Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

MUSIC: Everyone's personal turtle shell. A damp, dark little world where we let our vulnerability ooze out and ride on the back of a voice, of any voice of the millions of floundering bands out there. The perfect withdrawal is discovered in the pain of some lyric or the other, one that seems to echo your own thoughts with suspicious accuracy. It is this emotion that we relish to live in the shadow of, relieved that there is someone out there who actually "gets it", right? To lean on the reassurance that there always will be a line to mirror your exact state of "blahness". To be able to identify a particular avatar of yourself in a particular song at a particular moment, to be able to define the nothingness you feel suspended in. In other words, to recede into someone else's copy-written turtle shell.

Lyrics are something we are all naturally inclined towards, as they are something we can relate to. Empathy is not a preference but a necessity, possibly something we seek in frustration from friends and family and yet find in music, a beautiful utupian asylum. Is it shameful that we are so dependent on this understanding from a stranger, from a voice completely detached from ourselves? Not only are song lyrics something we lap comfort from, but seem to flaunt everywhere- whether it be online nicknames, entwined in back-of-a-book, product-of-boredom graffiti, scribbles tattooed on skin, or exploding out of our smirking lips. A string of words not only to prove your degree of worldliness and artistic calling, but the perfect disguise for your mood at that instant. Anyone should be able to discern the fact that this only serves to ridicule any creativity which may reside within you, as it's a clear indication that we are so foolishly incapable of conjuring impressive, raise-your-eyebrow phrases ourselves, that we must resort to what has already been created.

How many times have you been genuinely struck by a MSN nickname and discovered that it wasn't stolen from a song or poem, or any other work of art? Even if we did have the capabilities to come up with something more ground shaking than borrowed ideas, it seems slightly too embarrassing to post and expose your own tangled mind. A bit too open and daring, especially in a world that goes by "Oh it sounds familiar, it must be from..." So we all conveniently hide in the shell of those who are used to being victims of ambiguity or some manifestation of pain. Right? We become accustomed to being asked "Hey, where's your nick from?" and testing our own memories to recognize songs fragmented into Instant Messenger nicknames.

Where's all the creativity really gone? Seeking refuge in a lyric is a disappointment to all of us who do try to pursue our artistic talents. Yet look at this at another level. You're in a particular mood, one that you have the talent to identify and do not require a song to do so for you. You spin yourself in a certain thread of thought, a thought you are convinced is unique to you, a thought that is surely your own invention, something that identifies yourself in a group of people who would rather identify themselves with a certain brand. And yet, as you plug into your iPod for some inspiration to keep your cocoon weaving, you stumble upon a lyric which doesn't wash itself away like the others, a line that adheres to your thought rather too closely. And instantly, the music goes flying and you seethe: how the hell could someone have come up with that already?! The idea belonged to ME, it's my personal possession. To hear someone else mumble those very words is an insult to the self, is it not? It's funny how most of us feel a fear to peek out of the shell of an artist, relieved to live off their empathy and lyrics. The few, who dare not to, end up having their original ideas stolen from possession only too quickly, depriving them of what they have taken, proudly, to be their highly personal identity.

-Amrita Mishra