhetorical figure-of-speech device when a writer/performer breaks off what they're saying to address an abstract idea as a physical presence (e.g. "O what presence hast thou, mighty Death!") In the Greek, apostrophe means "turning away". *big geeky grin* I love that.

What was I talking about? Oh god, yes: this song. I also got distracted by this song and how much it was making me ache except some time in the last ten minutes I stopped getting it and now it's just a song again. Which is a shame because it was really striking a chord and now it's just flat. I was going to talk about how this song is what I'm continually trying to fictionalise but now, meh. No point. Not feeling it anymore. SIGHHATEMYBRAIN.

ETA: Sorry, I think the volume threw me out. I guess what's really sad about the song is how in the first chorus you have that juxtaposition of Samson having not much hair and going to sleep, and the history books and bible just forgetting this pre-Delilian love-affair [I loved you first]; it's a neat touch because you bring together these memories that are so personal and important on one level and seemingly inconsequential on another. All of these little details that make up the narrator's story (your hair was long when we first met...) - oh especially the move from Samson going to bed, telling her that she's beautiful, this wonder with the colour of her hair, and then having his hair cut in this intimate manner; how utterly normal everything was and then this fallibility, the two of them not being earth-shattering enough to bring pillars down and the such... and that affords this first lover to be-- not forgotten, so much, as unremembered. Not worthy of remembrance. And she's laying herself down and saying, you know what? I'm important, remember me. I loved you first.

I'm always trying to write that; the story of the one left behind. Not because of anything trite like a personal connection (blah blah emo woe) but because right now? Negative space rocks my world. Everything that you do not see, or do not take care to see. All the forms that make the form, all the people that make the person and I carried you here / on the stretched parchment / of my skin / tucked into the belly / where you printed words / with your pretty pink lips; the way we carry ourselves in the things that we do and the people around us and what do you lose when you lose the first lover? More to the point, what does she lose? She isn't the form; she's the shadow that makes Samson's form. Without her he surely wouldn't be who he is; without her connection to him, though, she does not exist. Like a shadow - without an object to block the light, a shadow has no ground and this narrator is a shadow who wants to be brought out to existence; she's saying, let the light fall on our love and our life and let me exist. Let me be remembered. That's what gets me. Um, just to point out - this isn't necessarily what the song is about but that's what I got from it.

Also, don't miss the actual, you know, music in this song. The piano directs the voice and lifts it; it does not hold its hand, it follows. It exists before the voice, after the voice; it constructs the voice, laying out the path for it to take but it is never with the voice. The vocals mirror, the vocals mimic and play with the piano melody but they never stand together. One can exist without the other but they make the most sense in the context of each other. If I'm right, it's played in a minor key but there's every possibilty that I got that completely wrong. What that does is make it sad and wistful, and you get that from the lilting piano notes that dance; the lower chords give the song gravity; the voice that rises with the piano, that mirrors, that repeats, that plays with the notes, lifting them, elongating them - the voice is wistful, and it hurts, and is hurting. It's really a lovely song. Listen to the very end, the sad acceptance when the voice goes deep, not high; it loses that airy wistfulness and jumps to something much more melancholy. Wonderful.

Comments

[wliberation.livejournal.com]

*makes incoherent voices*

I love you. I love you! Eeh!

That is as coherent as I can be in my response to this right now because... The way you speak about things. Okay, and now I have to listen to that song again.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

No, no, no - I love you. Wouldn't even have the song if it wasn't on your Still Days mix. And now I can't stop playing it because yes. It just takes me there, to this quiet room where memories physicalise in the background, poring over a photo album.