Saturday Song # 3: The Frames (The Swell Season) - Star Star

Its quite funny, I've been planning to post this for a while now, as it had been sitting on my mind, and I'd transcribed most of the intro too ;-) , and just before I headed off to my lunch break on Thursday, I saw the post on Something this foggy day - which picked up most of my thoughts. I thought that the two options he poses summarises a number of positions quite nicely; in the sense we are part of the great environmental cycle - or there is a reason outside of, and larger than ourselves.

Courtesy of Something this Foggy Day here's the way Hansard introduced the song, at one gig (at St Louis, last year, which you can buy, along with many others from "Played Last Night").

"This song is like a little consoling lullaby to yourself. It's written in that lovely state of mind where you're (pause), you're drunk - but, you know, it's neither good nor bad, it's just (does something that makes people laugh) ... This song was written in the middle of a field in the middle of the night in the middle of Ireland looking up - I'd like to say looking up at the stars but looking up at a cloudy grey black sky and knowing that the stars are somewhere beyond it and pretending that it's a lovely starry night in the middle of summer, even though you'll probably have pneumonia in the morning. And it's a song about looking up and asking the big questions to the man above or to the stars above or to whatever ... just that beautiful metaphor that there's the sky and the answers are up there somewhere - because otherwise being a human is boring. There are two ways to look at, I think, everything. We're either a fungus on this earth that's eating it up and chewing it up and we're all going to die, or we're here to sow poetry into the ground and to do as much good was we possibly can. (Everyone cheers!) Some of us live the other way and some of us live that way. It's really up to yourself I guess."

Star star, teach me how to shine shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say the hill's too steep
Well they talk and talk forever
But they just never climb

Falling down into situations
Bringing out the best in you
You're flat on your back again
And star, you're ever word I'm heeding
Can you help me to see?
I'm lost in the marsh.

Star star, teach me how to shine.. shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say we're all asleep
They'll toss and turn forever
But no rest will they find...

(I love the line which he often insert into the song: "There is no life, I know, to compare, to pure imagination")

 +++

And on Glen Hansard - there's something so familiar about him, he speaks like he's having a conversation with you  - in another recording he talks about how as musicians you are kicking and screaming to get someone (anyone) to pay attention and then, all of a sudden - the world turns around and says "What?!", and secondly I love this story here).

Finally - the Frames' Sydney concert (Aug 14 last year) is available to watch online - Yay!