by Raquel Pinheiro
An old friend has, for the last couple of years, been suggesting I should write essays. About whatever I feel like, since I write to him regarding everything under the sun. Although there is an inordinate amount concerning guitars and songs, and quite a bit on feelings and emotions. Therefore, let’s go for it. Like the shorter text on Camber Sands, this isn’t a standard song, or record, review. Do I even do anything standard? Answer, standard (guitar) tuning.
“Good Grief! I’m almost running out of tissues. That’s a compliment, by the way.” is what I wrote on Bernard’s instagram post of Deep Emotions visualizer. Running almost out of tissues was a small dramatic exaggeration to, there, easily convey the feelings and emotions brought by the song. Which are many, and multilayered.
Here, I have more room. All the room I want. The tissues didn’t almost run out – there was a nice stock, but the song release day and subsequent days were trying. What does a mostly logical, calm, joyful, steady person of profound, even feelings, do when confronted with a flood of emotions? She’s lost. And, or, shuts down. Or tries to figure out why tears keep want to burst out. Tears?… Again? What is going on?
Deep Emotions is an emotional mine field for me. The begging is easy “I saw the stars align over Primrose Hill”. Oh! a fellow star gazer! Nice. 🙂 A stubborn daughter and a stubborn dad? Rings several bells. From then onwards, making the song mine, quicksand is afoot. It makes me traverse at least, two separate levels of stored grief and trauma, that I thought solved, shelved, dusted and done. Unlike Sapphire Goss’ (who directed the short film that accompanies the song) words “… brief glimpses of half remembered things … ” there is nothing half remembered for me coming from Deep Emotions.
So far, Good Grief has proved a contender to thee record that has deeply touched me in such an unsettled manner in recent years – along with Mick Harvey’s Waves of Anzac/The Journey. Interestingly, Deep Emotions was released on April 24th, both the eve of Anzac Day – a solemn day in Australia and New Zealand – and 25 de Abril the day in 1974, 50 years ago, that ended a 48 years dictatorship in Portugal.
The dictatorships had Colonial War (1961-1974) to which by dad and many young men were dispatched to. Dad left the war, went to exhile and was only allowed to return in 1977? … Talk about emotions. Deep, complex, ones. One
If with Waves of Anzac/The Journey I took my default route to process feelings and emotions: go for a very long walk on my own, and, more recently, also hit my electric guitar to pour it all out, when I start writing about Deep Emotions I was too tired for either manner of physical release.
What seriously intrigues me is why the album versions of the songs provoke such an emotional reaction in me. The live versions, that can be found on youtube, touch me, but with serenity intensity. There is no “what do I do with these shattering waves that are bringing it all to the surface again?” sensation.
Aside from the obvious – live versus recorded – what is the difference? The voice? The delivery? The existence of more instruments? The arrangments? The production? The (in)famous sensorial surround sound (I listened to the, theoretically, non surround sound)? All of the above? The guitar(s) on the album version has(have) a lot to answer for, but … Does is matter? Is it relevant to go find Wally and figure out exactly what is the cause? Probably not. Maybe better to leave aside dissecting that side of things and write from feeling. Or maybe those things are a deliberated way of translating emotions. Deliberated in the sense artists go for whatever allows us to better express what we want to tell, and, hopefully, reach cross to the listener, viewer, reader, audience.
Grief and trauma. I could sell it by the bucketload. We all probably can. The difference is not all of us are out there, opening up, being vulnerable, explaining, talking about our songs and life before an audience, being scrutinized.
Now and then I write songs, and most often I write poems, some of which were turned into songs, and instrumental music. A lot of me and my life is on those, but mostly in a cryptic way, providing me with shelter. You would also need to know my life to decode them. Deep Emotions is the opposite of cryptic, of providing shelter. It’s bare bones, ripped apart heart, dive right into the storm. And I don’t like it. Because, as said at the beginning, it brings back what had been properly wrapped on the bottom of the top shelve of the cupboard or thrown away since it was no longer of use. Yet, here I am, tissues within reach.
Why do I have issues, get frightened with, of, deep emotions? It is not with deep emotions per se. It is with deep emotions that blow up in your (in my) face. Especially when coming from the person who was meant to be there for me through thick and stone, till death did us apart, who, instead of the grim reaper did us apart. And there it was, grief and trauma cake layer number two. Not that, by then, or before, with grief and trauma cake layer number one, I had no words for the consequences.
It is also because when the me who is often told “you’ve always been the backbone” (I’m a bassist, I’m meant to) or “you’re rock solid” (I’ve just wrote I’m a bassist and I’m meant to), “you’re the driving force” (I’ve just wrote twice I’m a bassist …) was overwhelmed by deep emotions everything for myself went south. I was as disoriented as a band when the bassist stops playing unannounced. Instead of my usual know what to do in a crisis and trust my instincts, there was a seriously hurt, confused, couldn’t comprend it person.
It is not every day your beloved tells you, among other baffling stuff and behaviour “you have no feelings, you don’t even cry at funerals”. Of the seven billion humans on Earth that human was aware I go deeply quiet and silent in such situations. That saying was just the more visible start of a downward spiral caused by depression, grief and trauma – his – that spill over in all sorts of ugly manners and would culminate in a wrecked marriage and a miscarriage. Miscarriage is a soft way of putting what happened, but I’m not ready to go further in such a public forum. Connect the dots.
So… so… On the record when Bernard sings “I’m not holy in possession of myself” it is not Bernard my mind sees, hears. It is something far more dangerous than him speaking about himself in a song. And it gives me the shivers.
If I go further back, there is another major episode of raining deep emotions I had no idea how to deal with. My by then boyfriend, husband to be, me and a friend had a music and poetry project. I was offstage, picking most of the poems. My husband picked a few and wrote some. He read/spoke them on stage with our friend compositions and musical support. The hurt, pain, mortification, inner darkness coming out when my husband read, interpreted the poems, in particularly one called Leilão (Auction) in which the narrator auctions every part of itself, including its most treasure possession, the heart, was too much for me.
Not knowing how to express how much it upset me to see his raw pain, how it heart broke me, I issued an ultimatum “It’s the band or I!”, knowing too well it would be me. By then, we were young, life was hectic, all the concepts now easier to speak of eluded us. I have memory no of ever explained the reason for the ultimatum. Life, and other projects, carried on. Until the darkness and deep, muffled, or explosive, emotions I didn’t knew how to deal with, now with more added hurt and grief, resulted in self destruction, into which I nearly got fully pulled into. I came back home, we both bare the scars, our bond is broken.
So… So… Deep emotions are very scary. At least for me. “I’m hard to reason with, that’s not in doubt…”, “the saddest story is my anguish and pain”, “I got deep emotions running through my veins/Sometimes I feel guilty, sometimes I feel pain”, “when they take me over I’m harder to reach…” Oh! 😦 It’s still not Bernard my mind hears and sees, even if it is his voice singing.
As for “I’m drawn to the boundaries of longitude/Iike the companionship of solitude”, that’s far more me, my longitude often being inner.
It’s the guitars, it’s it? On the record. They come from here, and there, and then there is that big, fat, bluesy one, that contrasts and adds to the dramatic crescendo. And the clapping. If it is clapping. Drums, maybe?
And now I just made part of my story known and opened myself to be scrutinized. It is fine. Another friend told me I should write a book with my life story. I’m not quite there. This things take time. For now, I may go back to my own Good Grief (or Ghosteen) a record in sketch mode, that came to me out of the blue with a set number of tracks, names for most of them, a storyline. I set it aside “It’s silly. I don’t want to go there. I’ll have to explain it.”…
Fortunately for me, Good Grief only has seven more songs. Meanwhile, until the next one is out, I’m going to see the stars, and planets, aline above the urban mountain top, with back view to the sea, I live at.
P.S. I’ve mailed you the tissues bill, Mr. Butler. It is quite hefty. I’ll accept your gorgeous factory black 330 as payment.
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 