Home alone sick on Christmas, listening to the Replacements. Now that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel in literature, here's a small pastiche of lyrics from a real dark horse. I don't know that anyone is better than Paul Westerberg on the subject of looking back with regret.
Hold my life, until I'm ready to use it.
Growin' old in a bar. You grow old in a bar.
The fool who wastes his life, God rest his guts.
It's a little disconcerting to remember that the man who wrote all these lines was in his mid-20s. The last is from the song "Here Comes a Regular," which includes the following objective correlative for sorrow over an empty life:
You're like a picture on the fridge that's never stocked with food.
I used to live at home, now I stay at the house.
("Objective correlative" refers to "the artistic and literary technique of representing or evoking a particular emotion by means of symbols that objectify that emotion and are associated with it.")
Another thing Westerberg excels at is the sketchy ballad; sketchy, because the listener has to fill in some spaces. "A Little Mascara," about a haphazard marriage gone bad, is an example:
You and I fall together
You and I sleep alone
After all, things might be better
After one, and there's one that's long gone
For the moon you keep shootin'
Throw your rope up in the air
For the kids you stay together
You nap 'em and you slap 'em in a highchair....
Afternoon, things are quiet
Settle back now if you can
Stations click by like a rocket
Don't you worry if you wonder why he ran
All you ever wanted was someone to take care of ya
All you're ever losin' is . . . a little mascara.
I take the two "one"s in the first stanza to refer to different things--the first a time of day (one in the morning?), the second a person (the long-gone husband who doesn't come home?)--but I'm not really sure. "Shootin' for the moon" is a cliche that works because the next line is such a perfect image of futility--"throw your rope up in the air" (without explicit mention of it falling to the ground beside you, because you can't lasso the moon). And what about the next two lines for a summation of a certain kind of life? He mentions napping the children, which must account for why it gets quiet in the afternoon. "Settle back now if you can" is followed immediately by proof that she can't--"stations click by like a rocket." She's trying to distract herself from the question of her life. The whole scene, captured in less than fifty words, is of a woman, clicker in hand, young children asleep, sitting alone in a quiet house with mascara running off her face. (That she's wearing it in the first place is a little like the rope thrown in the air.)
He doesn't write a lot of happy songs but still you often smile while listening. From "Left of the Dial":
Read about your band in some local page
Didn't mention your name, didn't mention your name. . . .
Passin' through and it's late, station started to fade
Picked another one up in the very next state.
There's a song called "Seen Your Video"--a high-spirited instrumental followed finally by the entire lyric:
All day, all night, all music video
Seen your video, the phony rock 'n' roll
We don't want to know, seen your video
Your phony rock 'n' roll
We don't want to know
We don't want to know
We don't want to know
We don't want to know
Comments