Meet Me at the Scene of the Crime

I remember everything
I knew all along we were pushing our luck
I saw it coming
I thought I'd better keep my big mouth shut
I was thinking
I was wondering how long we would go on like this
I was falling
Now we're not going to know what we made, what we missed

I felt the stumble
I saw the road rise up and something hit it hard
I didn't feel the earth move
I don't know what became of you
I only know that this is where we are

I saw the lights go out all over the world
We're not going to stop it this time
There's no room for error, there's no time to argue
Meet me at the scene
Meet me at the scene of the crime

I remember you
You were larger than life, it was some destiny
It was pathetic
But at the time it all seemed quite real to me
I was certain
I was certain you were meant for me
You were meant for me
I was mistaken
And now it won't let me have a moment's peace

I saw the lights go out all over the world
Let's forget it, let's get on with our lives
There's no room for error, there's no time to argue
Meet me at the scene
Meet me at the scene of the crime

We know what we are, we know not what we may be
We know what we are, we know not what we may be
We know what we are, we know not what we may be
We know what we are, we know not what we may be

This is madness
This is what we've come to, this is how it ends
This is nothing
This is nothing like what we had come to expect
This is useless
This is not what anybody had in mind
This is hopeless
This is what we get for our trouble and our time

After the stop signs, after the hard times, after the other shoe drops
After the give and take, after the heart breaks, after the music stops

I saw the lights go out all over the world
I heard the crowds singing "Auld Lang Syne"
There's no room for error, there's no time to argue
Meet me at the scene
Meet me at the scene of the crime

*****************

This is one of my favourite titles. There was a time, a time long gone no doubt, when "the scene" was one of those phrases people used. I think the Dave Clark Five even had a song called "At The Scene." The scene was whatever place was cool, whatever place you wanted to be, whatever place was worth being. But the scene of the crime - that's a place you don't want to go. Or, more accurately, it's a place where you should not go, under any circumstances, no matter how great the temptation. However great the desire to return to that memorable place, actually going back is always a mistake.

The past can be like that. Memory can be like that.

A strange piece in numerous small ways. It has a real, honest-to-goodness middle eight - and oddly enough, one that consists of eight actual bars. The overall structure is Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Middle Eight-Verse-Chorus. However the Verse sections are built around two separate chord patterns - the Bm sequence for the first four lines, and then two different sequences beginning in F#m that somehow hurry us into the chorus (and it occurs to me now that I should do something with the rhythm section to reflect that kind of push forward into the chorus. The chorus itself works a variation of the Bm sequence, with a special sequence to finish and bring the music to a complete halt. Which is another unusual thing about the song - while there is some kind of urgency in the rhythm, and the song keeps moving, it has all these stops and starts. After each chorus and after the middle eight we come to a complete stop. And so each verse begins with the music having come to a complete halt, while the voice does a phrase by itself. And yet the strangest thing of all - to me anyway - it that the song begins with a Bm chord. That puzzles me - for thirty years Bm has not been a chord I would turn to except as a last resort, or when I'm transposing from another key. What would possibly cause me to begin a sequence with a Bm? I can't even imagine it. I can no longer remember whether I wrote this on guitar or piano. I'm pretty sure it was guitar, but it seems somehow clear that I wasn't very concerned about the guitar - as if I had little intention of actually playing the song on guitar. So just how did that happen? Lennon loved the minor third ("Help," "A Day in the Life") but it's not one of my moves. Of course, it's not even one of my moves here - the song is in D, and the Bm it opens with is actually the minor sixth, which I do all the time. Just not in D.

We begin with all these assertions of certainty - I knew all along, I saw it coming - and it all seems a little excessive. So much certainty ought to make us suspicious, and sure enough, it all begins to fall away. By the time we reach the first chorus, it's clear that very little is known about anything, and that there's very little one can count on to be true and say that one knows. Few things are as mysterious, few things are as treacherous. The song is about memory in many ways, and is situated between two murky realities: some kind of present, where it seems that only one thing is known, but it's known very well indeed - the lights have gone out all over the world. There, and some kind of past, where much is remembered, but so vaguely and imperfectly that little of it can be counted on.

Until the second verse, anyway. Part of the past lurches into very sharp focus and heaven help us - the bitterness! the recriminations! It's all a little ghastly. It was pathetic? What kind of way is that to look back on anything? The true thing at the centre of all this - I was certain you were meant for me, I was mistaken - can only be pushed away. Pushed away hard, as it seems awfully difficult to get rid of. And as words fail us, we fall into one of my carefully constructed guitar solos. After a second chorus (and all three choruses are slightly different - for some reason, the second line is always different) we come to another complete halt. But this time we tumble into the middle eight.

The middle eight is built around a single chord - it's just A major ringing out, again and again - and it occurs to me that with no harmonic movement, perhaps there should be a little bit more happening in terms of rhythm during this part of the song. And there is just one line, repeated four times - and it's mad Ophelia's excessively sane observation from Hamlet.

We know not what we may be, but we know what this is. And the final verse casts its bleak and bitter judgement. This is madness, this is nothing, this is useless, this is hopeless. What the hell am I talking about anyway? The judgements are so absolute that the mood is becoming positively apocalyptic. After all these things are over, after we sing the last song, after we drink up and go home... can you meet me at the scene of the crime?

I can't go back, I must go back...

Authority

I have never believed in the authority of the author, or the relevance of the author's intention. I'm not sure why anyone would. There can be no gulf between what is meant and what is said. What is said is all there is. It's all we ever have.

And this is obvious, really. This is a bit of wisdom we all pick up from ordinary experience, from people arguing over what they meant and what they actually said. I think I was always aware of the gulf that opens up between these things. I certainly didn't need to read Wimsatt or hear about the intentional fallacy

This is true of speech, although in conversation where we can directly inquire if we feel the need as to whether they might be any difference between what was said and what was intended.

It is even more true of writing, which is in essence abandoned speech. Obviously, the anonymous masters, from Homer to Shakespeare, absolutely decline to assist us in making anything of their texts (which we approach as written documents, although we should always remember that neither Homer's poems nor Shakespeare's plays enter the world as texts but as performances.) But what applies to them applies to everyone. Writing is abandoned speech. It says what it says, and only that - but that is quite enough.

So the gulf only opens up if you allow it to. What is said or what is written - that is what is meant. And trying to divine some unspoken but intended meaning is just some weird detour...

But this brings us, as usual, to Swift.

Jonathan Swift, that meddlesome priest, gleefully subverts the whole process. Without the notion of the author's intention, an extremely dubious concept, we run into some very disturbing problems. How are we to cope with "A Modest Proposal," which nowhere pretends to mean anything other than what it says. The idea that this text might mean exactly what it says - that the poor children of Ireland should be fattened, slaughtered, and sold as food to the rich, that this is best solution to the problems of poverty and famine, and the best fate these children could hope for anyway - well, this has proved utterly impossible for anyone to cope with, ever.

And so, from the day it first appeared, we have tamed this wild piece of writing. We have put a frame around it, labelled it irony, and made desperate reference to concepts like Swiftian satire. But there is no license anywhere in what Swift wrote that permits this. It's simply how we cope.

Lennon's Birth Day

Sixty-seven (sixty-seven?) years ago, as the Battle of Britain began to fizzle out.

Lennon's been gone a very long time now - twenty-seven years this December. Far longer than he was a living presence in our lives. It seems odd, maybe because he was such a large and vivid presence while he was alive.

I'm at least old enough to remember that - the five years of the Beatles, the five erratic years afterwards, and then the five years of silence. But always a living presence - you always wondered what he thought about what was going on, what he might do or say next, what he had planned. No one like him today.

Hell, no one like him then.

Hey, we're really moving along now. Aren't we?

Here We Go

The idea is that on the off chance I feel like writing about something besides baseball, this will be the place.

I do have other interests. I think.