Sinister: i don't know where the summer goes...

[Archel]

dear list,

this will be my last message of the year. i hope everyone's managing
to feel more festive than i am, because it would be nice to think of
partying sinisterines even though i have been struggling with an essay
and have had no social life to speak of for ages.

lesley jo, may she be granted lifelong happiness, wrote:

******
if i am one of the people who are ruining the list then i never
meant to be. i'm not so  stupid and shallow that all i care about is
who is the cutest one, etc!!!  the only reason i ever loved  B&S was
because their music touched me in a way  i haven't felt for  very
long.
******

the only people who ruin the list are people who deliberately try
to make others feel bad. i don't want to speak for others, but hell, i
will anyway. we love you lesley jo! 'life is never dull in your
dreams'.

to sign off, here's some (slightly out of date) thoughts on ...Modern
Rock Song. the first half of the song (the part that we don't like as
much) is about a kind of male identity crisis i think. boy meets
girl/girl runs away/girl attacks boy/girl goes off with another girl. 
the narrator is trying to get the girl, but 'emma tried to run away'.
when he ctaches up with her she puts him on the ground with judo,
because his sexual advance 'i put my arm around her waist' is not what
she wants. she does not display conventional female passivity, and the
male narrator is put in the vulnerable position: 'she didn't recognise
my face/she wasn't even looking'. then we have him introducing laura,
but from an uncertain observer's viewpoint - '*i suppose* she needs a
holiday'. the two girls go off together, subverting traditional gender
pairings: 'she took emma by the hand, they've got a lot in common'.
this leaves the narrator adrift, 'feeling strange', and he has to
retreat into art (i'll go and play with words and pictures) and his
own head. he feels inadequate, that the girls know somwething he
doesn't, and through his song-writing persona is the only way he can
appraoch it: 'it's beyond me what a girl can see, i'm only lucid when
i'm writing songs'. INSTRUMENTAL BREAK. so, the second part of the
song, which apparently has nothing to do with the first part, is a
self-referential, postmodern (am i up my own arse enough yet?)
reflection on his whole reason for being. the narrator is trying to
regain control by looking inwards to the only territory where he feels
'lucid'. but still there is personal insecurity: 'i'm not as clever as
mark twain' and 'we're four boys in our corduroys, we're not terrific
but we're competent'. this may be all we can do, but we can do it.
songs are all we have, and this one's trying to justify itself.

i expect i'm far too much in academic essay mode still, and you can
laugh at me now. but i'm going away, so i WON'T KNOW. ha. until 1999,
adieu.

luv archel, a girl in the snow xxx 


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Rachel Playforth
rap101 at york.ac.uk
http://members.tripod.com/~RPlayforth/welcome.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------

"We're the younger generation, we grew up fast.
 All the others did drugs, they're taking it out on us."


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