Wednesday, December 28, 2005 | by nathan
Where I Am Now
Where I Am Now
I got some great stuff at the last K.C. show at Galileo, and I made an NPR piece out of it, my last one for “Assignment: Radio.” It was so much fun and it turned out really well. The other good thing that came out of the whole thing was that I was able to make kind of a “K.C. Clifford Live At Galileo” CD, which, while lacking in sound quality, captures well some of what it is like to see her live. Also, it has a lot of songs of hers on it that I love and yet which are not available on CD.
My favorite of these songs is “Ophelia,” which captures very well how I feel about my life now. On the disc, when introducing the song K.C. says, “I think I’ll be 80 and still growing up, and at some point there is part of you that you inevitably need to leave behind, and I think that is a good part of the process. And I think I woke up one morning and realized that I was a little older, and calmer, and a lot of things that were really good and healthy, but there was a part of me that I wasn’t operating with anymore, personality-wise. And that was a good thing, but it was also kind of strange, to wake up without her, and I call her Ophelia.”
This song describes a lot of the way I feel about how much I’ve changed over the past couple years.
Ophelia
Have you seen Ophelia? She was last seen wearing her heart on her sleeve.
This blue-eyed beauty is prone to hysteria;
Consider her armed with a flair for tragedy.
All that I’ve known to be true is you.
And where have you gone Ophelia? I can’t seem to find my way around here without you.
And maybe you’ve gone forever;
But maybe you’ll stop by in a week or two.
All that I’ve known to be true is you.
Ophelia, I can finally see, I can feel this breath in me
The girl that I was meant to be, Ophelia
I am finally free; I can feel this life in me
The girl that I was meant to be without you.
Without you, Ophelia.
So I guess this is so long, Ophelia.
And I bid you farewell Ophelia.
We’ve been together so long, Ophelia.
And I do wish you well, Ophelia.
And this one describes kind of how I approach relationships with friends and family, and trusting myself a little more:
This is how K.C. introduces it. “I think that I’ve decided somewhere in my life recently that some of the things that I need need to come from inside me; I need to stop looking outside of myself for some of the things that have already been given to me, the truth, and the hope, and the wisdom and encouragement. I don’t think I ever thought it possible until recently that you could encourage your own heart…and I’ve had a string of people that have not been telling me good things about myself… I guess it’s a little about calling a spade a spade. And there’s a cussword in it. We all just need to deal with it. Because sometimes there’s only one word you can use for things. Sometimes there’s only one word that rhymes. So pardon my French, but it is what it is.”
Counterfeit
She took it hard. It laid her out, left her wondering what this life was all about.
She saw stars through bleary eyes. She picked herself up off the ground and realized
They can call it love,
But if it makes you feel like shit, it’s counterfeit.
She dusted off, called some old friends.
Told them she feared she may never trust again.
She listened close to those who know who she is, where she’s been, where she’s trying to go
And they said
Let ‘em call it love.
If it makes you feel like shit, it’s counterfeit.
She’s finding out that life can play bitter tricks as she discovers
if it’s not love, it’s counterfeit.
She takes deep breaths
She found her smile. She’d forgotten where she placed it for awhile.
So those are the songs that describe my life now. It’s weird because K.C. is my friend. But there it is; I suppose this is why. She told me in our interview for KGOU that people always told her she was too sensitive. Yeah.
I like my life. I like having music that describes it.
| iPod, This I Believe |
Comment by jona and/or tish
Nathan,
I’m not trying to discount your subjective experience of this music here. I understand that there is an experiential aspect of music that transcends the propositional meaning of the lyrical text. But there is meaning beyond the realm of subjectivity (you probably remember from HKN that Kierkegaard preserves this balance by defining faith as the personal appropriation of an objective truth), and so it’s important to recognize false things as false. And this line and its ontology of love are false:
“They can call it love,
But if it makes you feel like shit, it’s counterfeit.”
This sure seems to be a common refrain these days everywhere in pop culture, but it comes with incredibly disastrous consequences. It’s insanity and the farthest pole of narciscism. I don’t imagine that anyone really wants to be treated this way. Only in the hyper-idealized world of fantasy would you want love that just makes you feel good about yourself or blissfully happy. Those who have actually embraced this kind of love are poisoned by it and have had all of their relationships poisoned. All of their relationships have dried up and they have become untrusting and cynical (see, e.g. Michel Foucault, or just about every celebrity marriage–Nick and Jessica, Brad and Jennifer, and the list goes on). This kind of love is the evidence of a small, brittle, shriveled, pathetic, stony heart that has never received the burning love of the Father in Christ.
This is real love: “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove: / O no! it is an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken.” To love is to commit and to be willing to be appalled, disagreed with, shaken, hated, hacked to pieces, destroyed and desolate for the sake of relationship. Love is God’s burning love for his whore of a people in Hosea. Love is laying one’s life down for one’s friends, not in the sentimental sense that you would lay down in traffic if they asked you to, but in the sense that you would die for them to get the truth into their minds and hearts and hands.
The real counterfeit love is the flattering love that never disagrees with you, never challenges you, never calls you to the carpet on your sin. That’s the kind of love that will bring you down to hell. Sorry to be so harsh in my retort, but I just really disagree with the song.
3 January 2006 7:56 am
Comment by jona and/or tish
Sorry not to specify! The last post was from Jonathan, not Tish (as is this one). I make no claims to speak for Tish. Again I say, Tish may only be known as she chooses to reveal herself.
3 January 2006 8:04 am
Comment by Nate
Hey Jon -
I see your point and actually totally agree with you, especially this part:
“The real counterfeit love is the flattering love that never disagrees with you, never challenges you, never calls you to the carpet on your sin. That’s the kind of love that will bring you down to hell.”
What I was getting at in posting the lyrics - and I should have been more clear about this - was the idea that when we are in someone’s life, we are supposed to be taking tender care of them. They will know us by our love, after all, and I have been thinking a lot lately about some relationships I have in my life that are more about manipulation, guilt, competition, or codependence, either in my part or on the part of the other person(s). When I hear the lyrics “if it makes you feel like shit,” what I think about is the way in which some actions and interactions can in no way be seen as loving - i.e. manipulation, which is a distortion of the truth in order to affect actions in another. We’ve all had those people in our lives who make us look at ourselves and our lives as worthless. I am in the process of reevaluating the place of these people in my life, so in that way the lyric resonates with me.
It’s not about how you feel emotionally, because I often feel like shit. Love has never been meant to make us feel happy or flattered all the time. But when someone says they love me, I want to know through their actions that this is true, and I want them to know through mine. Honestly the lyric is as much an indictment of myself as it is of others, as I can be a real jerk. A friend told me recently, “You’re my cunty friend.”
Anyhow, I absolutely agree with what you said, but I just think I did a bad job of explaining why I liked the song so much. For me (and for the songwriter, I think) it’s about how some people will tell you they have your best interests at heart and then they will do things that betray this not to be true.
(Incidentally, the song came, in part, from an experience wherein someone told K.C. she was too fat to be in the recording industry, then followed it up with something like, “I only say this because I care and I don’t want you to be disappointed,” which is a horrible thing to say to someone).
So yeah - sorry about the lack of explanation (and the overlong one here). I think we missed one another’s meaning.
In other news, I am crazy looking forward to seeing you two this week. Travel safely. - n
3 January 2006 12:55 pm