Great works of popular culture, like great works of literature, represents that generation like a stamp mark that does not fade easily. I am reminded of this fact today as I drive to work and am pleasantly serenaded by a song I use to hold close to my heart.
The song is ‘What’s up”, the 1993 hit single by the San Francisco rock band Four non-Blondes. Written by the lead singer, Linda Perry, it was a song that was constantly on my play list since I was first introduced to it by a friend in the summer of 1994. It was a song which I felt spoke directly to my inability to relate to my environment which I felt, back then, did not understand nor appreciate my sensibilities:
The song is ‘What’s up”, the 1993 hit single by the San Francisco rock band Four non-Blondes. Written by the lead singer, Linda Perry, it was a song that was constantly on my play list since I was first introduced to it by a friend in the summer of 1994. It was a song which I felt spoke directly to my inability to relate to my environment which I felt, back then, did not understand nor appreciate my sensibilities:
25 years of my life and still
I'm trying to get up that great big hill of hope
for a destination
I realized quickly when I knew I should
that the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
for whatever that means
chorus:
'n so I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed
just to get it all out what's in my head
'n I, I'm feeling a little peculiar
'n so I wake in the morning and I step outside
'n I take a deep breath
'n I get real high
'n I scream from the top of my lungs
what's goin' on
and I try, oh my God do I try
I try all the time
in this institution
and I pray, oh my God do I pray
I pray ev'ry single day
for a revolution
Today, surprisingly, hearing the song after over a 15-year hiatus, I am drawn to the fact that the song no longer holds the intensity of association it had so long ago. What has happened? Has the song changed? Or has the person listening to it undergone some evolution of the mind and emotion (not to say the least of the body) that makes me less concern with the issues I once thought was sacrosanct to my identity as a person. Perhaps like the reading of novels one held dear as a young person, the text when read as an adult now means different to us partly because our life has taken us on that road and changed our perception of what matters and what can be left aside. As X. J. Kennedy & Dana Gioia state: “Rereading a novel as an adult, for example, that ‘changed your life’ as an adolescent, is often a shocking experience. The book may seem substantially different. ... Has the book changed? Very unlikely, but you certainly have in the intervening years.”
All the same it is a lovely song and warrants attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment