ninety-four (theme: the seven deadly sins)

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Dance of the Seven Veils
Liz Phair
Exile in Guyville
1993

I hate sounding like one of those people.  Someone who loves an artist, but then is all like, "remember when so and so used to be good?  When she used to make good music?"  BUT I'M GOING TO DO IT.  Liz Phair used to be good. 
So good.  Her music was angry and messy and dirty (really dirty, haha) and unapologetic.  It galloped.  Sometimes it was really hard to get a hold of; the pitch of her voice or weird tempo of the music made it hard to like, initially.

Exile in Guyville is a perfect album.  Maybe it is Liz Phair's masterpiece and it'll never be topped.  I guess one thing that can be said for Liz Phair is that she isn't constantly trying to recreate this album; her music evolves as she does.  I just wish the material she has released as a result of this evolution was actually...good (there's that word again).

The protagonists in Phair's songs are neither GOOD nor BAD.  They are flawed, BUT are not condemned for their flaws or for their behaviour. They seem stronger for having these flaws AND they have attitude--like of the "fuck it" variety.  This brings me to this week's theme.  "Dance of the Seven Veils" has it all: Biblical references!  Lust!  Murder!  Prostitution!  The number seven!  This song has an eerie quality; the opening "Johnny my love" is downright creepy.  Phair's voice reaches a spookily angelic pitch when she sings the chorus.  She's an angel that isn't exactly fighting for a spot in Heaven.  She isn't concerned with pleasing everybody or meeting someone else's standards.  There isn't a complete disregard for consequences here, but at least the speaker is making her own choices.

ninety-four. [THEME: the seven deadly sins]

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

Madness
Artist: Muse
Album: The 2nd Law
Year: 2012
♥: Listen to the song before you read the post.


The seven deadly sins only work because they assume something's tangibly wrong with you. If you avoid them: you stay in line; you follow the rules; you live life in moderation; you function in society. You remain a sane, pleasant person with no discernably interesting qualities. Passion, of course, is gluttony -- is pride -- is wrath -- is lust -- is greed. It's assuming that you matter in relation to a larger picture, that your ideas and emotions could possibly be relevant.

That is a problem.

I have tried to start this paragraph a dozen times and it's a hard one. I can't speak for everyone; I can only speak for myself, sitting as a 26-year-old woman who is inexperienced and values passion as much as she values logic. I can't have a religion telling me that a bout of gluttony sends me to hell -- not when I've learned from it; not when I'll never experience it again (or if I do, it will be yet another learning experience) -- not when to experience these sins, and know what they can "cause" (if I believed in a Christian system), and keep experiencing them, would mean I was...well...

Mad.

I don't like qualifying things as good or bad. I don't believe that's the way you best learn from them. I realize that's not true for everyone, but it's true for me, right now. And to not fit into society, to not -- on some level -- be trying to hide the fact that I am lustful and masturbate or am gluttonous and eat sugar or am prideful and enjoy knowing I've made my students consider an issue from a different angle -------------- would make me mad, crazy, NOT MYSELF, because it would be denying who I am. And it's not that I'm not trying to change myself, every day and all the time, but that I need to come to terms with ME before I change her -- before I shift her around for someone else's reasons. Blind obedience -- now that's a sin.


This song builds, slowly, like an epiphany. The layers quietly come, one upon another, with that echoing refrain of madness, of not belonging. And they build and they build and I sit speechless every time, and even though it's Muse and they've used this method a million times, there's something new about this. "I have finally seen the light / I have finally realized" -- a bit of religious imagery, just to tie this theme together; a bit of neglecting the rules of religion and following something deeper ---



Because as this song builds,
REALLY builds,
"I have finally seen the light
I have finally realized ----

I need your love."

It breaks my heart.
That scream, that cry, that howl, climbs and climbs and breaks my fucking heart into irreparable pieces.

Because I do.

And in a lot of ways, that makes me mad.
It makes me different than I used to be, it makes me an outcast in many societies, it makes me a lunatic for being so swayed by the emotions and moments of someone outside myself. It makes me unable to control my sins, unable to keep myself in line, unable to force myself into a corner and into a functional facsimile of what people believe. Love, for another person, for someone or something truly and intensely, is all the sins at once. It is madness.


And I love, I love, that this song ends on a possibility.
"Our love is --- "


You could hear it end as "our love is madness", or you could hear that last chant of "madness" as the last chant in a series of those repeating throughout the song, and thus irrelevant...but isn't that the point, really? Love, love love love, is madness. Only madness. It makes no sense, in relation to the morals and realities and structures we've placed upon society. Love between a woman and a woman -- madness...in the worst sense, to some,


and the best sense,
to me.
To us.