(no subject)

[timepiececlock]

I made my roommate listen to The Luckiest by Ben Folds after a discussion about weddings, because I had officially changed my "song I will one day get married to" from Evlis's "Can't Help Falling In Love" to Ben Folds's song.

I played it for her and she told me the second verse was about pedophilia and the third verse was "just so odd" for its morbidity and if a guy told her he hoped he died after her when they were 90 years old she'd be freaked out that he writes weird things about their future death, and dump him.

I was kind of gobsmacked, because my reading of the lyrics was so completely different from hers. I thought the song incredibly romantic, and the difference analogies were just that-- fumbling attempts to describe via analogy a vast and powerful feeling of love that he "can't find the words to say". It didn't strike me as morbid at all.

The pedophiliac argument kind of made me blink. I really hadn't heard that verse as a sexual thing at all, but rather as a "what if we were totally different people in another life, would some cosmic power grant me a moment of deja vu in passing you by" / lucky-to-have-known-you thing. She says that the line "in a house, on a street where you lived" is a sign of the older version of himself always watching the young girl, and wouldn't I be creeped out if an old man was staring at me all the time and thought he recognized me as his soulmate?

The answer to that is yes, but that situation is not what I inferred from the song at all. I inferred that it was a one-time moment of recognition "in a wide sea of eyes" but roommate insists that the line "on a street where you lived" means he's stalking her or something.


I'm both amused and confused by this conversation. I guess I'll chalk it up to how people read poetry/lyrics differently.

Comments

[beckingham.livejournal.com]

I'm so proud of my amazing ability to flip-flop back and forth between something like both your interpretations on this song. On the one hand, I think that it would be as inappropriate a song at a wedding as Sting's "Every Breathe You Take" (dubbed the "stalker song") if you read it as him still loving her as an old man and "reaching across the age gap" because they're "destined" for each other. Maybe it's because I'm reading Lolita currently, but it reminds me of Humbert's argument that Dolores was his childhood love incarnate and that fate had merely given him a second chance at that "deep love".

It's certainly not your conventional wedding song, even on the romantic interpretation side. The "grasping at words" isn't what people want to convey at weddings--weddings are when you're supposed to have all the right words to say, when you're cementing something. The song, while passionate, isn't as concrete or clear as most couples might want. Or something. I need to listen to it again to put this across more coherently.

Bah. It sounds sort of morose to be something played at a wedding, now that I think about it.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

The music isn't morose at all--- it's quiet and pretty, the kind of thing you'd slow dance too.

if you read it as him still loving her as an old man and "reaching across the age gap" because they're "destined" for each other. Maybe it's because I'm reading Lolita currently, but it reminds me of Humbert's argument that Dolores was his childhood love incarnate and that fate had merely given him a second chance at that "deep love".

I didn't read it as reaching across the age gap at all---there would be no reaching because it's about seeing and recognizing someone you knew/know so well in this life, and wondering if there's some kind of connection that allows you to recognize them in the other. I didn'tread it as that being any relationship beyond momentary deja-vu like recognition of another person. You see them, you wonder if you know them, life goes on. I didn't read it as Lolita-like or sexual recognition, and it didn't even occur to me until my roommate suggested it. Even now, looking at it in the context of the other lyrics and the tone of the music, I still don't read it that way.

I agree that "Every Breath You Take" is an inappropriate wedding song, but I don't think that that is about the same thing as this song.

weddings are when you're supposed to have all the right words to say, when you're cementing something.

I've never thought so. I don't expect people to have the right words all the time; I don't even expect me to have the right words all the time. And knowing what you want isn't the same as the expectation that you must communicate that in a hallmark-style "right" way. It's not the words that matter, it's the feeling that makes you want to say them. If a hypothetical future boyfriend came up with a hundred offbeat analogies while trying to find a way to tell me how important I was... I wouldn't mind, and I'd try to understand what he was saying.

Besides, to me, having a wedding IS the action of saying "I want to live and grow old with you until one or both of us dies." That kind of lasting love described in the third verse is exactly what is intended by "till death do us part." And the death aspect isn't morbid-- it's a promise. That death is a part of life and only death will part you.

I've never read Lolita. I was always kinda freaked out by the idea.

[beckingham.livejournal.com]

momentary deja-vu like recognition of another person. You see them, you wonder if you know them, life goes on.
You see, I can see that quite clearly as well--it's almost my exact thought on the whole thing, but I can also understand how it sets a person off to have a man contemplating (even idly) being fifty years older than their beloved and watching them pass on a bike--and that vague "not so platonic" deja-vu experience might go from sweet to just a little creepy.

I've never thought so. I don't expect people to have the right words all the time; I don't even expect me to have the right words all the time.
I'm going to have to back track here as I was trying to express how a wedding song is taken conventionally. Or, at least, how it's been explained to me as conventional. I definitely agree with you on not finding the right words... it's just that most people I've met expect the right words. It's perfectly fine for you to have a song played that isn't all "perfect", but I was just noting that it's sort of, er, off-beat. Which I'm regretting stating now as it gives a false impression of my own beliefs as to what is appropriate or not.

I've never read Lolita. I was always kinda freaked out by the idea.
I'm about a third through it, and I have to say that at this point I'm not really recommending it to people. There are a few quotes in it that make me go "wow" or laugh or just have a profound affect, but it's overall shock is a turn-off for me. I feel like the controversy of this book made it more popular than it might have deserved. Still, the prose is nifty and I could change my mind once I'm finished.

[scarlettfish.livejournal.com]

I think that song is incredibly romantic - and quite frankly, the 'pedophile' argument makes me roll my eyes. A famous couple here in Australia used the song for their wedding, incidentally.

And for the record, I'm having Tori Amos' Sweet the Sting as my wedding song...unconventional, but perfect :)

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

and quite frankly, the 'pedophile' argument makes me roll my eyes.

I'm kinda relieved I'm not the only one who took that line as completely innocent and emotional, but not sexual.


If famous people in Australia did it, I can do it!


I've never heard that Tori Amos song.

[catystorm.livejournal.com]

*blinks at the lyrics* I haven't heard this song (or if I have I don't remember the music); but my first is it's sweet. Besides, the second verse is a hypothetical within the context of the song ... it doesn't strike me as pedophilliac at all, although I can see how someone would come up with that arguement.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I uploaded it: http://www.sendspace.com/file/emv8n4

It makes even more sense listening to the way it's sung, very soft and melodic, with gorgeous piano.

[clodia-risa.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's creepy at all. He only mentions seeing her, meeting her eyes. I mean, is the only way older men are allowed to look at young girls/boys supposed to be creepy? Can't they reminisce about their own children? Or their own childhood? Can't they find the kid cute? Or have the kid remind them of someone they once knew?

He's not even meaning to get with her if he was fifty years older, just that he would recognize her soul.

In short, I'd have to hear the song to see if it would sound good at a wedding, but I think it's sweet and insightful enough to work at one.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I'll post it for you. :)

[clodia-risa.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/emv8n4

The piano kills me.

[jaina.livejournal.com]

I read it the same as you, always have.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Hearing this from you guys is making me feel better-- I was having a moment of distress because something I loved was totally shot down by someone else. Glad to know I'm not crazy or reading it wrong.

[zebeckras.livejournal.com]

I seriously think that song is one of the most beautiful love songs I've ever heard and sometimes it takes my breath away when I hear it. I read it completely the same way you do. The "pedophile" argument doesn't work on me; like you, I think the song is very stream-of-consciousness, it's the kind of thing that you think to yourself when you're just marveling at the fact that you connected with this person, out of a billion people, you've found the one single person in the world who is RIGHT for you and what would have happened if things had been even slightly different?

Technically I know that there may not be just ONE person who is RIGHT for everyone, but there are times when you really feel that way and it's overwhelming. That line always makes me think of my husband, and it's not a line about how even if I were in my sixties and I saw you as a kid I'd make sure we had a relationship, it's about - what if the timing had been wrong? Would I have any idea what I'm missing in my life, would I *feel* it when I saw you, or would I just never ever know? It seems strange to realize that in another world I might pass Dan on the street and never have any idea who he is, not have some form of recognition about how special he is and what a connection we have. The third verse, about the elderly couple dying within a few days of each other, is something I've always heard the way you described - a fumbling way of saying "I don't think I could live without you." Ben Folds's lyrics are so like that - they're never song lyrics, they're usually poetry, sometimes they're actually prose set to music. *is big BF fangirl*

Not that I can't understand the reading your roommate gave, I guess. It just never occurred to me, at all. Oh, well, different strokes. :D

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you and I are on the same page here. What's weird is that usually this particular friend and I are not only on the same page, but on the same exact paragraph, sometimes the same line. It's interesting to come across something where we react so differently.