May 10 | Songscapes

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Lana Del Rey. I’m really not sure how I feel about her. I mean – I am sure about the feelings I get when listening to her music, but I’m not sure about how I feel about them!

I was trying to explain to my husband the other day what happens to me when I listen to music that affects me emotionally. Since I was a little girl I would create landscapes and atmospheres in my mind based on what I was listening to. The first time I remember doing it, I could have been as young as four or five. Mum and I were listening to the absolutely stunning score for the movie The Mission. I think it’s still my favourite movie score ever. I can remember crafting an entire narrative with unicorns, evil serpents, something like a Roc – all taking place in a backdrop which, when I watched the film years later, was not entirely dissimilar. That was not particularly shocking – there were indigenous musical patterns and drums underlying the whole thing – although I did find that years later, the first time I heard Bjork’s “Joga,” the landscape I saw in my head was almost exactly what I saw the first time I saw the accompanying music video, which was a bit shocking!

Since then I’ve continued to have these flights of fancy when I listened to certain songs. I’m sure I’m not at all alone in this. This is part of why when I discover a new song I often listen to it over and over again. I love exploring a new country in my mind, and getting to know every part of it.

Although there are too many songs over the years to remember which ones really affected me, some of them do stand out, either single pieces or whole albums. The first pop song to do it was probably Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose.” I can’t exactly remember what I first saw, but when I listen now I can see a lighthouse, almost lost in billowing white mist and a grey sea. Later song-countries I can remember quite vividly are the green sky and crashing ocean of Celine Dion’s “Miles to Go,” dark blue moonlit and shadowy forest in Sarah Mclachlan’s “Elsewhere,” the early Romantic-era garden in Loreena McKennit’s “Courtyard Lullabye,” the dark bedroom in Jann Arden’s “In Your Keeping,” and the grey shifting shadows and painfully white bathroom in Live’s “Lakini’s Juice.”

Today, I’ve noticed a trend in the music of young female singer-songwriters like Florence Welch and Lana Del Rey. I feel that they are tapping into something that similar artists from  years past tried before, but are adding more layers – either with reverb, orchestral scoring, or electronic, driving drum beats – creating vast cathedral-like spaces. I could spend hours wandering in these spaces. I never get tired of Florence’s music in particular, especially on her album Ceremonials. I loved Between Two Lungs, especially for “Cosmic Love,” which transported me to similarly dark forests, laid over with red and orange and twinkling lights. I find her music videos are similar to what I see – they’re both fanciful and dark. Ceremonials, though, was an entirely different experience. “Only if for a Night” was amazing – nighttime outside a place that looked quite similar to Ely Cathedral, only lit up from inside by something unseen. Like Florence’s narrator I danced on the green grass outside under the stars. My favourite track off that album, though, is “Never Let Me Go.” I lay beneath a great blue ocean, all alone on a sandy bottom, watching knives of moonlight cutting through to paint my face. I also listen to “Over the Love” on a loop, seeing a long dark room in a mansion at night, lit only by the light coming in from outside, some of which is white but a tiny portion of which is green, of course. (It’s off the Great Gatsby soundtrack).

Shortly after Ceremonials came out, I was visiting my friend and she showed me the video for “Blue Jeans.” I thought it was one of the most gorgeous videos I’d ever seen (I adore music videos) and although I briefly forgot about it, I re-discovered Lana Del Rey after hearing her sing “Cola.” I started exploring her a bit more, and found that her Hollywood influences – what makes her music sound so expansive – affected me in a similar way to Florence. The first song that really took me somewhere was “Gods and Monsters,” which I listened to over and over. I see a vast red and black landscape of treacherous peaks, kind of like Utah or New Mexico, unfolding before me. There’s nothing there – it’s barren but somehow beautiful and tempting. And now I’ve discovered “Young and Beautiful,” which has yet to carve a place in my head.

All of this is by way of saying that my feelings for Lana Del Rey are odd, mostly because I love her music so damn much and yet I’m not sure how I feel about her lyrics, which are often a bit weird and unsettling to me. I really am not the kind of person who can just ignore lyrics or something that bothers me about music. I’m picky that way – there are some bands or singers whose tunes I love but whose lyrics are just awful, and I actually feel a sort of guilt listening to them. I also feel guilt sometimes when I listen to an artist who I think is personally odious or a jackass. I don’t find Lana to be odious, but I do find her personally to be vacuous and pretentious. I know part of it comes from a persona she is cultivating, but it doesn’t seem to really work. It’s definitely not as meticulously crafted as other artists’ personae.

I’ve been playing with the idea that for me perhaps Lana represents the sort of thoughts that all of us court but may not always allow to the surface. In her song “Young and Beautiful,” for example, she asks, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” This bugs me – do we ever become unbeautiful when we become old? My inner feminist shrieks, “No! And anyone who says you’re not should be thrown out on his ear.” And yet I’m not naive enough to pretend people don’t worry about it sometimes, or indeed that I don’t! We all wonder about that day when we look in the mirror and don’t know who we are anymore. To be fair to Lana as well, she follows it up with “I know you will.”

Likewise, in “Gods and Monsters,” she sings from the point of view of someone who seems incredibly reckless, wanting to be saved by a man and shot full of drugs, wanting “innocence lost.” Again – a bit of an odious message for me…and yet I can’t pretend honestly that I’ve never sought out that part that wanted that last veil ripped away roughly. I think it’s part of our psyche.

Maybe, then, Lana sings to “the darker part.” I gotta have someone singing to it.

-Clarity

PS Although Florence’s music has definitely brought me close to God at times, I find the one composer that makes me see God without fail is Lauridsen – particularly his “O Magnum Mysterium” and “O Nata Lux,” both of which I listen to at Christmastime to reflect on the Incarnation. -C