HUMAN | NATURE
In Mixes on 14 July 2009
This week’s mix is as close as I’ll get to Michael Jackson tribute.
Of course, like every nine-year-old kid in 1983, I liked all of the singles from “Thriller,” but where my friends were endlessly enamored of the bigger hits — “Billie Jean,” “Thriller,” “Beat It” — my favorite song was easily and always “Human Nature.” Written by Steve Porcano of Toto, the song has the same breathy, easy melody of that band’s 1982 hit singles, but what was compelling to me as a child were the lyrics. Where most of the songs on “Thriller” were dance music, “Human Nature” was literally the first conceptually complex song that I connected with deeply. On its surface, the song is a defense of the main character’s lifestyle — clubbing and a one-night stand. What struck me then, and is still interesting to me is that the song’s character literally doesn’t provide a reason for his choices.
When I was nine I didn’t fully understand the song’s narrative (the character looks out his window before going out for the night, meets a woman, brings her home and wakes up next to her only to look out the window again as the sun rises) or its sad subtext (I read the final image of the character looking out over the city again to indicate that he’ll repeat the previous night’s activities with a new woman tonight). But what did ring through to me was the character’s defense of his choices: I don’t have a reason. That’s just how I am.
The mystery at the heart of the character’s self-knowledge resonated in me. I made choices for which I didn’t fully have rational defense. Or at least I couldn’t fully articulate them. I listened to the song over and over, absorbing it, and I still find it to be one of the most succinct defenses of something that is at the center of what it is to enjoy the freedoms of a liberal democracy: we can define ourselves (or we are at least promised that we will get the opportunity.)
I am a mystery. What a lovely, appropriate song for Michael to sing. So long as we do no harm, we are fortunate to pursue our unexplainable loves and obsessions. What joy that can be, and what pain it can bring.
This mix is less about the phenomenon of Michael as a pop star and more about what I believe is one of his finer artistic moments at the peak of his often troubled and troubling career. These songs each explore the same phenomena: how human beings love what they love, often without reason or logic.
Sometimes it’s something tiny, but it means the world, and freedom to us: Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick, Push” demonstrates this nicely, with its narrative of a young boy who find freedom, purpose, community and eventually love in something as outwardly simple as skateboarding. For Paul Simon’s character in “Late In The Evening,” that Something is music, as it is for the little triptych of hip-hop songs by Eric B and Rakim, Mos Def, and Aesop Rock.
The “I find my identity in hip-hop” ode is now so common a trope in the genre that I’m sometimes tempted to get bored with the more plain examples. I do not actually think hip-hop has saved anyone’s life, for example. However, Rakim’s lyrics stand, firstly as one of the earliest examples of this trope, but also, as one of the freshest and most original, because of the fact that he describes his love both as a fan as a writer. The end of verse one, “I start to think/and then I sink/into the paper/like I was ink/when I’m writing I’m trapped between the lines/i escape/when I finish the rhyme” stands as one of the best descriptions of what it means to be writer, or a maker of anything, I have encountered. The feeling of compulsion, and that it comes (as the song suggests) from somewhere deeper than emotion, from the soul, is, again, a perfect expression of what it is to be like this, to need to speak, or make something beautiful.
Mos Def’s track is equally powerful, and it is both a tribute to Rakim (who he quotes) and an extension of Rakim’s idea. For Mos, the operating power is not soul but love, and his description of that love as flowing out from both the music and from his connection to his family and his faith is moving.
Aesop Rock describes perfectly the frustration of artists trying to pursue their craft in an economy that neither values nor cultivates artistry and the passion that births it.
We don’t always love what is best for us, though, and several songs here reflect that. I see Springsteen’s character in “Darkness on the Edge of Town” as a darker corollary to the character in “Human Nature” — someone who is compelled to pursue what calls him out into the night until it threatens personal tragedy. At the same time, Springsteen conveys a compassion for such souls (haven’t we all been there, after all?) that is rare. The Velvet Underground and Mike Doughty explore opposite sides of how that darkness can manifest in addiction — the Velvets describe the danger and surreality and powerlessness of a drug buy while Doughty paints a vivid portrait of an addict in recovery.
The remainder of the tracks deal simply humans in love with humans. Neko Case, who opens the mix, wants love, but finds that one of the mysteries of who she is means that she cannot allow herself to be open enough to receive it. Love can become obsession, and here we find Over the Rhine’s haunting “I Will Remember.” Or it can be the very thing that ignites our desire for freedom and self-actualization. The Deftones’ often explore this — how young lovers often become each other’s first glimpse at true personhood. Chino Moreno’s sweetly desperate singing paired with the warm thunder of the guitars and drums in “Cherry Waves” is one of the band’s best. Rufus Wainwright recounts an obsession with what turns out to be an empty fantasy. How often do we knowingly fool ourselves?
Both Johnny Cash and Wilco explore what it is to be broken and love, and to know that they mystery of one’s brokenness need not keep us from love, or healing, so long as we have faith.
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