Turning attention once more to this oft-ignored bastion of dilettantism, I blow on dusty serifs, adjust listing margins, and wipe down the photo header in the misapprehension that a new offering may induce company to come calling. If you, dear reader, have stumbled through Google's back pages to find a nook so tiny as to single-handedly double its readership, I, in turn and in turns, thank, bless, and pity you. May God have mercy on your soul.
And he certainly does, which brings me to the nexus of this effort. Over the past few weeks, "Fallen Down," a tune by rock trio Gov't Mule, has found its way into my thoughts and lodged itself between my unconscious and conscious selves, that penumbral region of malleable grey matter known better as "conscience". Why has a pop song, and this one in particular, resonated so much of late, I find myself wondering. I respond thricely and thusly: (a) pop songs are earworms, and "Fallen Down," as a musical composition, is as close to approachable as Gov't Mule ventures, (b) the song's lyrics describe ingenerate human struggles quite viscerally, especially in the areas of human weakness and regret, and (c) those lyrics offer an opportunity for subversive interpretation beyond, and in contrast to, their surface meaning.
All music is intended to provoke the listener in some capacity. Those compositions which succeed deserve recognition and an accompanying deeper exploration, if not loquacious over-indulgence.
Falling
The lyrics of "Fallen Down" tell the tale of a sordid life from the perspective of old age. The singer, in the role of prosecutor, presents a biographical portrait of the subject to the subject, connecting how the man's youthful folly and maltreatment of his peers have left him lonely and regretful. The singer notes that the price of egoistic fulfillment during the man's heyday was to lack what he ultimately seeks now: connection.
A sampling of the man's treatment of others is provided:
Target practice with other people's lives Hit a few right between the eyes But, most of the time, you were wounded by the ricochet You say play to win, boys, never play to lose Long as you're playing, boy, you're bullet-proof But think about it - you're bleeding to death anyway
Using people for one's own ends takes many forms, such as befriending someone solely to enhance one own's clout, taking advantage of a friend's generosity, and still baser manipulations and abuses. But while its manifestations may differ in kind, its effects carry a common subtext: in the end, such relationships do not, nor can they, persevere. The transacted party ends up discarded, the abuser ends up debased, and one or both end up hurt.
This ambivalence toward others was intended to enrich the man, at least temporarily, but the realized gain is found to be worthless:
And you have fallen down, down from the heavens
Stuck out in the desert
Amazing grace - such a lonely place
For heroes like you and me
Fallen down, just like a shooting star
With no fallen angel standing by
To carry you away
Even his corruptible friends, or "fallen angels," have abandoned him. He is left with memories of loss made more tangible by his actual loneliness or abandonment in later life.
Rising
It is a great irony that the optimism innate to the American Project, e.g. the belief that anyone can prosper through hard work and determination, finds no home in many American art forms. The blues is a prime example. Developing as it did out of the experiences of slavery in the 1800s and of abject poverty through the early and mid-1900s, the blues has always been an expression of pain and helplessness.
Gov't Mule's musical style, borrowing heavily from the blues, provides them license to write songs in a similar tradition; that is without the happy endings common to most popular music. "Fallen Down" is a perfect example.
However, while some see only despair and loss in a song whose denouement refuses to resolve happily, I see an opportunity and an invitation. Songs such as "Fallen Down," and the blues in general, offer an opportunity for the listener to participate in the creative process with the singer by inviting the listener to append a suitable epilogue through their own lives.
The lyrics of "Fallen Down" do not need to be the final chapter of the man's life, and so by extension, the end of anyone's life story. Each listener has an opportunity to live their own life in a way that uplifts other people instead of in a way that reduces their dignity, as the man in the lyrics lived. In a sense, this cautionary tale of falling down should inspire us to instead rise up. It calls us to identify those areas of our lives in which we are compulsive users - of ourselves, of other people, of things - and to initiate positive change instead. It calls us to seek forgiveness when we fall down, and to offer it freely to others when they do too. It calls us to follow our conscience instead of our ego. And if we find ourselves, as the man did, regretting past mistakes, it tells us that so long as we have breath, our story has not reached its last page. We can still be forgiven, loved, accepted, and dignified. We can still forgive, love, accept, and dignify others.
In essence, a song like "Fallen Down" only tells half of a story. It is a sort of meta "call and response," to borrow from blues parlance. The call of injustice personified lyrically by the man's life demands a response by us, the listeners, in our own lives and communities. The song leaves us to finish the tale in whichever way we choose; not musically, but in reality. We're called, therefore, to join this musical composition and our own lives into a single story, and to live our days in such a way that when an author pens a story about our lives, the last chapter will have been beautifully written in advance.
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