Post by lee on Jan 5, 2009 3:16:54 GMT -5
...i figure you folks would be more interested than most, at the very least.
Drugs as Sacrament: Gnosticism, Narrative, and Craig Finn
I read a review of a Lifter Puller album wherein the reviewer dismissed Craig Finn as being the guy who insists on telling you about the “sweet party” where he just was, breathlessly and enthusiastically. I understand why the reviewer would write that—on first or surface listen, it could appear that way—with Finn’s speak-singing, speedy with adrenaline and passion (and sometimes simulating chemical assistance), rushing to remember and recount the details of the night that just ended.
The mysticism of The Hold Steady’s “Stevie Nix”—in which the protagonist/narrator is reborn through drugs and a baptism in the Mississippi—places the lyrics in the position of rendering explicit the transcendence being sought by the music’s frenetic energy. The character sees this as a rebirth—he is “born again”—and that is the important part; the Gnostics of the post-Crucifixion period believed that anyone and everyone had direct access to god, and that any church that claimed to be the lone conduit was simply false, and interested only in control and limiting people’s connection to god for political reasons.
“Separation Sunday”’s Holly is the vessel for redemption, as her travels through drugs, parties, being labeled a “hoodrat”, and warning others “always remember/never to trust me” conclude with her finding her way into a cathedral and offering to “tell the congregation how a resurrection really feels”. This dramatic end follows an exhausting period of pleasure-seeking, during which she catches glimpses of both human kindness and horrifying consequences—such as the body found in the garbage dump (“Stevie Nix”).
Lifter Puller was, indeed, the breathless, journalistic, event-centered Finn; there were rarely consequences for the speedy characters in Lifter Puller songs, as the moments on the dance floor, in the rental car, or on/off-campus stand alone. Craig was always standing aside, taking it in, to be painted in broad strokes later. With Lifter Puller began the cinematic quality of Finn’s writing, wherein he presents only flashes of any story, concluding “Fiestas + Fiascos” with The Eyepatch Guy calling out a hit on Nightclub Dwight in the backroom of a dance club for Dwight’s failure to repay a loan. The album’s lyrical narrative is filled with blurs of Dwight’s addiction and the fallout for many connected to him—such as Jenny from “I Like the Lights”, who questions Dwight’s connection to “the pipe”. The album’s final moment is one of the few instances in Lifter Puller’s recorded output wherein real, definitive consequences are presented to any of the characters in Finn’s stories, to that point.
The characters in those songs, while being aware of their downside, continue consuming all manners of substances and engaging in risky, dangerous activity for the sake of moments of (forgive the pun) ecstasy that they produce. Meanwhile, they remain clearly aware that the behavior and substances are destroying them. This awareness is central—it separates the central characters from the peripheral ones, whose consumption and partying are never discussed or mentioned except as accessories or propulsion for the main characters’. Their exhaustion is their third dimension: the first song of The Hold Steady’s “Boys and Girls in America” includes the line “he likes the warm feeling, but he’s tired of all the dehydration”. No characters in Lifter Puller songs would have admitted to any such thing.
“Boys and Girls…” includes a song called “Chillout Tent”, whose two characters’ simple pursuit of sun, live music, weekend fun, and the opposite sex is first fueled and then enabled by recreational drug use—psychedelic mushrooms in her case and MDMA in his. The two end up kissing in the outdoor music festival’s medical tent (the “Chillout Tent” of the title), where they are hooked up to IVs for dehydration and given “oranges and cigarettes”. The song ends with each stating that they never saw the other again, matter-of-factly, showing their drug experience to be dangerous and transcendent for them both, but ultimately nothing to take very seriously. It is a curious situation, a seeming-contradiction, where the serious physical consequences of drug abuse leads to a brief, slightly lamented romance, enjoyed but not further pursued.
“Hot Soft Light”’s narrator repeats the refrain “we started recreational / ended kinda medical / it came on hot and soft / then it tightened up its tentacles”, as he narrates a story of desperation, defiance and interrogation that “started in the vestibule / and ended in the hospital”. That’s where he discovers the “hot soft light” at the center of “a cross”, which in this case, it is implied, leads him to a new beginning, as in the next song, he sings “the lord takes away and the lord delivers / washed it all off in the Mississippi River”, just like the baptism described before. For Finn, redemption is where you find it, and his characters find it all around—in the connections they forge (through intoxication or other means), or the holiness he sees in simple faith. That is, if you believe that you are reborn in the filthy, polluted Mississippi, then you are reborn there. In this sense, Finn is a Gnostic, since he sees the direct connection for humans to a higher force.
“Stay Positive”’s affirmations of faith begin on the first track, declaring “we are our only saviors”, as it describes hard-living people who plead for help and faith that “we can all be something bigger”. The pleas continue later with “Lord, I’m Discouraged”, in which the narrator describes a failing romance, and fears a “wavering” faith. The object of the narrator’s despair is portrayed as being both emotionally unavailable and beholden to “fortified wine” (used in Holy communion) and a visitor whose visits “only take five or six minutes” (obviously a reference to illegal drug trafficking). In a twist, however, the song does not end with the narrator offering any solutions besides faith and prayer “that she don’t die”. As he attempts to exercise some kind of agency in the situation, the candles he lights only remind him of the way her new friends have “shadowed her light”, in his opinion, and his frustration at her secrecy and distance. This is one of the few cases on the album where we see a clear narrator—one whose role in the proceedings is obvious and unshifting, as he pleads for “a sign that [god] is listening”, but does not ask for god to intercede specifically. The character never asks his god to do the character’s will, but only to grant him strength.
There is still some remnant of the Lifter Puller characters’ desperation and feelings of paranoia and powerlessness in “Stay Positive”’s populating personalities, but the album’s narrative arc calls their occasional despair into question: “Constructive Summer”’s optimism/fatalism mix moves through “Sequestered In Memphis”’s hostility toward the implications and consequences presented by the presence of an interrogator. The narrator seems to resent being questioned about an affair that has been only enjoyable, so far, while exploring the conventions of storytelling, and how the presentation of events shapes the audience’s reaction. “One For the Cutters” presents a different drama which ends in a courtroom, but whose protagonist is probably legally absolved by “her father’s lawyer”, and of which the narrator is difficult to pin down—whomever is telling the story seems to have a great deal of inside information, but it is never quite clear whether he or she was privy to more information, or if he or she is just omnicient.
“Navy Sheets” despairs over a loss of innocence and further corruption in the redemptive nightlife, which only serves as a distraction from the sorrow and frustration at the core of “Lord…” “Yeah Sapphire” implies that maybe the characters’ prayers “worked”, and “Both Crosses” concerns itself with confusion, forgiveness, and mysticism, the narrator pleads, “baby, let’s transverberate”. This low point is countered by the narrative’s turn in the next song, the triumphant “Stay Positive”, which mixes in the good with the bad and emphasizes the the collective contributions of everyone. It can be seen as another song written and sung by the characters themselves, in the vein of “Constructive Summer”, as the lyrics work to reassure the listener how important faith is, whether religious or humanist. This is key to the narrative, as “Slapped Actress” eventually shows. The two songs between—“Magazines” and “Joke About Jamaica”—serve as further meditations on a “woman-as-mystery” theme (like “Lord…”), but from dueling perspectives. The former is narrated from the point of view of a man reflecting—somewhat superficially—on a difficult relationship, and the latter presents the narrative of a woman who never feels her intelligence respected by her male peers, and thus seeks their attention other ways. The song concludes with an offhand mention of how things were “before those two kids died”, which brings the narrative to an effective close, as the music crashes down around the final syllable. The structure concludes with “Slapped Actress”, which pulls the perspective back, revealing a view of both the story and the teller’s awareness of shaping the story. The inference to be made here is that the storyteller has shown us these things and then himself so that we can see how we shape our own story/stories, how each of us can work to dictate the path of our lives, and that our decisions matter.
On the other hand, this final piece of the story has a conflict, too—when Finn says both “we are the actors / we are the theatre” and “we make our own movies” it begs the question: which is it? The narrative seems to be emphasizing a sense of desperation and powerlessness, with the characters periodically trying to remind and convince themselves to keep their chins up and rely on one another, even as it becomes clear that none of them are very trustworthy; the rhetoric is empowering, but the narrative is despairing.
After twenty seconds of silence, the audience (by now, it seems clear that the listener is intended to see him or herself this way in response to the album) is presented with another installment in the “i-almost-died” running narrative Finn frequently employs. “Ask Her For Adderall”, a harrowing, spiteful narrative segways into the resigned despair of “Cheyenne Sunrise”, which obliquely appears to be the final consequence of “Lord…” and “Magazines”, with the relationship in shambles, the narrator only coming home to treat a wound, and threatening to “just back out again” if she is going to fight with him. The image is one of a man on a bender, physically wounded enough to require a bandage, and self-destructing. Appropriately, the final song splits the difference of the album’s two-headed narrative, with “Two-Handed Handshake” scolding in order to empower both sides to make better choices, and to be better and more forgiving of one another and themselves.
-Lee Pietruszewski
Drugs as Sacrament: Gnosticism, Narrative, and Craig Finn
I read a review of a Lifter Puller album wherein the reviewer dismissed Craig Finn as being the guy who insists on telling you about the “sweet party” where he just was, breathlessly and enthusiastically. I understand why the reviewer would write that—on first or surface listen, it could appear that way—with Finn’s speak-singing, speedy with adrenaline and passion (and sometimes simulating chemical assistance), rushing to remember and recount the details of the night that just ended.
The mysticism of The Hold Steady’s “Stevie Nix”—in which the protagonist/narrator is reborn through drugs and a baptism in the Mississippi—places the lyrics in the position of rendering explicit the transcendence being sought by the music’s frenetic energy. The character sees this as a rebirth—he is “born again”—and that is the important part; the Gnostics of the post-Crucifixion period believed that anyone and everyone had direct access to god, and that any church that claimed to be the lone conduit was simply false, and interested only in control and limiting people’s connection to god for political reasons.
“Separation Sunday”’s Holly is the vessel for redemption, as her travels through drugs, parties, being labeled a “hoodrat”, and warning others “always remember/never to trust me” conclude with her finding her way into a cathedral and offering to “tell the congregation how a resurrection really feels”. This dramatic end follows an exhausting period of pleasure-seeking, during which she catches glimpses of both human kindness and horrifying consequences—such as the body found in the garbage dump (“Stevie Nix”).
Lifter Puller was, indeed, the breathless, journalistic, event-centered Finn; there were rarely consequences for the speedy characters in Lifter Puller songs, as the moments on the dance floor, in the rental car, or on/off-campus stand alone. Craig was always standing aside, taking it in, to be painted in broad strokes later. With Lifter Puller began the cinematic quality of Finn’s writing, wherein he presents only flashes of any story, concluding “Fiestas + Fiascos” with The Eyepatch Guy calling out a hit on Nightclub Dwight in the backroom of a dance club for Dwight’s failure to repay a loan. The album’s lyrical narrative is filled with blurs of Dwight’s addiction and the fallout for many connected to him—such as Jenny from “I Like the Lights”, who questions Dwight’s connection to “the pipe”. The album’s final moment is one of the few instances in Lifter Puller’s recorded output wherein real, definitive consequences are presented to any of the characters in Finn’s stories, to that point.
The characters in those songs, while being aware of their downside, continue consuming all manners of substances and engaging in risky, dangerous activity for the sake of moments of (forgive the pun) ecstasy that they produce. Meanwhile, they remain clearly aware that the behavior and substances are destroying them. This awareness is central—it separates the central characters from the peripheral ones, whose consumption and partying are never discussed or mentioned except as accessories or propulsion for the main characters’. Their exhaustion is their third dimension: the first song of The Hold Steady’s “Boys and Girls in America” includes the line “he likes the warm feeling, but he’s tired of all the dehydration”. No characters in Lifter Puller songs would have admitted to any such thing.
“Boys and Girls…” includes a song called “Chillout Tent”, whose two characters’ simple pursuit of sun, live music, weekend fun, and the opposite sex is first fueled and then enabled by recreational drug use—psychedelic mushrooms in her case and MDMA in his. The two end up kissing in the outdoor music festival’s medical tent (the “Chillout Tent” of the title), where they are hooked up to IVs for dehydration and given “oranges and cigarettes”. The song ends with each stating that they never saw the other again, matter-of-factly, showing their drug experience to be dangerous and transcendent for them both, but ultimately nothing to take very seriously. It is a curious situation, a seeming-contradiction, where the serious physical consequences of drug abuse leads to a brief, slightly lamented romance, enjoyed but not further pursued.
“Hot Soft Light”’s narrator repeats the refrain “we started recreational / ended kinda medical / it came on hot and soft / then it tightened up its tentacles”, as he narrates a story of desperation, defiance and interrogation that “started in the vestibule / and ended in the hospital”. That’s where he discovers the “hot soft light” at the center of “a cross”, which in this case, it is implied, leads him to a new beginning, as in the next song, he sings “the lord takes away and the lord delivers / washed it all off in the Mississippi River”, just like the baptism described before. For Finn, redemption is where you find it, and his characters find it all around—in the connections they forge (through intoxication or other means), or the holiness he sees in simple faith. That is, if you believe that you are reborn in the filthy, polluted Mississippi, then you are reborn there. In this sense, Finn is a Gnostic, since he sees the direct connection for humans to a higher force.
“Stay Positive”’s affirmations of faith begin on the first track, declaring “we are our only saviors”, as it describes hard-living people who plead for help and faith that “we can all be something bigger”. The pleas continue later with “Lord, I’m Discouraged”, in which the narrator describes a failing romance, and fears a “wavering” faith. The object of the narrator’s despair is portrayed as being both emotionally unavailable and beholden to “fortified wine” (used in Holy communion) and a visitor whose visits “only take five or six minutes” (obviously a reference to illegal drug trafficking). In a twist, however, the song does not end with the narrator offering any solutions besides faith and prayer “that she don’t die”. As he attempts to exercise some kind of agency in the situation, the candles he lights only remind him of the way her new friends have “shadowed her light”, in his opinion, and his frustration at her secrecy and distance. This is one of the few cases on the album where we see a clear narrator—one whose role in the proceedings is obvious and unshifting, as he pleads for “a sign that [god] is listening”, but does not ask for god to intercede specifically. The character never asks his god to do the character’s will, but only to grant him strength.
There is still some remnant of the Lifter Puller characters’ desperation and feelings of paranoia and powerlessness in “Stay Positive”’s populating personalities, but the album’s narrative arc calls their occasional despair into question: “Constructive Summer”’s optimism/fatalism mix moves through “Sequestered In Memphis”’s hostility toward the implications and consequences presented by the presence of an interrogator. The narrator seems to resent being questioned about an affair that has been only enjoyable, so far, while exploring the conventions of storytelling, and how the presentation of events shapes the audience’s reaction. “One For the Cutters” presents a different drama which ends in a courtroom, but whose protagonist is probably legally absolved by “her father’s lawyer”, and of which the narrator is difficult to pin down—whomever is telling the story seems to have a great deal of inside information, but it is never quite clear whether he or she was privy to more information, or if he or she is just omnicient.
“Navy Sheets” despairs over a loss of innocence and further corruption in the redemptive nightlife, which only serves as a distraction from the sorrow and frustration at the core of “Lord…” “Yeah Sapphire” implies that maybe the characters’ prayers “worked”, and “Both Crosses” concerns itself with confusion, forgiveness, and mysticism, the narrator pleads, “baby, let’s transverberate”. This low point is countered by the narrative’s turn in the next song, the triumphant “Stay Positive”, which mixes in the good with the bad and emphasizes the the collective contributions of everyone. It can be seen as another song written and sung by the characters themselves, in the vein of “Constructive Summer”, as the lyrics work to reassure the listener how important faith is, whether religious or humanist. This is key to the narrative, as “Slapped Actress” eventually shows. The two songs between—“Magazines” and “Joke About Jamaica”—serve as further meditations on a “woman-as-mystery” theme (like “Lord…”), but from dueling perspectives. The former is narrated from the point of view of a man reflecting—somewhat superficially—on a difficult relationship, and the latter presents the narrative of a woman who never feels her intelligence respected by her male peers, and thus seeks their attention other ways. The song concludes with an offhand mention of how things were “before those two kids died”, which brings the narrative to an effective close, as the music crashes down around the final syllable. The structure concludes with “Slapped Actress”, which pulls the perspective back, revealing a view of both the story and the teller’s awareness of shaping the story. The inference to be made here is that the storyteller has shown us these things and then himself so that we can see how we shape our own story/stories, how each of us can work to dictate the path of our lives, and that our decisions matter.
On the other hand, this final piece of the story has a conflict, too—when Finn says both “we are the actors / we are the theatre” and “we make our own movies” it begs the question: which is it? The narrative seems to be emphasizing a sense of desperation and powerlessness, with the characters periodically trying to remind and convince themselves to keep their chins up and rely on one another, even as it becomes clear that none of them are very trustworthy; the rhetoric is empowering, but the narrative is despairing.
After twenty seconds of silence, the audience (by now, it seems clear that the listener is intended to see him or herself this way in response to the album) is presented with another installment in the “i-almost-died” running narrative Finn frequently employs. “Ask Her For Adderall”, a harrowing, spiteful narrative segways into the resigned despair of “Cheyenne Sunrise”, which obliquely appears to be the final consequence of “Lord…” and “Magazines”, with the relationship in shambles, the narrator only coming home to treat a wound, and threatening to “just back out again” if she is going to fight with him. The image is one of a man on a bender, physically wounded enough to require a bandage, and self-destructing. Appropriately, the final song splits the difference of the album’s two-headed narrative, with “Two-Handed Handshake” scolding in order to empower both sides to make better choices, and to be better and more forgiving of one another and themselves.
-Lee Pietruszewski
