list of misunderstood lyrics (that turn out to be deep poetry :)

1. Cat Power – “Lived in Bars”

According to the lyrics site, at the start of the second verse of “Lived in Bars”, she says:

There’s nothing like living in a bottle
And nothing like ending it all for the world

Well, I used to hear:

There’s nothing like living in a battle
And nothing like airing it out  for the world

For me, the misundertood lyric had a poetic resonance of very personal nature: catharsis, the artist’s art as the weaving of very personal stories. I am sure the intent is the same (all cat power lyrics are personal), but the misunderstood line revealed a lucidity about itself, a deeply poetic device.

On people and places

Some people want me out of their lives and gladly for the better. Sometimes, I try to intrude into someone’s life and they never open again. That’s fine as well, gladly for the better. But as age happens to me, I don’t matter butting up as much. You can explain this by the simple fact that before, there was a deep need for bonding, for sharing, anyone really, who would listen or at the least, pretend to. But now, this page, this mind, these very few friends, don’t need much more.

I’m told loneliness is ravaging. I think I have a faint memory of it. But I am not too worried if it should happen to me again. I discovered something in songs, books, and films. There’s a space you can furnish. I did not know that before. In working towards building some of those myself, I feel very much like an apprentice woodworker. Learning along with the greats how to accomodate space. But I wonder if I would enjoy living in one of mines. Possibly not. After all, I think when we build, we build for others, even the ‘other’ that is within us. I imagine a finished work is like those familiar places of a city you grew up in. You enjoy going back, for nostalgic reasons,for the feeling it gives off. Imagine Herzog going back to the legendary locations of his great films. So much that went on there. Imagine his relationship to his films, wonderful spaces to breathe in. I guess the locations were the raw matter, the film ends up being what is sculpted out of it.

Descriptions of some people I know

She is an interesting being. But it is not an interestingness that she displays. She has large emotional capacities with conflicts and decisions about them. All internal. The idea of her inner turmoil is seducing because she is self-sufficient, reliant, and responsible about it. If there is something you could say that she conveys, it would be the self-assurance of her insecurity, but subtly, like Holly Hunter.