The Beauty of Midnight Oil's "Blue Sky Mine"
One of the great side benefits of my current exercise program is that I get to listen to A LOT of music on my ipod throughout the week. On your average morning I get to drift in and out of conscious attention to whatever is entering my ears. One song that I have on my playlists has really struck me, lyrically-speaking. You know how you can hear a song twenty or two hundred times without really
listening to the words? (Maybe that only happens to me.) Well, the depth of Midnight Oil’s “Blue Sky Mine” has recently registered for the first time. Here are the lyrics:
Hey, hey hey hey
There’ll be food on the table tonight
Hey, hey, hey hey
There’ll be pay in your pocket tonight
My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
A life that is led is no more than a token
Who’ll strike the flint upon the stone and tell me why
If I yell out at night there’s a reply of bruised silence
The screen is no comfort I can’t speak my sentence
They blew the lights at heaven’s gate and I don’t know why
But if I work all day at the blue sky mine
(there’ll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(there’ll be pay in your pocket tonight)
The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They’re crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I’m caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the blue sky mining company wont come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won’t save me
Who’s gonna save me? Who’s gonna save me? Who’s gonna save me?
And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothings as precious, as a hole in the ground
Who’s gonna save me?
I pray that sense and reason brings us in
Who’s gonna save me?
We’ve got nothing to fear
In the end the rain comes down
Washes clean, the streets of a blue sky townAs we come up on Labor Day in a few weeks, (and as I come up on vacation next week!) this song is quite of the moment. As I’m thinking about all the things this song is saying, the words of old grey Karl Marx are ringing in my head “All workers experience alienation.” First of all, how awesome is it that a song exists that expresses
something more than “I love you” or “I don’t love you” or “I want to dance” or “I am dancing at a club?” I can answer that. Totally awesome!
This is a song about a conflict of mostly unseen forces. A guy works for some kind of vaguely environmentally destructive company. Bad. However, this job pays the bills. Good.
But the lines that just
kill: “And if the blue sky mining company, won’t come to my rescue/ If the sugar refining company won’t save me, who’s gonna save me? Who’s gonna save me? Who’s gonna save me?” (I recommend you actually listen to this song to get a feel for just how impacting this moment is in the song, introducing a new melody that will stick with you for awhile.)
Which brings us to the second big idea hinted at in this song- salvation as a physical phenomenon. There is a materialism at work here. The sugar refining company is your savior because it puts food on the table and makes survival possible for one more day. Wow! Anybody who wants to hear that message, please raise your hand! No one? Really?
Those of us of a more spiritual bent might point to some of the earlier lines in the song of a wrenched gut and a tortured psyche to show that the provision for physical needs just isn’t enough. This is a voice still in need of saving. And that’s what I personally like about this song. It asks great questions and just leaves them unanswered…
…Until the very end of the song.
In the end the rain comes down and all is made clean. That’s a faith statement. I like those--even if or
especially if they are non-specific.
...But Now My Life Has Changed in Oh So Many Ways
Today was a momentous day in the life of Mike as pertains goal-setting.
I weighed in today at exactly 200 lbs! I checked that scale a couple times to make sure it wasn't lying! This is momentous for a variety of reasons:
1) I have mentioned elsewhere on here that my life is now largely a numbers game due to the Diabetes thing. I have to (well, I don’t “have to…” I suppose I could do absolutely nothing different with my life if I felt so inclined…) keep track of glucose levels, carb intake and exercise times, etc. So here are some numbers. My goal was to get down to 220 lbs by December. When I hit that goal seven months early back in May I decided to keep going. Total weight loss since January—57 pounds.
2) This means that I have officially lost 115 lbs total since my heaviest days a few years ago. If I did the math right, this means I’ve lost 36.5 % of my body weight. Can that really be right? Here’s what I do know without a math formula: I never want to be that person ever again.
3) The last time I was at this weight I was getting my driver’s license in high school.
While losing all that weight took a dedicated effort over a long stretch of time, (I’m talking years), lots of stalled progress, a few setbacks, etc. I was very intentional in making lifestyle changes that were sustainable for a lifetime, trying not to get on
too rigid of an exercise schedule or starving myself. However, I realize that there are still challenges ahead in maintaining at this level at worst and maybe even getting down to the ideal BMI weight of 179. (Life is never "ideal." I feel awesome right now so I’m not going to cry if I can’t lose any more. But there is a side to my personality that would love the tidiness of reaching that
numerical definition of fitness.)
The so-what part of this post? If you are a reader who sees me in person on a somewhat regular basis, PLEASE HELP me stay accountable to this new me. I am officially giving you permission to pry if you see me packing on pounds again. Life is a funny thing: How do you add over a hundred pounds to your body without really even realizing it?
I am happier these days than I have been in many years. The above is a large reason for that.
Here’s to life renewed.
Thanks for reading.
Whatcha' Listenin' To?
Journey
Greatest HitsI’m not going to even feign a critical detachment here. With this album I recovered the soundtrack to my childhood. Or at least a large part of it. Everything I know of the ideas of love, romance, sadness, yearning, and heartbreak I learned from pop music in general and these guys in particular. Whether or not this is a good thing is definitely fodder for discussion.
But I do know one thing. For a brief two-week period in fourth grade I wanted to be Steve Perry, the lead singer. Leafing through the photos in the liner notes it became pretty clear to me that I was inspired by the idea of being a singer in a rock band with my heart on my sleeve. I think I was only smitten by the Platonic form of being Steve Perry or one of the guys from Journey because these guys were badly-dressed, hairy and ugly as sin. It’s obvious by the sounds, however, why they sold out arenas. I think the music was written and recorded in a pop music laboratory.
The Killers
Hot FussSpeaking of music perfectly concocted in a lab, you have this album. Take The Edge’s guitar sound from U2, retro analog synth weedlie-weedlie sounds and up-front vocals with catchy melodies and stir. Are The Killers the Journey of our times? Could be.
Hilary Hahn
Beethoven Violin Concerto in D, Bernstein SonataIn the liner notes to this album the young Ms. Hahn tells an amusing tale of being invited to perform the slightly obscure Bernstein piece for an American music festival and her violin teacher at the time beseeching her to try another, more established piece. “How can I teach a piece I don’t know?” complained her mentor.
While I realize she tells the tale for humorous effect I could not help but feel a slight sadness that this moment between student and teacher revealed a glimpse of the wretched state of conservatism that plagues orchestral music programming. When the teacher can’t be bothered to learn anything beyond the beloved, tried and true (and
tired?) standards of the repertoire, how shall the orchestra escape from its position as a large cover band, as Frank Zappa described it?
So, not surprisingly, the more unpredictable orchestration and dynamism of the Bernstein piece interested me much more.
Ray Charles
Genius + Soul=Jazz/ My Kind of JazzThis CD is a Rhino reissue of two albums released in the early 60s and early 70s I never even knew existed: Ray Charles swinging out with big bands and playing Hammond organ on mostly instrumental tunes. They are only nominally “Ray Charles” albums, for the real stars are the arrangers (one of whom being Quincy Jones) and the Count Basie Band.
While the liner notes are effusive in their praise of Charles’ musicianship, it’s certainly not evident on these recordings as organ isn’t his primary instrument and his solos feel like “plug and play” technology, just filling holes in arrangements that would work with or without his contributions. However, if you want to maintain a swinging bachelor pad in the retro mold, you could do much worse than this music.
I Want to Ride It Where I Like
It's been about three or four weeks and the biking to work has been going well. No one in a car has demanded my life or been rude to the "weirdo on the bike" yet. And fortunately I find myself on the road during times of the day with light traffic.
However, this morning I had my first embarrassing moment. You see, I carry a change of clothes in a backpack as, even though it's only a two mile commute one-way, I get a little bit sweaty.
Well, this morning I got all the way to my desk, (15 minutes early I'll have you know) when I realized I didn't pack any work pants!
It was mildly amusing telling my boss I need to go back home and get some pants.
However, I couldn't get too mad about burning the extra calories.
