Enjoy the ride... please...

Dear Americans,

Some of you really never could understand the difference between fact and fiction, could you? Okay, there's probably people like that in every culture, but you seem amazingly good/bad at missing the distinction. Over here in Australia, we're particularly good at sarcasm and other forms of not taking things seriously, so we find your earnestness both bizarre and amusing.

Here's a hint. You know that show Desperate Housewives? The one that's been a huge success in both your country and mine?

It's not real. Uh-uh. Some of you are reeling in shock, I know, but I thought it was time to break the news to you.

I know who you are. You're the same ones that I've just seen saying that it wasn't realistic for Mama Solis to run around the hospital as soon as she woke from a coma. You used to watch the X-Files and debate whether Mulder and Scully could really get to Idaho from Washington D.C. by 8am.

Fiction. All of it. They fiddled with reality for dra-ma-tic-pur-pos-es. A wacky concept, but I'm sure you'll learn to live with it eventually.

I don't think reality television has really helped you. It suggests that real life is somehow entertaining and worth watching. Actually, life is better lived than viewed. And the first episode of the Lone Gunmen probably freaked the hell out of you back in 2001. It freaked me out, because over here it screened less than a week before September 11th.

Just another step in blurring the line between fantasy and reality. But trust me, Desperate Housewives is firmly in the fantasy camp. Bree doesn't need your letters of support.

Thrill 4-14: Look death boldly in the face {The Beekeeper}

If ever a song deserved its status as a title track, this is it. How could anyone dare to argue with it pushing to the front of the line?

The soft, faintly smiling album cover really doesn't give much of a hint what a serious, intense song lies behind it. But now I'm listening to that song as I type, and looking at the cover at the same time (which I don't think I've ever done before), and suddenly the photograph has a completely different feel to it.

I don't know if The Beekeeper is really the kind of song that anyone could claim to love hearing. It doesn't make any attempt to press the right emotional buttons for that to work. Instead, it seems to me, it's a song that commands respect.

There's plenty of reasons to respect it. Firstly, the lyrics are top notch. They match the best efforts from Scarlet's Walk in that they are poetic without being cryptic. It was nice of Tori to confirm that this song was about her mother's near-terminal illness, but it's also nice that it was possible to work out what the song was about without that information being provided.

The figure of the Beekeeper herself is a memorable one. Someone else picked up before I did the link to Tori's version of Time, both songs featuring a female angel of death, although I would say the new character is a slightly more formidable one (and she's explicitly written into the song, rather than relying on a photograph). I'm also a little reminded of the fisherman on Sting's The Soul Cages, which is no bad comparison in my book (although Sting's character is basically a heartless bastard in whose defeat we rejoice).

Musically as well there are some excellent touches. The low growls and the electronics really add to the texture of the song. I'm particularly taken by the way the guitar work in the 2nd and 3rd verses rises upwards at the end, only to break off.

Even better is the slight feeling of light and release for the lines where it is most appropriate - "She will awake Tomorrow Somewhere" and "Maybe I'm just passing you by" - coupled with the return to a darker melody for "One day I'll be coming for you". It really is extremely effective (in the last instance, quite chilling) and one of the best examples of marrying words and music I've heard in quite a while.

High marks, then, but don't expect me to be inviting the Beekeeper round for dinner anytime soon.

Incomprehension and rage

It really is true, some people do completely forfeit their right to live in society.

What else could you possibly do with a person, who as revenge for (allegedly) having been twice physically struck by his boss, forms a plan to KILL the boss' two children?

Or, when the plan to invade a school armed with guns starts going wrong, shoots a two-year-old boy dead at point blank range because he is crying too much?

By God, how does someone get to the age of 23 with so little sense of proportion? What did he do if someone pushed in front of him in a queue at school, I wonder?

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you may have been spared the news reports of a school 'siege' in Cambodia a few days ago. I haven't, so instead I've spent my time being more shocked as each new detail emerges. On one level it's nice to know I can still be shocked. But really, what I'm mostly feeling is anger and frustration that a person could behave like this - or that he could gather about five 'friends' to help him in his endeavour.

The total inability of some people to deal with ANY situation where they don't get their own way is the thing about this world that probably upsets me the most. These are the people I just want to sit down somewhere, forcibly, and yell and scream and cry at and ask, "Why? Why? Why? Why are you like this? Why can't you give and take? Why is your ego so goddamn big? Why didn't you stop and think about what you were doing, and realize that you were going too far? Why can't you control or at least redirect your impulses? Why the FUCK didn't you get some help before we got to this point?"

Meanwhile, a man who has recently been jailed here in Australia for his role in the worst corporate collapse in our history, and who has been barred from being a company director for 20 years as a result, has just been caught trying to continue his business dealings by ordering people to give him weekly reports and spending his visiting privileges doing deals. The man is so bloody arrogant he can't take the umpire's decision.

I'm no means perfect, but there are times I'm grateful my personality tends towards introspection and self-questioning or criticism. At least the damage from my errors tends to be directed inwards, sparing others from harm. I'm not going around making other people's life hell because of a lack of awareness that I am not, in fact, the centre of the universe.

As for the supposed motive for the school siege: Revenge is a dish best thrown in the garbage, uneaten.

Yours furiously,

orfeo

When I come to power... (part 3)

...children will be so rigorously trained in morality that it will simply be unthinkable to them to break into a car. Especially when it's parked outside a church.

In case that fails, they will also be taught reasoning and observation skills to such a degree that, if they do feel compelled to steal from a vehicle, they will at least check first that there is something inside that might possibly be worth taking.

I'm not angry with my local hooligans so much as very disappointed in their lack of style.

There's a right way and a wrong way

How I intended to make sandwiches this morning:

Butter bottom layer of bread
Place tuna on bread
Wash lettuce and leave to drain
Chop tomato, place tomato slices on tuna
Chop cucumber, place cucumber slices on top of tomato
Place lettuce on top of previous layers
Butter top layer of bread, place on top
Cut each sandwich in half
Wrap sandwiches in plastic, ready to go

How I actually made sandwiches this morning:

Butter bottom layer of bread
Place tuna on bread
Wash lettuce and leave to drain
Chop tomato, place tomato slices on tuna
Chop cucumber, place cucumber slices on top of tomato
Butter top layer of bread, place on top
Cut each sandwich in half
Wrap sandwiches in plastic, ready to go
Notice lettuce still sitting in colander
Unwrap plastic
Lift off top layer of bread from each half-sandwich
Add lettuce on top of whichever bits didn't stick to the top layer of bread
Replace top layer of bread
Re-wrap sandwiches, now looking considerably messier than before

Visual audio

How much is a good music video worth to the song, I wonder?

There are songs that I first encountered on the television, rather than the radio, that I find almost impossible to separate from the images. Jewel's Intuition is one, partly because the film clip is such a success. I'm not sure I actually heard the song on the radio that much.

But this post is really about Coldplay.

Over the last few years I have tended to regard Coldplay as the most frustrating popular artist around. Not because they're not any good (there are plenty of other examples of that quality) but because they had the potential to be very good indeed. If only they would write songs, or more accurately finish them.

Their first hit, Yellow, used to bore me tremendously. It just takes SO long to get where it's going, despite the fact you know exactly where it's headed from the outset.

The songs from their second album were slightly better, but they consistently suffered from the same defect: some nice (often really nice) idea would be presented, but that would be it. No development, no direction, just a nice sound that kept on going until someone decided that was long enough for a hit record. It's exactly what I dislike about so much dance music that consists of only a couple of bars, over and over. Clocks was clearly the worst offender. I liked those four bars the first time around, maybe even the second, but when I realised that was all there was going to be I quickly grew to dislike the song, except when it was used as backing to a 30-second ad on television. That seemed an appropriate home.

In My Place was a little better, but not much. The Scientist was slightly touching lyrically, but musically it went on too long. In fact, the last part of the song seemed designed only as an excuse to finish off the rather good film clip.

Ah yes, I was talking about film clips, wasn't I? I promise I haven't forgotten.

The only single from that album that I enjoyed was God Put a Smile Upon Your Face. It only had two simple musical ideas, but it was the kind of song that only needed two simple musical ideas - driving and edgy. The second musical idea, with the cry of 'yeah' sliding upwards, was something I would turn the radio up for. Not to hear it go anywhere, just to hear its repeated presentation.

And it had a rather edgy film clip to go with it, of course.

Now Coldplay's quest for airwave domination seems to be hitting a new level with the interest in the first single, Speed of Sound, from their third album. I've heard the song numerous times on the radio without paying much attention at all. It slid by while I was getting out of bed in the morning, pleasant enough but sounding very much like Coldplay being Coldplay.

Twice in the last 24 hours, I 'saw-heard' the song instead and was riveted.

I can't decide why, exactly. It might have been all those flashing lights dancing across the screen like a fairground. Or, it might have been that with the help of rather better sound (a new stereo television is a quantum leap forward compared to an ageing clock radio), I suddenly noticed that Coldplay have finally written a song that logically progresses from beginning to end. Complete with a rather lovely key change between the verse and chorus.

Except it's odd for me to have taken so long to notice. Maybe my prejudices had just got in the way until now. But I'm worried that it really was the flashing light show that changed my mind, in which case I'm a man of lesser musical principles than I'd hoped.

To REALLY foul things up requires a computer

My music collection is in the hands of a madman.

I still use the Windows Media Player 8 that was installed on my computer when I bought it, primarily because I quite like the interface (why is it that all good computer programs eventually get ruined by being more helpful than you actually need?), but also because every attempt at upgrading has utterly failed to hold on to my playlists, the one truly useful feature.

WMP 8 has some peculiar issues though. When I didn't have an internet connection on this computer, I patiently typed in the names of albums and artists when I needed to, and songs where that was important for some reason (like a playlist drawn from multiple sources). Now, however, I have access to the updates from some mysterious online source which is reasonably reliable when it comes to albums but rather questionable for singles or Australian works that the Microsoft monolith doesn't really know about.

The updater kept crashing and freezing WMP 8, but in some odd way this seemed to work. Album art would miraculously appear.

Tonight, the updater didn't crash, and as a result all hell has broken loose on my hard drive.

Song titles have survived, artists have survived (although it STILL doesn't know who released Under the Pink, for God's sake), but a large number of albums have miraculously transformed themselves. Radiohead's Ok Computer has been retitled as Emigre (a Wendy Matthews album), but still has Paranoid Android on it. Half of The Bends now claims to be k.d. lang's Invincible Summer. Tori Amos' B-sides have stayed in their original groupings, but have now miraculously attached themselves to new friends, so that Alex Lloyd is credited with Purple People and Bachelorette, Sons of Korah sing not only Amazing Grace but 'Til the Chicken and, most bizarrely of all, her versions of Smells Like Teen Spirit and Angie are now part of the score to Tomb Raider (the computer game, not the movie).

I could go on, but you'd think I was just making it all up. I'm not, I swear. This is really happening. You bet your life it is.

Some of the changes are slightly rational. I think that maybe Little Earthquakes has had all of Boys for Pele added to it because the two albums have appeared in a double-pack here in Australia, and some bl**dy fool entered the data as a single work and was blindly believed by the all-knowing internet database that controls these things. Other examples, though, defy all explanation. I could understand if it had merely changed my writing of Powderfinger's Odyssey #5 to Odyssey Number Five, but instead I apparently own both and the second one has a lovely little Tori song called Graveyard on it. And no sane person would mistake To Venus and Back for Strange Little Girls AND attribute the latter to a Christian band instead.

It turns out that pressing 'Update Names' for individual albums is rectifying the problem, but the entire episode is quite possibly the oddest thing a computer has ever done to me. I can't decide whether to point and laugh at it or back away slowly while reaching for a baseball bat.

Thrill 4-13: Let's go genre-hopping {Ireland}

Sandwiched in between the two most serious points in the Beeekeeper album is a silly little song that might just be one of the most subversive things Tori ever wrote.

I think the reason why this song has mystified so many people, me included, is that we tried to take it seriously. When really what we should have been doing is enjoying the break being offered to our brains. We should have spent the time bopping our head from side to side, grinning inanely.

I've completely given up trying to analyze the lyrics, and I'm enjoying Ireland a lot more as a result. I think it was a wise decision. The verses are easily the weirdest and most cryptic of the entire album in my opinion. I've no doubt, this being Tori, that there is some hidden meaning for her buried down below, but she hasn't been this odd since Boys for Pele. And we all know that driving to Ireland makes no sense. That was the first clue, really, that we should be focusing on the music.

Which is almost as bizarre, but rather catchy once you've stopped choking on your breakfast. As best I can figure out, Tori Amos has gone where no sane musician has dared to venture and created a brand new musical style: Celtic Reggae.

Yes, I told you it was bizarre, weren't you listening?

It comes complete with a group of backing Toris singing "sha na na na" at every opportunity. I'm reminded again of Wendy Matthews, who I think of as the singer most likely to maintain her dignity while singing something like "sha na na na" (I'm sure she's done it, in fact, but the song title won't leap to mind). Tori comes perilously close to losing her dignity, but walking close to the edge of the cliff is not the same as falling off it.

Thrill 4-12: Gnosticism 101 {Original Sinsuality}

From a 6-minute song that is too short, to a 2-minute song that packs more action in than it has any right to.

There's a theory out there, being pushed by Tori herself, that the entire Beekeeper album has a theme based on an alternative view of the gospel. I don't buy it. It's much easier to think of Ribbons Undone being about her daughter, of The Beekeeper being about her mother's illness, of Toast being about her brother, and of Cars and Guitars being about a woman making a slightly embarrassing attempt to impress her man.

It's clear though, that a couple of songs do relate to Tori's readings of and about other interpretations of Scripture that died out in the early history of the church, primarly gnosticism. 'Gnosis' means knowledge (or secret knowledge), and Original Sinsuality has a character urging to eat of the tree of knowledge, which in traditional Judeo-Christian thought is a disastrous course of action.

A little digging in the right places (thank you, Google) will reveal that Sophia, Yalbadoath, Saklas and Samael are all pulled straight from the gnostic literature - the first being God's mother and the other three all being names for God. Except the God who created this material world is a dark being, one to be escaped from.

Refuting the heresy of Gnosticism was one of the main drivers of Christian writers in the first couple of centuries of the church, which led to things like the Nicene Creed. But I digress, this is a music topic not a theological one.

Original Sinsuality basically falls into three sections, and at first I had different reactions to each of them. I guess I still do, really. So, bear with me while I dissect a small song into even smaller pieces.

Section One: The Setup

In the beginning... quite literally. The first section of the song is a great introductory passage for the 'sermon', the ideas part. It's very factual - where (the garden, I mean THE Garden), when (before THE Fall), who (the original mother, Sophia), what (the tree, the fruit). And then the first idea, "you must eat". Everything is set up nicely.

Section Two: The...

The pause? The glib play on words? The wasted space?

To be fair, I don't feel quite like that about the middle of the song any more, I'm just recording my initial reactions, but it still seems such a shame that this section is a bit weak. Misspelling words to play on them has never been a favourite trick with me. The philosophical point of the song could have been made just as well by contrasting 'sin' with 'sensuality'. We all would have recognized the closeness of the sound without forcing the issue.

Perhaps the most irritating thing, though, is the girlish tone that suddenly enters Tori's voice here. Oh, look, aren't I clever! Yes, dear, you are, but in Australia at least we don't particularly like people who draw attention to their cleverness. Do a Google on 'tall poppies' and you'll see what I mean.

Section Three: The Payoff

I forgive everything when she utters the word "Yalbadoath" like some priestess of a mysterious cult.

She is of course helped by some well-applied reverberation, but she's the producer so I can credit her with that touch of brilliance as well. From here to the end of the song, with the great repeated cry of "You are not alone", is one of her best vocal performances in the studio ever. It's seared across my brain, asking me to give in to darkness.

It's proof of the power of this tiny section of music that I find myself adoring it despite all of the (considerable) reservations I have about the theology here. I've almost never been fond of Tori's theology (remind me to discuss one day how difficult it is for most people to comprehend that, I, a Christian whose beliefs border on what might be called fundamentalist, can be so in love with the music of someone who invests a lot of time in trying to shock fundamentalist Christian sensibilities), but the musical power on display during the last third of Original Sinsuality is, to my ears, simply undeniable.