Yin : bleak times ahead.

A few weeks ago when I was at a friend's house, I heard the song 'Alors on danse' (So we just dance) by Stromae, courtesy of someone having downloaded it onto their phone whilst in Europe (elsewise it would've remained an 'unknown unknown' for me)

It was a pretty massive hit in that part of the world last year, reaching number one in 18 European countries plus Turkey (I bet Turkey were wishing that common music tastes were high on the criteria for joining the European Union). And that standard-bearer for our modern age, Kanye West, has done a remix for the English-speaking world, who apparently can't handle the song in its original form.

The song itself is orright (the vuvuzela sounding trumpet is a bit irritating after a while) and the split screen video clip below, similarly so. The main redeeming feature for me at least, were (was?) the lyrics.




Although I have been informed by my francophone insider, The Free(wo)man, that the lyrics are held in general contempt by young people in France, I actually quite like the flow of the verses - they have a morose, almost poetic quality, and the ideas while a bit trite are still nicely expressed (or maybe I have low expectations; yea I'm looking at you, Katy 'Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?' Perry):

(English translation: I just copied this off lyrics translation and can't vouch for their accuracy):


-
So we just dance
So we just dance
So we just dance

When we say study, it means work,
When we say work, it means money,
When we say money, it means spending
When we say credit, it means debt,
When we say debt, it means bailiff,
We agree to being in deep shit
When we say love, it means kids,
When we say forever, it means divorce.

When we say family, we say grief, because misfortune never comes alone.
When we say crisis, we talk about the wold, famine and then third world.
When we say tiredness, we talk about waking up still deaf from sleepless night
So we just go out to forget all our problems.

So we just dance… (X9)

So you say that it’s over because the only thing worse would be death.
When you finally think you’ll make it, there’s more and more!
Ecstasy means a problem, problems or just music.
It grabs you by the guts, it takes hold of your head and then you pray for it to end.
But your body is no heaven so you block your ears even more.
And then you yell even louder and it goes on…

So we just sing
Lalalalalala, Lalalalalala,
So we just sing
Lalalalalala, Lalalalalala,

So we just sing
So we just sing
And then only when it’s over, then we dance.

So we just dance (x7)

And well, there’s still more (x5)

-

opinions?
And to compound the dismal, existential despair that the lyrics invoke, have a lark at Allen Ginsberg's reading of 'Howl' - his seminal beat generation poem which begins with the famous line 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked'


Apologies for possibly subduing the pleasant mood of a languid, sunny Friday afternoon (the following post shall hopefully restore it)

c.l.

An open letter to Coleridge: please die now

Dear Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

Damn you and your infuriatingly complex poems. Why must there be forty-seven translations of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Why is the mariner's journey not a short trip to Ireland? Why does your stupid prose gloss complicate things? WHY ARE YOU A ROMANTIC POET??! Even Google agrees that Romanticism is 'one of the most complex literary movements in history'. WHY?

And, by the way, we all know you were doing illicit drugs, and not anodyne, when you wrote Kubla Khan! HA! Caught in the act! I'm GLAD that person from Porlock interrupted you while you were writing Kubla, otherwise I would have three hundred more lines of unintelligible poetry to dissect whilst trying to write a half-formidable essay of a few thousand words. Didn't you, while you were in one of your moments of 'spontaneity', stop to think of the poor, hassled students later who would potentially write essays on your poems a few centuries later who might be suffering??

You should be ASHAMED! The pain and trouble you are causing us is irreversible. My mind is forever scarred with lines of your poetry. So much so that I will myself, by the force of my uncontrollable primary imagination, erratically shout lines of your poems.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan decree..." NOO!!

No regards and very unsincerely,

~ Hurley Who

Meteors All Night

Poems. They strike at the most unexpected moments.

Case in point:

C.L sits down on a Monday night for a nice productive session of Conflict essay-writing.

All is going well but then C.L makes a fatal error: she writes an incomplete sentence. C.L glares at the computer screen because she can't see anything wrong with the sentence and thinks Word is just stupidly insisting it is wrong in that annoying Word way (ie. underlining in it in green squiggliness and suggesting to 'revise fragment'). Uh, not helpful!

Anyways, being in an irrational 'I am going to fix up this one unimportant sentence' mood C.L right clicks on 'About this sentence' to get an explanation for its incorrectness so she can fix it. Here's what appears:

C.L reads the pop up impatiently, but then gives a double glance at the phrase "Meteors all night" and thinks to self 'that's pretty... in a vague, grammatically incorrect sense.' Promptly gets sidetracked.

35 mins later: C.L has got no further on her essay, but instead has 3 versions of the poem "Meteors all Night" and accompanying music. Yay for random strikes of inspiration.

Enjoy:

Meteors all night- v.1

Come,

watch for

Meteors all night

Because the teacher said to.

And we will laugh clearly under the stars;

Those distant observers,

Blasts from the past

All over now.

Meteors all night- v.2

Come,

watch for

Meteors all night

Because the teacher said to.

And we will laugh clearly under the stars;

Those distant observers,

Blasts from the past

Dying in slow-motion

Just like us.


Meteors all night- v.3

Come,

watch for

Meteors all night

Because the teacher said to.

And we will laugh clearly under the Stars;

Celestial monuments to our Glory.

Let us grow young

Together.

BY COUNT LUCIFER

Music-matchability: Champagne Supernova (Oasis)

Note: Yeah the three versions are pretty similar, but Disco Read made a good point when she commented on their complete dissimilarities due to the different endings: Version 1 is about the fleetingness of Youth, Version 2 is more despairing in its outlook and Version 3 is well... hopeful?

Yes I totally intended that meaning :D