It's always an exercise in futility to try and clarify what you've written after people have read it, but here goes.
The key phrase - it's buried in the penultimate paragraph, so my bad - is "in my mind."
Of course Jackson was human. But he also appeared to be so utterly out of phase with ordinary human existence that he couldn't interact with it in any normal way. His response to the world, in general, seemed like it was intended to lessen his connection with what for want of a better word I'll call "humanity." But he was certainly human, for all that he appeared to be something else. Saying that he was "no longer really being human in any meaningful sense" is hyperbolic, to say the least. It's because he was human that what happened to him seemed so terrible.
On to the issue of molestation: I used the word "probable" for a reason. I have uncertainty about what actually happened. But at the same time it seems likely to me that if someone's attorneys let him pay millions of dollars to settle a civil suit, they have some reason for not thinking that he's not going to win it. Hence, "probable." But I don't know the truth, and I don't pretend to.
This brings us to the most important point about all: There is no way, no way in the world, that I know what Michael Jackson was really like. And not in the "we can never really know another human being" sense of not knowing what he was really like, either.
Our word "fame" comes from the Latin fama, which originally meant "rumor". Virgil described Fama (the Romans' goddess/personification of rumor) as a hideous feathered creature who had as many eyes, ears, and tongues as she had feathers.
That's who told me everything I know about Michael Jackson.
My knowledge of Jackson is not only imperfect, it is also, almost certainly, fundamentally wrong. It's based on the crazy-quilt of public relations, gossip, art, and parody that hung between me and the real Michael Jackson.
But even though it's fundamentally wrong, it's also all I have. And even though there's a crazy-quilt of myth hanging between me and the real Michael Jackson, there was a real Michael Jackson, a real person whose real outlines could be perceived through it.
So why bother?
Two reasons.
First, he was literally inescapable. It was practically impossible to be a normal American growing up in the 1970s and 1980s and not be confronted with the idea of Michael Jackson. This idea was originally crafted with great care. It was the work of many hands. The idea's central objective was to be as known by as many people as possible. The people whose handiwork this idea was (including, it's essential to recognize, Michael Jackson himself) were extremely successful. I have ideas about who Michael Jackson was because it is close to impossible for me not to.
The second reason is that there was, at the core of this idea, a real person. That real person, what I could make out of him, seemed to be in misery for a very long time.
The understanding I've fashioned for myself about what caused that misery is, at the very best, contingent. I recognize that. But its contingency is not something to apologize for. It can't be helped. As Joan Didion pointed out thirty years ago, we tell ourselves stories to live. This is a strength, in that it lets us endure what she called "the shifting phantasmagoria" of our actual experience. It's also a weakness, because in constructing narratives, we impose an order on the real world that is not necessarily accurate or even present, and it is that distorted order, and not the real world, that we actually understand. The best I can do - the best anyone can do, really - is to remain aware of this process whenever I can, to remain aware that the stories I'm telling myself are, at best, only based on truth, and not the truth themselves.
I think the people who've called this posting "wonderful" (hi Cory!) and "smart" (hi Patrick!) are moved to do so because the narrative I've constructed for myself about Michael Jackson resonates, in some significant way, with the narrative that they've constructed for themselves. It's not because I'm in touch with the truth about Michael Jackson. If I'm in touch with any truth, it's the truth of what the emotional and intellectual experience of coping with the idea of Michael Jackson is like.
tl;dr: It's all shadows on the cave wall.
I'm not really any sadder about Michael Jackson's death than I already was about his life.
It was clear that this was a guy whose Maslovian pyramid took a sharp turn somewhere above "safety needs" and ended up with its tip pointing in a direction nobody else has ever been interested in going. It's always uncomfortable to see someone who's been ruined by fame; what was distressing about Jackson was that even though he was ruined by fame before his 20th birthday, he kept pressing the lever, and getting rewarded with still more fame, and still more ruination. Fame ruined him as an artist and it ruined him as a person, and then it kept on ruining him.
In one sense, Neverland is just a point on the same curve that connects Iranistan, San Simeon, and Graceland. But unlike its predecessors, the overarching sense that I got from everything I ever heard or saw about Neverland is not "this is what happens when you marry too much money to too little taste" but rather "this is an inarticulate expression of uncontained misery." Also, Barnum and Hearst and Presley held their citadels of damaged self-expression till the day they died: Jackson lost his. And he didn't seem too unhappy about losing it, either.
The saddest thing about Jackson was not just that his fame ruined him, it's that it continued ruining him even after he was essentially finished as an artist. In the last decade of his life he was no longer a great singer or a talented composer or a brilliant choreographer; he was someone who had once been all those things and was now Michael Jackson. Here was a guy whose entire existence from early childhood had been wrapped up with what happened when he did things that made other people happy and excited. And that was unavailable to him. He still could make people happy and excited by showing up and having his picture taken, but that's all he had left.
Someone on the WELL used a word about Jackson's probable history as a child molester that made me stop and think: "unforgiveable." It strikes me that it never even occurred to me whether or not to forgive Michael Jackson. In my mind, he was so far away from normative that the question of forgiveness seems totally irrelevant. Not that his no longer really being human in any meaningful sense justified his actions, or mitigated the harm he did, but that it makes no more sense to judge the morality of his actions than it would to judge Henry Darger's. Their creepiness, sure. But this was a man (it's a mark of how profoundly damaged Michael Jackson was that it feels strange to call him "a man", just as it feels strange to recognize that when he died he was older than the President of the United States) who spent every day of his life embedded in a matrix of perverse incentives. The terrain of his personal landscape was unrecognizable. I can understand the choices that my cat makes more deeply than I could understand the ones Jackson made.
His death has made me stop and think, but it hasn't made me mourn a loss. We lost Michael Jackson fifteen years ago.
There's a reason commentators are using words like "bloodbath" and "slaughter." Though it reminded me more of one of those nightmares where you find yourself in your math class, on the day of the final, and you realize that you've been going to the wrong class all semester: the exam is covered with equations that you can barely recognize, you don't know where to begin, and for the next three hours all you can do is fail.
Cramer walked onto that show ready to defend himself against what Stewart had already accused him of. He was utterly unprepared for what he got. Which is strange, because what he got was really just an elaboration of what Stewart said in the original piece about CNBC and Rick Santelli: this network seems to be in league with the traders against the investors, it's uncritical to the point of appearing collusive, and that if the network actually has a purpose beyond entertainment (and, seemingly, telling the fish how to line up for the sharks), it has manifestly failed.
And Cramer had nothing to say to any of that. It was weird. It's like he's never in his life prepared for a midterm by looking at a practice test. The only thing he was ready to talk about was that sure, his predictions could have been better. It's like he focused on the one single thing in the original piece that made him look silly, and paid not the slightest bit of attention to anything else.
I actually started to feel bad for him at one point. Not bad bad, mind you - the clips from his 2006 interview that Stewart kept playing kept that under control. But he was in zugzwang very early on. Whatever ammunition he might have had to use in disagreeing with Stewart's criticisms of CNBC he left at home. His knowledge and experience and common sense, which he did bring with him, gave him nothing he could use to counter Stewart - largely because Stewart's fundamentally right and he knew it.
But if he couldn't disagree with Stewart, agreeing with him was even less of an option. Agreeing with Stewart would destroy him.
So he babbled ineffectively. You would expect that someone with his persona would be irritated if he got interrupted in mid-sentence by a long speech. But every time that happened to him he looked unperturbed, maybe even relieved. He was safest when he wasn't talking.
And so he let Stewart talk. And what Stewart let loose with was, seriously, the clearest and simplest articulation of what has happened to us, of who did what, and to whom, and how it was done, that I've seen anywhere.
Cramer walked onto that show ready to defend himself against what Stewart had already accused him of. He was utterly unprepared for what he got. Which is strange, because what he got was really just an elaboration of what Stewart said in the original piece about CNBC and Rick Santelli: this network seems to be in league with the traders against the investors, it's uncritical to the point of appearing collusive, and that if the network actually has a purpose beyond entertainment (and, seemingly, telling the fish how to line up for the sharks), it has manifestly failed.
And Cramer had nothing to say to any of that. It was weird. It's like he's never in his life prepared for a midterm by looking at a practice test. The only thing he was ready to talk about was that sure, his predictions could have been better. It's like he focused on the one single thing in the original piece that made him look silly, and paid not the slightest bit of attention to anything else.
I actually started to feel bad for him at one point. Not bad bad, mind you - the clips from his 2006 interview that Stewart kept playing kept that under control. But he was in zugzwang very early on. Whatever ammunition he might have had to use in disagreeing with Stewart's criticisms of CNBC he left at home. His knowledge and experience and common sense, which he did bring with him, gave him nothing he could use to counter Stewart - largely because Stewart's fundamentally right and he knew it.
But if he couldn't disagree with Stewart, agreeing with him was even less of an option. Agreeing with Stewart would destroy him.
So he babbled ineffectively. You would expect that someone with his persona would be irritated if he got interrupted in mid-sentence by a long speech. But every time that happened to him he looked unperturbed, maybe even relieved. He was safest when he wasn't talking.
And so he let Stewart talk. And what Stewart let loose with was, seriously, the clearest and simplest articulation of what has happened to us, of who did what, and to whom, and how it was done, that I've seen anywhere.
Of the small set of people who read this blog, a vanishingly small subset will care about this:
Because I needed an LRU cache in the project I'm working on, and I couldn't find one anywhere, I built one. Since there's nothing proprietary in the code, and I'd like other developers to look it over and maybe even use it, I've released it as open source. You can find it at http://csharp-lru-cache.googlecode.com.
Because I needed an LRU cache in the project I'm working on, and I couldn't find one anywhere, I built one. Since there's nothing proprietary in the code, and I'd like other developers to look it over and maybe even use it, I've released it as open source. You can find it at http://csharp-lru-cache.googlecode.com.
Cain killed Abel, and the blood cried out from the ground - a story so sad even God took notice of it. Maybe it was not the sadness of the story, since worse things have happened every minute since that day, but its novelty that He found striking. In the newness of the world God was a young man, and grew indignant over the slightest things. In the newness of the world God had perhaps not Himself realized the ramifications of certain of His laws, for example, that shock will spend itself in waves; that our images will mimic every gesture, and that shattered they will multiply and mimic every gesture ten, a hundred, or a thousand times. Cain, the image of God, gave the simple earth of the field a voice and a sorrow, and God Himself heard the voice, and grieved for the sorrow, so Cain was a creator, in the image of his Creator. God troubled the waters where He saw His face, and Cain became his children and their children and theirs, through a thousand generations, and all of them transients, and wherever they went everyone remembered that there had been a second creation, that the earth ran with blood and sang with sorrow. And let God purge this wicked sadness away with a flood, and let the waters recede to pools and ponds and ditches, and let every one of them mirror heaven. Still, they taste a bit of blood and hair. One cannot cup one's hand and drink from the rim of any lake without remembering that mothers have drowned in it, lifting their children toward the air, though they must have known as they did that soon enough the deluge would take all the children, too, even if their arms could have held them up. Presumably only incapacity made infants and the very old seem relatively harmless. Well, all that was purged away, and nothing is left of it after so many years but a certain pungency and savor in the water, and in the breath of creeks and lakes, which, however sad and wild, are clearly human.
- Marilynne Robinson, from her novel Housekeeping
In case you're unclear on what just happened in South Ossetia, here is Gary Brecher to explain it all to you. I'm a big fan of the little creep (oh, come on, that's what he'd call himself), and I love, for instance, his breakdown of why the Pentagon condemned the Russian response as "disproportionate":
By the way, I don't know if you were watching, but the Russians shut down The Exile back in June. Oh, I'm sorry, they didn't shut it down. They have a free press in Russia, after all. They conducted a surprise audit of the newspaper and scared its investors into backing out. First time they'd done that to an English-language publication, so there's another landmark.
Anyway, Ames was the editor of The Exile, so if there's anyone who'd be likely to take a less than sanguine view of the Russian government, it's him. You'll note he's not cheering for Georgia in this affair.
If you want a translation, luckily I speak fluent Pentagon. So what “disproportionate” means is—well, imagine that you’re watching some little hanger-on who tags along with you get his ass whipped by a bully, and you say, “That’s inappropriate!” I mean, instead of actually helping him. That’s what “disproportionate” means from the Pentagon: “We’re not going to lift a finger to help you, but hey, we’re with you in spirit, little buddy!”Less comprehensive (and funny), but no less informative, is Mark Ames's take on things, and in particular John McCain's delusional reaction to them.
By the way, I don't know if you were watching, but the Russians shut down The Exile back in June. Oh, I'm sorry, they didn't shut it down. They have a free press in Russia, after all. They conducted a surprise audit of the newspaper and scared its investors into backing out. First time they'd done that to an English-language publication, so there's another landmark.
Anyway, Ames was the editor of The Exile, so if there's anyone who'd be likely to take a less than sanguine view of the Russian government, it's him. You'll note he's not cheering for Georgia in this affair.
I'm putting this story up because I just told it to someone the Sunday night, and then today Teresa Nielsen Hayden linked to one of Stephen Malinowski’s music animations on Making Light. Okay, so the universe wants me to tell this story. Here it is. It’s both pointless and kind of wonderful.
About 8 years ago, I was in Paris with a bunch of people including my friend Kay. Kay has friends who live in Paris, an American woman married to a French man. I should say a Parisian man, or more specifically a man of the 13th arrondisement, because that’s where he holds court. Fabienne is one of those people who knows everyone, and whom everyone knows. He’s big and bearded and jolly, like a character in a Marcel Pagnol movie, and people love him. In the entire time I’ve known him, I’ve never been in a public place with him and not had two or three people walk up to him to say hello.
Fabienne is a tinkerer, and his neighborhood is full of workshops. One afternoon, he took us to visit his friend Pierre. Pierre was an intense little guy whose enormous workshop was an utter shambles of boxes and old furniture and the kind of detritus that you see at the Marche des Puces - mountains of discarded ephemera that look perfectly ordinary if you’re French, but alien and magical if you’re not.
In the middle of this mess was his creation. It was an old computer, connected to a cutting machine. The cutting machine, which was driven by software he’d written, produced paper rolls for a hurdy-gurdy. It took Fabienne (whose English is not terrific, though it is enchantingly weird) some time to get the point across, which was that Pierre had made this entire elaborate setup to make it easier for him to compose music for his favorite instrument.
At which point a switch closed in my head and I said “Oh! Like Conlon Nancarrow!”
Pierre looked up eagerly. “Nancarrow?”
“Nancarrow!” I said.
“Nancarrow!” he said.
"Nancarrow," I affirmed. It was beginning to dawn on both of us that neither of us could speak a word of the other’s language. This was as much conversation as we were going to be able to have. We were crestfallen.
When I got back to the US, I dropped Stephen (who I’ve known from the WELL for a long time) an email message telling him about the man who composed for the hurdy-gurdy. Pierre’s strips of paper, where the boxes tell the instrument what notes to play, are doing almost exactly the same thing as the rectangles in Stephen’s animations, which tell the viewer what notes are playing. Their pitch is a function of the vertical position, and their duration is a function of the horizontal length. Both men had turned to software to implement these oddly similar visions, though Stephen’s notes are bars on the screen and Pierre’s are holes in paper.
Stephen wondered if Pierre would like one of his animations. Of course he would, I said. Just be aware that Pierre doesn’t speak a word of English.
So Stephen sent Pierre a tape. And he included this note with it:
Stephen --> Robert --> Kay --> Fabienne --> Pierre
David Hartwell famously observed that the golden age of science fiction is twelve. There comes a point in one's life where it becomes extremely difficult to love certain things unironically. The narrow perspective of youth and inexperience makes beacons out of things that are merely shiny. You can't recognize meretriciousness when you haven't tasted it yet.
But then you learn a little more about the world, get burned once or twice, live a little, and you start to see what things are really like. This is a wonderful and necessary experience, because you develop a new, deeper, truer appreciation for the things in life that are genuine and sustaining. But you lose some things along the way.
And so it happens that Yes passes out of your life.
Even when I thought Yes was great, which I did, it was hard for me to find much that was admirable in Jon Anderson. The high voice: annoying. The fantastically stupid lyrics: annoying. And his whole mystical spirit-child persona, all unicorns and no fucking, was like what Stevie Nicks might have been like if she found sex icky.
I never dreamed I'd find something that turned me around completely on the subject of Jon Anderson. But here it is.
I had tears in my eyes watching this. It is so totally, brilliantly, unironically great. Okay, the backup singers are a little flat. The sound is muddy, and the image isn't all it could be. It doesn't matter.
They're kids. The keyboard player (yes! he's wearing a cape!) is better at playing glissandos than he is at shaving. They do this far better than you would believe possible, and they do it with a kind of love and enthusiasm that the band itself hasn't been able to muster for thirty years. I've watched it start to finish twice and it's just outstanding.
And it could never have happened if Jon Anderson didn't turn out to have qualities that are wholly admirable, like generosity, enthusiasm, kindness, and a complete lack of pretense. (It's very hard to imagine Peter Gabriel or Robert Fripp, say, doing anything this. Or Lou Reed, for that matter.)
From the fabulous Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, New Jersey, I present to you the Paul Green School of Rock Omega All-Stars, with Jon Anderson singing lead, performing, in its nutty entirety, all of "Close to the Edge". Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
There's a wonderful moment in part 2, at about 5:20 where the keyboard player switches over from the pompous dramatic pipe organ to the silly mini-Moog-like lead, and the person taping this (a parent, I'd bet) has zoomed in, and at the edge of the frame you can see one of the backup singers, and she's cracking up. And it's completely cool.
This is all progressive rock really ever needed: to be comfortable with the fact that from time to time girls are going to laugh at it.
But then you learn a little more about the world, get burned once or twice, live a little, and you start to see what things are really like. This is a wonderful and necessary experience, because you develop a new, deeper, truer appreciation for the things in life that are genuine and sustaining. But you lose some things along the way.
And so it happens that Yes passes out of your life.
Even when I thought Yes was great, which I did, it was hard for me to find much that was admirable in Jon Anderson. The high voice: annoying. The fantastically stupid lyrics: annoying. And his whole mystical spirit-child persona, all unicorns and no fucking, was like what Stevie Nicks might have been like if she found sex icky.
I never dreamed I'd find something that turned me around completely on the subject of Jon Anderson. But here it is.
I had tears in my eyes watching this. It is so totally, brilliantly, unironically great. Okay, the backup singers are a little flat. The sound is muddy, and the image isn't all it could be. It doesn't matter.
They're kids. The keyboard player (yes! he's wearing a cape!) is better at playing glissandos than he is at shaving. They do this far better than you would believe possible, and they do it with a kind of love and enthusiasm that the band itself hasn't been able to muster for thirty years. I've watched it start to finish twice and it's just outstanding.
And it could never have happened if Jon Anderson didn't turn out to have qualities that are wholly admirable, like generosity, enthusiasm, kindness, and a complete lack of pretense. (It's very hard to imagine Peter Gabriel or Robert Fripp, say, doing anything this. Or Lou Reed, for that matter.)
From the fabulous Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, New Jersey, I present to you the Paul Green School of Rock Omega All-Stars, with Jon Anderson singing lead, performing, in its nutty entirety, all of "Close to the Edge". Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
There's a wonderful moment in part 2, at about 5:20 where the keyboard player switches over from the pompous dramatic pipe organ to the silly mini-Moog-like lead, and the person taping this (a parent, I'd bet) has zoomed in, and at the edge of the frame you can see one of the backup singers, and she's cracking up. And it's completely cool.
This is all progressive rock really ever needed: to be comfortable with the fact that from time to time girls are going to laugh at it.
The verse-chorus form of pop songwriting, part anchor and part foundation, reminds me of Clifford Geertz's observation that the webs of significance that comprise human culture both constrain us and support us. The structure that this form imposes seems very rigid if you look at it on paper, and it is very small in scale. But because of its limits, it has also given thousands upon thousands of modestly able musicians a space in which they can use their small fund of talent to craft something indelible.
It's hard to know what kind of musician Elliott Smith would have been in another time, or had he had a different life. But he grew to maturity working in this simple form, and he never left it, even as his modest talent developed into an astounding profligacy. It's all on display in this song, a pop song that's four minutes long and six hours wide.
The first statement of the verse is, in its arrangement, spare and simple: an acoustic guitar playing through its seven chords with a simple strum on every quarter note, and Smith's voice, double-miked to pick up a little reverb, presenting the song's melodic line. The arrangement may be simple, but the melody is not: there's a statement, an elaboration, and then three repeated responses, helpfully called out for you by the phrasing in the lyrics:
Now, there's something else to notice in this melody, which this repetition helps us with. The second syllable of "movie" descends three notes, but "clown" stops on a single note. The first two "sounds" bend down, the last one doesn't. The melisma in this song seems casual, but it is in fact deliberate and careful: the descending notes at the ends of these phrases signal that continuation is coming, that they're a part of a longer gesture. These notes are present again in the second verse, in the same form: "doing" is sung just as "movie" was, with the same three note drop-off in the last syllable. These seem like ornaments to the melody when you first hear the song, but they're intrinsic.
After the second repetition of the verse, we get the chorus, and again, because we're being introduced to the song still, it's done nakedly: the strings and backing vocals go away, and we're back to the simplicity of acoustic guitar and voice.
The chorus holds two surprises in store: after the first line, there's a little guitar riff, the first time in the song where the accompaniment, and not the melody, stands out. And then the second line, with the highest (and loudest) notes sung so far, reveals that the chorus is not nicely divided into halves: we're suddenly led into the second verse a little before we were expecting.
The second verse is where it all comes together.
The arrangement here shifts: up until now, we've been in coffeehouse-folk mode, with a singer and an acoustic guitar. Now, though, we have a rock and roll band: drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar.
And what a lead guitar it is. The lead guitar line here is played with every subtle gesture of tone and dynamics that Smith infused the first verse's vocals with. The call-and-response, the descending melismas at the end of the phrases, all present here, played with a fluency and grace that George Harrison spent his whole life working towards. Harrison would have been proud to play the rhythm guitar here too, which has expanded the open chords of the first verse into syncopated descending arpeggios, played so precisely that it's easy to think that both lead and rhythm are being played on the same instrument.
The lead ends the second phrase with a flourish of ascending groups of sixteenth notes that may be my favorite guitar riff ever: instead of ending the second phrase with its descent and a pause, the melody is turned around and opened up. These notes announce that the structure of the song is breaking open. The first two phrases of the verse, the statement and elaboration, now get to develop in repetition before the response arrives.
And then the verse starts for a third time, with the harmonizing vocal line now almost taking the lead:
But the chorus is not expanded at all, it's still the same two lines of melody that were present the first time. What's different in its repetition, though, is the stomping guitar line, that overlays it, the arpeggiating rhythm guitar now asserting itself into the lead. The long notes of the melody -
have turned into a root that the guitar is now playing against. The guitar's phrase fills the space after the first line, and the end of this phrase leads into the second:
Instead of the spare simplicity of the first verse, and the baroque elaboration of the second, the third verse begins with a furious barrage of jangling strumming on the electric guitar. And instead of subtle developments in the arrangements, we just get the two lines repeated again and again:
There's something haunting about the sound of the guitar at the end of this song. Its tone is raucous and round and harsh, but it's also played with precise voicing, down to the mordent at the end (where the last "world" was sung). The strings balance it with sweetness, and help it come to earth in the last few notes, from which there's a subtle fade-out to silence.
You see the word "Beatlesesque" used to describe Smith's work. I suppose that's good as a convenient shorthand, but it really doesn't begin to get at what he's doing in this song. This is a song whose arrangement and melodies and harmonies are in constant movement and development, and much as I love the Beatles I can't think of anything they did that compares to the ambition or accomplishment of this song.
I think that on his good days, Elliott Smith had as much talent as any three Beatles. I wish he'd had more good days. I wish he were still having them.
It's hard to know what kind of musician Elliott Smith would have been in another time, or had he had a different life. But he grew to maturity working in this simple form, and he never left it, even as his modest talent developed into an astounding profligacy. It's all on display in this song, a pop song that's four minutes long and six hours wide.
The first statement of the verse is, in its arrangement, spare and simple: an acoustic guitar playing through its seven chords with a simple strum on every quarter note, and Smith's voice, double-miked to pick up a little reverb, presenting the song's melodic line. The arrangement may be simple, but the melody is not: there's a statement, an elaboration, and then three repeated responses, helpfully called out for you by the phrasing in the lyrics:
I have become a silent movieIf you listen to the first thirty seconds of the song, those five pieces should be very clear in your mind. And at any rate, to make sure you are familiar with them, he repeats the five pieces again in the second verse. The arrangement broadens in the second verse, with sustained strings filling out the simple strumming, doubled by a subtle vocal descant starting in the second phrase.
The hero killed the clown
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Now, there's something else to notice in this melody, which this repetition helps us with. The second syllable of "movie" descends three notes, but "clown" stops on a single note. The first two "sounds" bend down, the last one doesn't. The melisma in this song seems casual, but it is in fact deliberate and careful: the descending notes at the ends of these phrases signal that continuation is coming, that they're a part of a longer gesture. These notes are present again in the second verse, in the same form: "doing" is sung just as "movie" was, with the same three note drop-off in the last syllable. These seem like ornaments to the melody when you first hear the song, but they're intrinsic.
After the second repetition of the verse, we get the chorus, and again, because we're being introduced to the song still, it's done nakedly: the strings and backing vocals go away, and we're back to the simplicity of acoustic guitar and voice.
The chorus holds two surprises in store: after the first line, there's a little guitar riff, the first time in the song where the accompaniment, and not the melody, stands out. And then the second line, with the highest (and loudest) notes sung so far, reveals that the chorus is not nicely divided into halves: we're suddenly led into the second verse a little before we were expecting.
The second verse is where it all comes together.
The arrangement here shifts: up until now, we've been in coffeehouse-folk mode, with a singer and an acoustic guitar. Now, though, we have a rock and roll band: drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar.
And what a lead guitar it is. The lead guitar line here is played with every subtle gesture of tone and dynamics that Smith infused the first verse's vocals with. The call-and-response, the descending melismas at the end of the phrases, all present here, played with a fluency and grace that George Harrison spent his whole life working towards. Harrison would have been proud to play the rhythm guitar here too, which has expanded the open chords of the first verse into syncopated descending arpeggios, played so precisely that it's easy to think that both lead and rhythm are being played on the same instrument.
The lead ends the second phrase with a flourish of ascending groups of sixteenth notes that may be my favorite guitar riff ever: instead of ending the second phrase with its descent and a pause, the melody is turned around and opened up. These notes announce that the structure of the song is breaking open. The first two phrases of the verse, the statement and elaboration, now get to develop in repetition before the response arrives.
Born in the role, but he can't stopgo the vocals (and yes, there's that three-note descent on "stop"), now firmly backed by the drums and rhythm guitar. But then the last line's melody repeats again:
Standing up to sit back down
To lose the one thing foundwith vocal harmony suddenly appearing, an ascending alto contradicting the descending tenor, "found" ending on a mordent that leads right into a repetition of that beautiful guitar figure.
And then the verse starts for a third time, with the harmonizing vocal line now almost taking the lead:
Spinning the world like a toy top...and with strings swelling to fill the harmonies even fuller, until the response finally comes:
Till there's a ghost in every town
Can't make a sound...this in a form essentially unchanged from its first appearance. Except that it too gets an elaboration, one more
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Can't make a soundto lead into the second chorus.
But the chorus is not expanded at all, it's still the same two lines of melody that were present the first time. What's different in its repetition, though, is the stomping guitar line, that overlays it, the arpeggiating rhythm guitar now asserting itself into the lead. The long notes of the melody -
Eyes locked and shining
have turned into a root that the guitar is now playing against. The guitar's phrase fills the space after the first line, and the end of this phrase leads into the second:
Can't you tell me what's that burning?And the chorus has again performed its function: again it ends with unexpected abruptness, again it leads us into a change in the character of the song.
Instead of the spare simplicity of the first verse, and the baroque elaboration of the second, the third verse begins with a furious barrage of jangling strumming on the electric guitar. And instead of subtle developments in the arrangements, we just get the two lines repeated again and again:
Why should you want any otherwith the entire ensemble: drums, bass, guitars, lead and backing vocals, strings, all turned up to 10 (and still, reliably, the last syllable of "other" is those three descending notes). They repeat four times, and then the last few repetitions are left to the strings alone with the guitar.
When you're a world with in a world
There's something haunting about the sound of the guitar at the end of this song. Its tone is raucous and round and harsh, but it's also played with precise voicing, down to the mordent at the end (where the last "world" was sung). The strings balance it with sweetness, and help it come to earth in the last few notes, from which there's a subtle fade-out to silence.
You see the word "Beatlesesque" used to describe Smith's work. I suppose that's good as a convenient shorthand, but it really doesn't begin to get at what he's doing in this song. This is a song whose arrangement and melodies and harmonies are in constant movement and development, and much as I love the Beatles I can't think of anything they did that compares to the ambition or accomplishment of this song.
I think that on his good days, Elliott Smith had as much talent as any three Beatles. I wish he'd had more good days. I wish he were still having them.
