Light Years - A Reflection on High School

It seems that songs can have a huge influence as to where my thoughts go during the day. Over this past week I've been diving back into Pearl Jam and have had certain emotions rebirthed. But first a digression... It is significant I think the relationships we strive so hard to have and keep during high school, but two years out I have learned just how petty they really were. The number of people that I went to high school with that I still talk to I can count on both my hands. But oh how important they seemed during those four years.. I see some parallel with my current friendships, in college. I think this pettiness is the main reason that over the past two years I have clung more to the relationships I have at church instead of pursuing new relationships at UTA. Friendships with people in high school and college are ultimately futile. Granted there may be two or three people that really have an impact in my life but I believe that they will make themselves apparent anyhow. I could and almost desire at this point to discuss the fruitful relationships that can be gained through a local church but that would be far beyond the scope of what I want to discuss in this post. So what does Pearl Jam have to do with high school friendships? In their song Light Years the chorus echoes what I have always felt was the cry of people like me looking back at graduation and thinking "At that moment I didn't comprehend what it meant to never see this face next to me again" the chorus is as follows "And wherever you've gone... and wherever we might go... It don't seem fair... today just disappeared...Your lights reflected now... reflected from afar... We were but stones... your light made us stars" I've noticed as I walk UTA or drive around the city I will at times see a face of someone I once knew at Sam Houston. My responce is almost always the same.. either I will nod my head, slightly acknowledging that mutual bond, or I just ignore them. We are in so many respects light years away from one another. And at that moment I realize that yes the blame for this schism lies on both of us, but I also realize that the relationship meant nothing. Our feigned affection then has left us wholly unrecongnizable to one another. I firmly believe that we should be pursuing real relationships with all around us, but these walls created solely by my desire to find identity can not be broken until that search for identity is broken.

Life in Fog - My Analysis of "Round Here"

What does it mean to grow up? What does it mean to truly understand the world in which we live? Once we begin the journey offered in adulthood is it possible to possess “childlike” innocence? Can one be alive yet “dead”? What role does the notion of right and wrong play in our society? The song, “Round Here” written by Adam Duritz, fights with these questions. Through an exegetical new critical analysis of the lyric it will show that when an individual “grows up” if the notion of right and wrong is skewed, feign attempts at life will ultimately result in absolute despair. The analysis of this lyric will require a work in expository exegesis due to the linear progression of the story contained within the song. I will however highlight the central oppositions at the outset to clarify the minor oppositions and the plot development throughout. The central oppositions are Child v. Adult; Life v. Death; White v. Gray where white symbolizes the moral law and gray symbolizes some undefined notion of relativism. The first verse contains the first glimpse of the child v. adult and white v. gray oppositions. The singer steps outside into a foggy (gray) environment where “no one notices the contrast of white on white/ and Angels get a better view/ of the crumbling difference between wrong and right” (3-6). A paradox is created by this white environment. People see it as fog, yet this does nothing to change that it is really just white on white. With the conclusion of the verse we learn that the protagonist believes in this moral law e.g. “Round here, we always stand up straight” (12). Almost like an obedient child who follows the “moral law” dictated by their parents. We also learn that Maria, possibly his love, believes she is dying which the singer cannot understand, likely due to his innocence. However, Maria does seem to understand the source of her turmoil. The second verse through several oppositions centered on Maria develops her character substantially. The fourteenth line alerts us to the fact that Maria has come from Nashville with her suitcase. One could easily interpret this as meaning she has in some way failed in a musical endeavor. The opposition of hope v. despair is thus introduced. Within the second line she announces that she wants to meet a boy who looks like Elvis. This is significant due to the fact that Duritz, the songs author, is a scruffy looking guy compared to the clean cut Elvis. The opposition between beauty and ugly is developed in a way that is mutually exclusive in experience concerning the singer or Maria. The singer could defiantly be psychological hurt by this gesture whereas Maria is obviously fighting her despair. In the sixteenth line one of the key ideas to unlocking this song is posited. Maria is on a high wire, the entire world is looking at her and her failure, and the sick part is many among the spectators are probably cheering for her fall. She is then painted completely as a paradox. “She takes her clothes off/ She says she’s close to understanding Jesus” (18-19). She understands that these two things cannot go together she understands she is misunderstood. Her realization of this inconsistency causes her to be nervous, and it takes no scientist to know that being nervous on a high wire can be deadly. The question then must be asked, why get on the wire if so much toil awaits? To find beauty, the aesthetic is what waits on the other side of the wire. So the verse ends with a declaration that we all want to “carve out our names” i.e. find beauty, and to do so we will roar like a lion or sacrifice as one would a lamb. The result Maria falls from the wire a foreshadowing of her death. In the bridge we begin to see more clearly the most central opposition which is that of child v. adult. The singer cries out for the innocent children to run away from this gray world which would allow such an evil high wire to exist. He argues from the image of a child that there is safety in innocence. Then in the final verse we see the conclusion to the three central oppositions. It begins with Maria saying that her desire to kill herself is “only in my head” (31). This may be recognized as an opposition between mind and body where Maria would be saying that her mind is leading her to contemplate this action. Maria then says that her “walls are crumbling” these walls would be everything in the second verse i.e. her vocational hope, libido, religion the crumbling of which caused her to be nervous. This results in her jumping off a building, truly falling off the high wire. And now you have our singer, does he jump as well? Most likely not, but one thing is certain the innocence he cried for in the bridge the innocence that prevented him from understanding Maria’s crying in the first verse is absolutely gone. The opposition of life v. death is at the forefront as he grows up to being truly an adult. The paradox is formed, can one who is now dead still be alive, or the inverse can one who is alive be in some respect dead? He now can freely do the things a child would want to such as stay up late, but they now amount to nothing. Yet certainly, he is now on the same high wire as Maria and he sees the same gray fog and he is horrified. He depicts this with the phrase “I’m under the gun” (49). Contained in this plea is the horrifying irony of the lyric “I said I’m under the gun round here/ I’m innocent, I’m under the gun round here” (49-50). Now that he understands the evil of the fog he wants to go back to the childlike innocence he used to know, but he can’t. A tension is created by the almost mute scream to end the song “I can’t see nothing/ Nothing round here” (51-52). It seems then that the fulcrum thus rests on the notion of right and wrong. If you forgo this idea for some form of inconsistent morality you belittle the high wire and thus cause the real emotion of despair. Adulthood would then be one constant falling from the goal of the aesthetic.

To Embark

I have for some time been limited in my expression of feelings/thoughts to the confines of a facebook status or in my own journal. This has proved inadequate. So all this shall function as is a new medium for self expression. I find that when I want to share anything on facebook I am limited in what I really can say. I would like to start this blog with an explanation for its title. I do not believe that in this short post I can undertake the totality of the meaning I intend, but I will attempt to sum it up. I have in recent weeks come to believe that the "self" what I would call "me" is wholly unachievable. I can never be "me". "Me" will always be my reaction to what society, in the form of all influences i.e. friends, teachers, celebrities, and inanimate things, acts upon me. In saying this I believe that God intended us to have this futility. We should be cognizant that we can not achieve any true identity. And thus realize that the "self" is inadequate and thus accept the gift of a new self in the pursuit of the likeness of Christ. This pursuit being the Biblical doctrine of sanctification i.e. the idea of killing myself daily. The beauty of it is then that we are like Christ instead of being like all the futile influences around us. A lot of this idea has come from the words in Lecrae's song Just Like You. Check the link for the song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2OZRFambeg