What Kind of Equation?

[bcholmes]

I've got Ani's Revelling/Reckoning loaded on to one of my machines at work. It's not one of my favourites; I don't find it as edgy as her earlier work. As a result, I haven't listened to it too closely, although I hear tracks from it when I have my music running on shuffle.

Without a doubt, my favourite part of music is the lyrics. And when I caught this snippet of the lyrics a while ago, my curiosity was piqued:

What kind of scale
compares the weight of two beauties
the gravity of duties
or the ground speed of joy?
tell me what kind of guage
can quantify elation?
what kind of equation
could I possibly employ?

I find these lyrics incredibly evocative. They appeal to a brain that keeps wanting to apply its formal math training to life, and emotion, and hope. So I started to listening a bit more closely to the rest of the song.

The scenario that Ani describes in the first verse of the song is of breaking up.

she went over to his apartment
clutching her decision
and he said, did you come here to tell me goodbye?

And listening more, I was struck by the way she describes her ambivalence about breaking up. She sings:

and she said:
you are a miracle but that is not all
you are also a stiff drink and i am on call
you are a party and i am a school night
and i'm lookin' for my door key
but you are my porch light

And I guess there's something about that torn-ness that really speaks to me. Not in any specific way, at this moment in my life, but I do recognize times in my life when I grasped for equations that would help me figure out what the right course of action is.

she's choking on the smoke
of unthinkable choices
she is haunted by the voices
of so many desires
she's bent over from the business
of begging forgiveness
while frantically running around
putting out fires

In retrospect, I'm surprised at how long it took me to recognize that she was talking about choosing between two lovers -- a situation that I'm never able to view the same way since becoming poly. She sings:

and you'll never know, dear
just how much i loved you
you'll probably think this was
just my big excuse
but i stand committed
to a love that came before you
and the fact that i adore you
is but one of my truths

And it was only after I picked up on that concept that I realized that a lot of those lyrics that I previously found quite beautiful tended to juxtapose passion and obligation. "You are a party and I am a school night". What initially sounded like a really compelling story of someone wrestling with deciding to end a relationship (while acknowledging that on many levels she's still very emotionally attached) now appears to be a much more banal tune about choosing between two lovers. Even seeming to say "this is what being in a relationship is about".

It kinda comes across to me as an anti-poly song. Although I suspect that it's really more an "ending the affair" song.

It was interesting to reflect on my various reactions to the song.

Comments

[ubiquity.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's really interesting! I'm constantly amazed at how ingrained these kind of assumptions are. Polyamory just seems so totally obvious to me that it's sometimes hard for me to understand how monogamous people think, but the reverse is even more the case. Polyamorous people are at least exposed to stereotypes of monogamous people, whereas most monogamous people don't even consider polyamory as an option, and there are no ubiquitous poly stereotypes.

A song that evokes a feeling of tornness in me is Tied (http://www.telltalerecords.com/clips/lyrics.html) by Kaydi Johnson. It's not subtle about it like the Ani song, but it of course shares the same assumptions. It makes me remember how I felt when I was in an exclusive relationship and not free to be with someone else I loved. It reminds me of how I never want to feel again.

(:,
Pace