Somebody's Baby Now

I thought a poem
Could win a heart
Or if not
Then cure the blues;
But tonight
I write alone
When I'd rather
Be with you.

Happy for You

And truly I can bear
To never take his place
Each time I see you wear
The smile that lights your face.

My claim is not to know more about music than the people I spend most of my life with. It simply is that I seem to think more deeply about a particular strain of music than any of them likely imagine possible.

There are times when this seems like another adolescent hangover that I should have shedded a long time ago. But then I come upon another album, another song, another turn of phrase that makes me remember the large body of work I've taken so much pleasure from the past decade or so. I make no special claims about their structural depth; my taste firmly and unabashedly lies with the deft manipulation of words, set to pliable melodies. Where once I would have naively claimed that these assuredly belong to the world of poetry, now I'd just assert that what ever the world may think of them, I know only that this mind and body is particularly attuned to the skilled exponents of this craft. And I'm content with that.

These structural limits of the format, ironically, seem to act to the benefit of the composers. On the written page, the absolute freedom on offer seems to have compelled practitioners into a direction that elevates structure over feeling. It could also be that I just like nothing more than a good rhyme, and again this seems to have been eschewed on paper in favour of a variety of other devices that my untrained eyes simply do not respond to.

More broadly, I think it's also the subject matter. There is in a way a lack of pretentiousness in rock poetry, simply in its quotidian selection of topics. I'd certainly agree that elevating the everyday experience as something greater than it is would be a mistake. But a remarkably large spectrum of thought and feeling is to be found within these songs. I'm probably well beyond being able to better myself in knowledge of enough of the antiquities and history to fully appreciate the verse that is set in that style. Perhaps that would be a far more enriching experience, and are far more enriching life. But I'll deal with the life I've got.

Too Much of One Thing

Symptomatic of a larger malaise I possess is that I shirk from wholesale commitment to anything that brings me pleasure. Whenever I happen upon anyone praising something I enjoy, but going the extra mile that I didn't realise was there -- that's when I pause, stop, and turn around. Not that I turn my back completely, just that I maintain an air of aloofness that I think is a betrayal of the depths of my feeling.

True enough, sometimes, I can't convince myself this isn't rational, though. Take music, and my distaste for the levels of obsessive fandom that have a following unto themselves. I've spoken before of the danger of all this, namely, elevating eclecticism unjustly. Then again, maybe I'm just too closed minded. What, after all, differentiates my eccentric picks over anyone else's? Just that I don't praise them to the same extent?

Final Fig

My candle is spent
Its flame at end
But sadder still
The sight
Of a wick
Still strong and thick
Yet never set
Alight.