Forum / "Story 2": An exercise in narrative.

  • Better.thumb

    It's actually a two-minute rap song by this act on the Sub Pop (Seattle grunge) label called clipping. See how much they cram in in a short space of time (here's a video I made with some flipcam photos):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFUdzbIAhTI&feature=youtu.be
    ---------------------------------------------
    Here's some interesting debate, on this genius.com[*] site:

    Wintermute 3 months
    I think this song might be about Michael being in Purgatory or Hell. Things like, “godsmack is how the wind feel” and “why won’t you just let me die” allude to this. Michael is directly feeling god’s wrath on him, then asking why god doesn’t just smite him instead of forcing him to live through this scenario over and over again. “Blue Acura dent on the left rear fender/ Back again the sense of Deja Vu” is my main point in inferring that this specific scenario has happened before. There’s no reference to the Blue Acura at any other spot and it’s so specific. “There’s that familiar taste/ He wishes it would take him to another place” the other place being the other side or heaven or death. “when he knows the results too well” as he’s experienced this before. “That was a full lifetime ago”—literally.
    The alternative interpretation would be that one of his victims has taken their vengeance on him, the blue Acura being one he remembers from one of the houses. My main issue with this is the lack of the blue Acura being referenced in this way. It seems like too far of a stretch to just attribute it to one of his victims just because there’s no other mentions. There are so many references to recurring experiences in this song i think it’s reasonable to assume he’s just reliving the same nights. Perhaps he really did die the first time he tried to save his family but instead of truly dying he was forced to relive the day.
    Anyway, great song, great lyricism.
    -----------------
    2 months
    “Godsmack” is in part a callback a “Story” on their first album where it was also the first word in the song. On the page for that song someone hypothesized that it’s a reference to the alt metal band, but that interpretation seems tenuous to me.
    -----------------
    MechaKirby7 0
    2 months
    “Mike asking came the crowd that gathered round” should be “Mike asking the crowd that has gathered ‘round”. “Since the last that he ran it god dammit” should include the word “time” between “last” and “that”. And, although not entirely lyrical, the “ha” after the line “Guess there just wasn’t a spark” is important to the story.
    Also, according to UrbanDictionary, Godsmack is another term for a heroin overdose, which could be referencing how good the wind feels on Mike’s face after leaving the bar that night, as it is implied he dislikes his job. However, a second definition says that a godsmack is a display of karma, which plays off of Wintermute’s idea of a purgatory or hell scenario.
    ---------------------------------------------
    [*] Which is about THIS:

    "Today we take a crucial step forward in the mission to annotate the world: Introducing Genius.com, the new home of this great knowledge project.

    "When we created Rap Genius 5 years ago, we had no plans to expand beyond rap lyrics. But the community had a bigger vision, and it wasn’t long before 'Rap' Genius housed the collected works of Shakespeare and Jane Austen, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, poetry by T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes, TV and movie scripts, Chipotle’s menu, the back of a Tylenol bottle, the roster of the 1986 New York Mets, and that dream you keep having where your teeth fall out—all lovingly and carefully annotated.

    "In retrospect this was inevitable. Any text can be as layered, as allusive and cryptic, as worthy of careful exegesis as rap lyrics. Furthermore, it’s simply not possible to create a website that annotates rap alone, just as it’s not possible to create a website that annotates any individual slice of human culture—because no slice of human culture stands on its own."

    http://genius.com/Genius-founders-introducing-geniuscom-annotated
    ---------------------------------------------
    Feed your heads, narrative artists!

  • You must log in to reply to this thread.