Old love and impossibility
August 19th 2006 01:36
In NIN's/Johnny Cash's "Hurt", the speaker has failed an unspecified "you" -- and, what's more, he pays for it. He loathes himself, drugs himself, tries to kill the pain but can't, sits "full of broken thoughts I cannot repair". And he is condemned to stasis: "You are someone else. I am still right here."
The character doesn't necessarily say that he still loves, or ever loved, the addressee, but these are implications that we, versed in typical scenarios, are likely to draw.
The song is readily read as an extension of an ancient image -- the unrequited lover, the male protagonist sick with, driven mad by, love. So, in some respects, this particular old-love perspective is merely recent love times ten, an expressive exaggeration of familiar pangs. The depiction is realist in its dearth of roses, and romantic in the strength of its despair.
But one quality that the subject matter of old love seems particularly to yield is the combination of desire with impossibility. Both the NIN and Cash versions are sung somewhat matter-of-factly, accepting of limitation. The speaker has wasted away yearning for a second chance, and stares in the face the awareness that he won't get it.
What about the old-love perspective of the party no longer in love?
Well, consider Simon and Garfunkel: "She once was a true love of mine".
Emphasising the end of love, the speaker sets a series of impossible challenges. If she wants to be my true love again (and I suppose it's implied that she does), she must make a shirt with no seams nor needlework, and find an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand.
What I like in "Scarborough Fair" is the gentleness and restraint. The voice has elements of melancholy, kind affection, nostalgia, regret -- but it is essentially matter-of-fact. "This is the reality of the situation. My love is gone," says the speaker. And you believe him. He has no distinct emotions in tone or in language -- no passion, no anger. The musical style itself, its archaisms, consigns the love to long ago fairytale, to distant past.
But, though the words might be neutral, and the details of the old love and its ending left unexplained, there's a sense in which fire is implied. Sure, I might not feel anything now, but she used to be my true love. A whole tumultuous affair is hinted at. And the speaker still asks to be remembered to her. She still matters.
Say you honestly don't love someone. But not only that -- you also know, from experience, that you can't recapture whatever you had. You've tried too many times and failed, etc. Well, the love might be gone, but there might remain not only a longing for it, but a necessity to rekindle it.
Why necessity? Well, consider the regret and guilt, and the gulf of communication between you and this person you still care about. Consider the hurt you wish you could alleviate, especially if she still loves you. These are wrongs that love could apparently right.
And consider also the desire for the past to mean. It's difficult to shake various related feelings: that what's important should be actively perpetuated, that continuation creates meaning, and that the only important things are lasting. Of course you're not going to "let go" when your partner dies.
On the other hand, time seems to erode meaning, mock attempts to hold onto it. The "Hurt" speaker is pathetic; there is no value is his love -- "You are someone else. I am still right here."
A hopeless situation. In "Scarborough Fair", there might be affection and obligation, but you can't love what you love no longer; you can't make yourself love. In "Hurt", you can't stop yourself from loving; but there's no means of obtaining your object.
So it might turn out that the saddest thing in the world is not unrequited love -- which at least has hope -- but old, lost, ended love. The necessity but impossibility. The simultaneity of meaning and hollowness.
Notes:
-- The singing style of "Scarborough Fair" is customary for ballads. Yeats recommends a similar monotonal style for reciting poetry. One says the words, but doesn't add emotion, doesn't in that way force an interpretation. One allows the emotion, rather, to bubble up from the semantics of the words -- all the turmoil captured, but subdued -- creating a contrast between vocal tone and meaning, between what's said and how. And when the ballad is sung by an "I", there arise such questions as: What sort of person could speak these words evenly? What would they have had to go through to reach this level of calmness? What are they suppressing or not telling us? How do they really feel? -- Consider Nancy Sinatra -- distant, controlled: "Bang bang. My baby shot me down." It's almost euphemistic speech. Consider bluegrass lyrics or folk songs in general.
-- It's curious that such songs possess these two qualities: on the one hand, an openness to having limitless pain read into them; on the other hand, a "concealment" -- the meaning is there for anyone who listens carefully and considers the words, but they're usually recited by their speakers without awareness of their depths, they await later reclamation. In similar fashion, nursery rhymes are often surprisingly brutal or surprisingly achingly sad.
The character doesn't necessarily say that he still loves, or ever loved, the addressee, but these are implications that we, versed in typical scenarios, are likely to draw.
The song is readily read as an extension of an ancient image -- the unrequited lover, the male protagonist sick with, driven mad by, love. So, in some respects, this particular old-love perspective is merely recent love times ten, an expressive exaggeration of familiar pangs. The depiction is realist in its dearth of roses, and romantic in the strength of its despair.
But one quality that the subject matter of old love seems particularly to yield is the combination of desire with impossibility. Both the NIN and Cash versions are sung somewhat matter-of-factly, accepting of limitation. The speaker has wasted away yearning for a second chance, and stares in the face the awareness that he won't get it.
***
What about the old-love perspective of the party no longer in love?
Well, consider Simon and Garfunkel: "She once was a true love of mine".
Emphasising the end of love, the speaker sets a series of impossible challenges. If she wants to be my true love again (and I suppose it's implied that she does), she must make a shirt with no seams nor needlework, and find an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand.
What I like in "Scarborough Fair" is the gentleness and restraint. The voice has elements of melancholy, kind affection, nostalgia, regret -- but it is essentially matter-of-fact. "This is the reality of the situation. My love is gone," says the speaker. And you believe him. He has no distinct emotions in tone or in language -- no passion, no anger. The musical style itself, its archaisms, consigns the love to long ago fairytale, to distant past.
But, though the words might be neutral, and the details of the old love and its ending left unexplained, there's a sense in which fire is implied. Sure, I might not feel anything now, but she used to be my true love. A whole tumultuous affair is hinted at. And the speaker still asks to be remembered to her. She still matters.
***
Say you honestly don't love someone. But not only that -- you also know, from experience, that you can't recapture whatever you had. You've tried too many times and failed, etc. Well, the love might be gone, but there might remain not only a longing for it, but a necessity to rekindle it.
Why necessity? Well, consider the regret and guilt, and the gulf of communication between you and this person you still care about. Consider the hurt you wish you could alleviate, especially if she still loves you. These are wrongs that love could apparently right.
And consider also the desire for the past to mean. It's difficult to shake various related feelings: that what's important should be actively perpetuated, that continuation creates meaning, and that the only important things are lasting. Of course you're not going to "let go" when your partner dies.
On the other hand, time seems to erode meaning, mock attempts to hold onto it. The "Hurt" speaker is pathetic; there is no value is his love -- "You are someone else. I am still right here."
A hopeless situation. In "Scarborough Fair", there might be affection and obligation, but you can't love what you love no longer; you can't make yourself love. In "Hurt", you can't stop yourself from loving; but there's no means of obtaining your object.
So it might turn out that the saddest thing in the world is not unrequited love -- which at least has hope -- but old, lost, ended love. The necessity but impossibility. The simultaneity of meaning and hollowness.
Notes:
-- The singing style of "Scarborough Fair" is customary for ballads. Yeats recommends a similar monotonal style for reciting poetry. One says the words, but doesn't add emotion, doesn't in that way force an interpretation. One allows the emotion, rather, to bubble up from the semantics of the words -- all the turmoil captured, but subdued -- creating a contrast between vocal tone and meaning, between what's said and how. And when the ballad is sung by an "I", there arise such questions as: What sort of person could speak these words evenly? What would they have had to go through to reach this level of calmness? What are they suppressing or not telling us? How do they really feel? -- Consider Nancy Sinatra -- distant, controlled: "Bang bang. My baby shot me down." It's almost euphemistic speech. Consider bluegrass lyrics or folk songs in general.
-- It's curious that such songs possess these two qualities: on the one hand, an openness to having limitless pain read into them; on the other hand, a "concealment" -- the meaning is there for anyone who listens carefully and considers the words, but they're usually recited by their speakers without awareness of their depths, they await later reclamation. In similar fashion, nursery rhymes are often surprisingly brutal or surprisingly achingly sad.
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Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Is it good to be like a Buddhist, and experience no attachment -- neither pain nor love? Or is it good to open yourself to the world, and to feel both the highs and the lows? -- Well, my sincere advice is that I don't know. It depends too much on what other beliefs you hold. For instance, do you believe in such things as reincarnation? And what do you value most? Do you believe that absence of suffering is the highest good, or do you believe that experience of the world is important, or is there some other set of things you value?
For the same reason (that it depends on what you believe and value), I don't know whether the pleasure outweighs the pain...
You also ask if the pain is that bad. Well, this also I can't answer. I think it's too individually-variant. For some people it will be bad, and some will think it nothing at all.
So... protect yourself from the world or dive into it? What I personally believe is that there's no right and wrong to the matter, but only a choice. And there's no correct choice, but only a choice.