The One That You Love...ready for the music part

[nat whilk II]

Listened to some of Mavis Staples new album, One True Vine on MOG.  Tweedy helping out again - nice stripped down arrangements.  One Tweedy penned tune "Jesus Wept" really stood out.  Got me into the alt-gospel sort of frame of mine and I started this:

 

[EDITED - 2nd verse 1st melody added and misc tweaks]

[EDITED AGIN - changes in the chorus for the last time round]

[EDITED YET MORE - getting close to ready for the music part of the process]

 [EDIT YET SMORE  - just listened to LCK's link to JJ Cale's Magnolia in the Friday Influences thread...the verses here fit that vibe...that might be what I'll start out with musically..but cast into 3/4 time...]

 [if you're familiar with the old classic gospel "Wings of a Dove" (it was on the radion in the very early 60's - Ferlin Husky cover)...I'm borrowing the lyrical rhythm of "snow....white...dove" for the chorus of this tune in progress]

The One That You Love

1st Verse-1st melody

He looked into your eyes.

Shook his head, and said, it

[rhino55]

Holy crap! Listening to One True Vine for the first time right now. Thanks for the heads up.

 

As far as your lyric goes, it's really great. A couple of things jump out.

 

He said the arrow of time is my most painful invention

To crucify time and space was the inevitable intention.

 

Is a great couplet, but digging deeper the second line could be clearer. Crucify is obviously a super loaded word that I would normally advise people to stay away from, but I think it's perfect here in the sense that it feels right, but I just don't get how time and space can be crucified. I might be being too literal (I usually am)

 

As far as the second verse second melody goes, it feels like it might be too wordy. You could always trim it up a bit.

 

 

[nat whilk II]

Mr Rhino55 said:

He said the arrow of time is my most painful invention

To crucify time and space was the inevitable intention.

 

Is a great couplet, but digging deeper the second line could be clearer. Crucify is obviously a super loaded word that I would normally advise people to stay away from, but I think it's perfect here in the sense that it feels right, but I just don't get how time and space can be crucified. I might be being too literal (I usually am)

 

Yeah everyone's terrified that there might be fundie in the room...booooooo!!!  

 

Personally, I'm totally sold on the idea that religious and mythological language and connotations are for the writer, the richest lode of language, ideas, and stories forever and ever amen.   Y'all know my affinity for Chris Whitley - he was working his own mine in that vast mountain.  This is part of the reason I'm totally ok with working counter to the pop hatred of "Religion" (the haters conceive as a totally undifferentiated lump of straw that takes all stabbings with no whimper).  

 

As to the meaning of "crucifying time and space".  Here's the levels of meaning in my personal cache of ideas and resonances:

 

1.  all existence as we know it undergoes constant death and rebirth.  Not just "life", but also what encompass using the word "universe."  It's really an old hat notion, nothing inventive by me to see the crucification/resurrection motif as applicable to all life and even all other aspects of existence as we know it.  Joseph Campbell was the most famous/latest in a long line of people who have worked and spread this idea.

 

2.  one particular philosopher with a heavy religious bent, and someone I find astonishing, brilliant, creepy, fascinating, and if you'll allow the term "holy" is Simone Weil.  Her very dark philosophy/theology was strongly influenced by Schopenhauer.  Both hers and Schopenhauer's cosmologies are very, very dark, tragic, and full of universal suffering.  I read these guys with a fascination similar to watching a horror movie for which I've totally bought into the suspension of disbelief.   At any rate, Weil's idea is that time and space are a self-imposed self-crucification by God of God.  All existence is based in a sort of theological Passion.  It's very weird, very darkly intoxicating, and I am totally convinced, not all that healthful from an emotional/psychological point of view.  But I make artistic use of it here (since I can't shake thinking about it all anyway!)

 

3.  if you happen to tie into the character in the song as a Christlike/Godlike figure, then you know He's basically beyond time and space, but somehow still acting in time and space and suffering from doing so.  He basically "shoots" the spacetime universe with his little arrow, and there are hints of some other non spacetime mode that his love will be risen into.  But just hints.  I don't want to make this into a coded message with some set of precise formulations as the secret key that I've just obscured for poetic effect.  I want the obscurity to be part of the basic message.

 

hope this makes sense.  if so, please explain it to me

 

nat whilk ii

[Lee Knight]

 

I really like this lyric a lot. But I'm not crazy about the word continuum here. As a word it's dandy, but it is out of context here.

 

While it makes sense, and the couplet itself is wonderful, the word is a "name the thing that doesn't belong here" test. The tone before and after that word is very conversational and, more to the point, is successful at creating a beleiveable voice. With that one word you slip out of character. I'd go simple and direct here. Something like the following but way better? Very cool lyric you've created.

 

 

He said the arrow of time is my most painful invention

 

The clock, now crucified, is the inevitable intention.

 

 

 

[nat whilk II]

 

the redoubtable Lee Knight said:

I really like this lyric a lot. But I'm not crazy about the word continuum here. As a word it's dandy, but it is out of context here. 

 

While it makes sense, and the couplet itself is wonderful, the word is a "name the thing that doesn't belong here" test. The tone before and after that word is very conversational and, more to the point, is successful at creating a beleiveable voice. With that one word you slip out of character. I'd go simple and direct here. Something like the following but way better? Very cool lyric you've created.

 

 

He said the arrow of time is my most painful invention

 

The clock, now crucified, is the inevitable intention.

 

Yes, we're both thinking alike here it turns out.  As I've been starting the process of melodizing and harmonizing these lyrics, I've already taken out "continuum".   Partially because it's a bit of a dorky word, and also because I've decided to make the mysterious "archer" basically a human character, altho somewhat (hopefully) mysterious and strange in his suffering.  For example, the arrow of time has become just "the most painful invention" and not "my most painful invention".

 

I was heading toward the simple, "everything, crucified" as a solution.  So much depends on how I phrase it melodically and then the vocal execution caps it off, too.  

 

I'll try to post up the work in progress on the melody and chords when I get just a bit further.  This one is taking some work and two or three trees have already bravely given their lives to the cause.  

 

Thanks a ton for the input.  Even when I don't take advice explicitly, I'm definitely influenced by what you and others have to say.

 

nat whilk ii