Some persons will, or would, more than bellyache at my treatment of Downie’s august lyrics in this article. They will, or would, fulminate, vituperate, and execrate, but with saltier speech than these noble verbs intimate. In their minds, I will have done nothing but roast their troubadour, and not in the boyish charm of a Dean Martin roast. The mind of man is supposed to be a repository for knowledge, not a dumping ground for clusters of words leading to confusion. There is a Great Roast coming—what the Bible calls ‘the great and dreadful day of the LORD’ and ‘the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God’ (Malachi 4.5; Revelation 19.15.) If you, whoever you are, insist on continuing your addiction to twanging folly—if you persist in this habit of walking nowhere without ear buds in your ears—ear buds that spill into your heart jangling jingles like ‘big soup stones’ and ‘prideless loans’ and ‘grill sick crows’—you will wish, on that Determinative Day, that you had been wrenched away from imbecilic ditties like Twist my Arm. Imagine writing strings of words like what’s in Twist my Arm, calling these strings lyrics, and then saying to your band mates, “Okay, boys, now we’re going to add some music so I can sing this thing”?! This is madness. And it is madness to enjoy listening to what madmen sing. The sight of a man ending his career in shrieks appeared hip to Downie’s committed fans. If ending his career like that was hip, then it was tragically hip, and the band has been well-named. Tragic, hip, obtuse, mad, The Tragically Hip is all of that. But ‘obtuse’ is the key word, the best word to describe the band, its lead singer, and their lyrics. From first to last, Gord Downie’s Tragically Hip has been tragically obtuse. It may be that most of these tragic lyrics were fashioned only after what musicians call a ‘riff’ was conjured. If so, it is madness to reach for words, irrespective of meaning, that will suit a predetermined sound. This is not songwriting. It is merely sound-causing, something even less than what the Bible calls a ‘tinkling cymbal.’
In light of this man’s lyrics being no more sensible than an accidental clashing of cymbals together, what does celebrating the man and his ‘work’ mean for Canada where the judging of literature is concerned? This lost man—this wayward soul—was awarded the Order of Canada in 2017, which grant can do nothing but greatly reduce the distinction of the prize; something called CBC Music made him personality of the year for 2016; and now a proposition has been put forward to create a poet laureate position in his name. So there are people who are not embarrassed to assert that the man who wrote verses like this (from The Darkest One) should have ‘artists’ follow in his footsteps, and, I suppose, be paid by the taxpayer to shuffle stupidly along in his wake—: “Where you don’t complain, but you still do/And you don’t explain if you want to explain/What you believe you say without shame, ‘I just do’/To say what you mean you don’t mean what you say/Or you do.” Do we need more ‘poetry’ like this? One more time, to force the point home—from Long Time Running: “Well, well it’s all the same mistake/Dead to rights and wide awake/I’ll drop a caribou, I’ll tell on you/I’ll tell on you, I’ll tell on you.” The sound that both these songs make is not the problem. I like the sound of each one. The first one trips merrily along; the second one is pensive and dreamy. The trouble is their lack of sense. The first song might have been written by a child with autism or some other similar handicap. If the song had been given to represent that—to represent the effort of a disabled child trying to be understood—then the song would have made some sense. In the second song, the word ‘caribou’ has no context to support its being there. The song might have been written by a troubled child of nine or ten upon learning the phrase ‘dead to rights’ and after having seen his first caribou during a car trip. After acknowledging the child’s attempt, a parent or teacher could correct him or redirect him, and that would be the end of it. But no one but a madman should call writing like this ‘poetry.’ And it is madness to establish a poet laureate position on the basis of it.
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