Emotional Misdemeanors: In Defense of Musical Plagiarism

 

Last week I was in a particularly exceptional mood, and in the midst of the simple pleasure of a moment, I made the stupid-fucking-grown-up mistake of questioning its origin.

Dumbass human move.

Regardless of whatever gift the universe hands us, we’re evidently dead-set on not only looking it in the mouth, but kicking it in the teeth.

Quick to recover, I pulled the ultimate weak-ass default move that scores of people make when they’re feeling something but unaware of how to express it:

I threw a song quote up as my status.

[Avoiding eye contact, drops head into hands in shame.]

I know.  I KNOW.

My pithy bit of lyrical wisdom?  I reached for Queen, of course.  Freddie Mercury has always had stacks of words on deck for anything I have ever felt, but I went for the obvious, considering my ridiculously optimistic mood:

“Is this the real life…?”

It really was a mildly sincere question—things felt a bit too good for a moment for me not to question the authenticity of the experience, if just a little.  Oh, the first world problems of white privilege, amIright?

But, within moments, my sincere-if-not-tongue-in-cheek bon mot devolved into an online sing-along with friends from around the country adding the text, line by line.  Honestly, I didn’t mind.  Unfazed, I sat back and smiled at the silliness of it all.

Sometimes you’ve just got to say:

“Why so serious?”

It wasn’t until the next morning—when I noticed a former favorite student’s status update, that I was given pause.  As I rolled through my newsfeed, Ian’s status leapt out at me.  Although he didn’t reference me by name, he did ruminate over how it was possible that a “speech teacher from high school” and his sister had both had the audacity to commit this apparent abomination of lyrical larceny (yes, these are my words, not his…I wouldn’t violate his privacy to rip his actual post) within days of one another, using the exact same song.

His post was, honestly, a fairly gentle castigation of the practice of people posting song lyric statuses because, as he asserted, they were “just trying to evoke some deeper meaning” from them…and yet, I still felt a little stung. 

I had not realized the depth of my crime against the interwebs.  Had I fallen victim to that tweakish-teen habit of substituting real emotion and introspective response by cribbing someone else’s more epigrammatic wit or wisdom?

Apparently so.

But the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I became at the judgment, however well-meaning it was.  I mean, it’s not like I was posting “Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots…”, for Christ’s sake.

Aren’t we ALWAYS trying to use our words and thoughts and feelings and images to evoke deeper responses from other people and feel connected to them?  Wasn’t social media developed with this as its prime directive—so that we can feel a little bit less ALONE on this giant shitball we’re all riding around the sun?

Whether I post a Queen lyric or a stanza from a Lord Byron sonnet or write something original…isn’t my ultimate goal to get someone out there to think: “Fuck yeah!”…and hit the “like” button or retweet it or message me a note that reassures me of the fact that, well-what-the-hell-do-you-know, I’m not alone?

We’ve never had a population like what’s crawling on this planet right now…and yet, I’d venture to hypothesize that we’ve probably never felt so damn alone and so distanced from one another than in this generation. 

In my experience, music creates exquisite little snapshots of our lives—the sounds take you to first crushes, first kisses, first dances…and to last calls, last contacts, and last loves.  How many times have you spun up the volume on a song and cried, “THAT’S my JAM?!?!?!”  

Yeah, you and about 88 million other people, dumbass. 

 

We all have communal property rights to those same emotions—and I think therein lies my point…if we share a collective unconscious, a limitless reserve of allocated human responses, what is so wrong with withdrawing and depositing from that account whenever you feel the need for a little human touch?

 

If we are out driving around and we hear five songs in a row that evoke primeval responses within ourselves about something or someone…songs that that salve our wounds or stab at our souls, songs that make us feel alive and attached, well, what the HELL is wrong with sharing them in optimistic (if not admittedly naïve) faith that we are actively doing something about that deeper hunger for synchronicity—unlike the chaotic reality and confusion of human disconnection we see unfolding around us every day?

There HAS to be more to our species than simply our magnificent abilities to take pretty pictures of ourselves and split atoms and continue overpopulating our poor planet.  If sharing a song lyric helps me to tap into that incomprehensible craving for connection—well, what the hell does that matter to you?  

Look—I apologize if I’m coming off as overly defensive.  It’s just that I’m caught in a landslide here…there’s no escape from reality.  People, just open your eyes—if only you’d look up to the skies you’d see…

Okay, so maybe Ian was right. 

I need a hobby.

 

 

This would be a good time for you to come in now, Bruce...

 

In the end what you don’t surrender, the world just strips away.

Mobile friendly: Bruce Springsteen, "Human Touch"