We're Floating In Space

[Note: This blog entry does not necessarily represent the views of The Daily Collegian, or even the person writing it. Take it with a grain of salt. Enjoy it nonetheless.]

I hate Sublime.

I didn’t used to hate Sublime. The band’s self-titled album was once one of my favorites, probably top ten, maybe top five. I once owned a Sublime t-shirt which I adopted as my non-confrontational concert-going t-shirt. I was a faithful follower of the rule that you couldn’t wear the t-shirt of the band you were going to see, and since I had a cool Sublime t-shirt and there was never any chance of going to a Sublime show, I made it my uniform (along with a pair of cargo shorts that were really awesome too).

A Sublime song came on my friend’s computer earlier tonight and I started thinking about how god-awful their lyrics are. They’re just so fucking dumb. It makes me angry. They’re embarrassing. Yeah, I like smoking pot too. It’s not the only thing I talk about, though. It’s always obnoxious when someone talks about the “cool” stuff they do. That’s all Brad Nowell ever did.

But that’s not the reason I hate Sublime. I hate Sublime because they introduced another generation of poor, unsuspecting music listeners who don't know any better to the idea that “One good thing about music / when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Looking past the fact that this is probably the most interesting Sublime lyric there ever was, and they didn’t even write it, this lyric pisses me off. Here’s why:

Sometimes, you do feel pain when music hits you. That lyric is supposed to be profound or something, but it’s just completely false. Let me break it down:

First of all, it’s not THE one good thing about music. And I know, that’s not the lyric. There’s no “the.” But why make some random-ass observation about one thing about music? That’s lazy, first of all, and second of all, it’s pointless. One good thing about my jeans, they have a zipper. Okay? Lots of pants, lots of jeans, have zippers. My jeans are no better or worse than the majority of pants in the world because they have a zipper. Likewise, one good thing about an ice cream cone, when it hits you, you feel no pain. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d get hit by an ice cream cone and it would cause me pain worth writing a song lyric about. In that sense, music is not unique in that it causes no pain. Therefore, saying that music does not cause pain is an inane.

Second of all, since I’ve shown that music’s ability to avoid causing pain is not very special, let me attack the implication that it’s the only good thing about music. Everybody knows this is untrue. There are tons of good things about music. “When it hits you, you feel no pain” is not a definitive statement of what music actually does; it’s merely a statement of one thing that music arguably does NOT do. Obviously, sometimes music does more than just fail to cause pain; sometimes music causes joy. There, that’s a true statement about music. Sometimes music causes joy. That statement itself is more profound than the actual lyric, and it’s actually true.

Music does cause pain. And that’s my main issue with the lyric — one good thing about music is that, when it hits you, sometimes you do feel pain. But it’s not important how you feel when music hits you; it’s important that you feel anything at all.

I thought of this when I was thinking about the Flaming Lips song “Do You Realize??” and why I fucking love that song. It’s a great song. Amazing, even. It does what music is supposed to do. It evokes emotion in a direct way. It’s not the kind of emotion that’s fabricated, like a vapid song about some person you’ve never met who does something regrettable. It’s a song that makes you think about your own life. But what’s amazing about “Do You Realize??” is not that it evokes an emotion. The amazing thing is that it doesn’t necessarily evoke the same emotion from every person who hears it. It doesn’t even evoke the same emotion from the same person every time they hear it. When I listen to “Do You Realize??”, sometimes I’m overcome with ecstasy over the beauty of life. Other times, I’m overcome by the crushing realization that my life is utterly insignificant. One good thing about “Do You Realize??”, when it hits you, you feel something. Sometimes it’s elation; sometimes it’s pain. But that pain is awe-inspiring pain, and I wouldn’t love “Do You Realize??” nearly as much if it didn’t have the potential to completely crush my soul for a few minutes.

In summary, fuck that lyric. Fuck Bob Marley. Fuck Sublime. One good thing about music, when it hits me, sometimes I feel the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.