Song Choice: Narrative Songs vrs Your Brain

[sisabet]

I should be working, but I'm caught up, today is a holy day for me, I'm bored and I had to pull the car over at lunch so I could cry because I was playing what I thought was a safe CD but it turns out one of the songs is all about Wes thru Angel POV and I just now realized it and I freakin' lost it.

After that, even the new All-White Meat Chicken McNuggets would taste like dust. Or yesterday. Or something equally dramatic and maudlin. I'm running out of cliches.

I'm also seriously considering vidding "Pancho and Lefty"

Cutting for serious length as I ponder narration in vids, lyrical interpretation of "Paradise" and Angel is Pancho, dammit!


Pancho and Lefty
-Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings

Livin' on the road my friend
was gonna keep you free and clean
but now you wear your skin like iron
and your breath is hard as kerosene
You weren't your Mama's only boy
but her favourite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
and sank into your dreams

Pancho was a bandit, boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants
for all the honest world to feel
Well, Pancho met his match you know
on the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dyin' words
Oh, but that's the way it goes

All the federales say
they could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
out of kindness, I suppose

Lefty he can't sing the blues
all night long like he used to
The dust that Pancho bit down south
ended up in Lefty's mouth
The day they laid poor Pancho low
Lefty split for Ohio
Where he got the bread to go
there ain't nobody knows

All the federales say
they could have had him any day
We only let him slip away
out of kindness, I suppose

The poets tell how Pancho fell
and Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel
The desert's quiet, Cleveland's cold
and so the story ends we're told
Pancho needs your prayers, it's true
but save a few for Lefty too
He only did what he had to do
and now he's growin' old

All the federales say
we could have had him any day
Only let him go so long
out of kindness, I suppose

A few grey federales say
could have had him any day
We only let him go so long
out of kindness, I suppose



I love this song. I love any song that tells a story. I love any song that features a male duet. I love any song that has Waylon and/or Willie (or the boys). This song is loved on many many levels.

So let's talk about whether or not this can be vidded. Maybe I am not the best person to be making that decision - I'm pretty liberal on the whole "can this song be vidded" front. My typical reaction is, "I don't know - can it?" Does the song want to participate? This is important to know because a song that is extremely - positively - no way shape or form anything but - strictly narrative, vidding it can be hazardous to your, not to mention your viewers', health.

So I'm in a quandry, because I love a story-telling song and I love a vid that tells a story. All of my vids are narrative (to me) - I can't vid unless I have a storyline in my head. If no one gets the story but me - that is absolutely fine - unless the vid itself is narrative and the whole purpose was to tell a story. If no one gets that then I have failed. But I don't consider Closer a failure because I interpret it as Redemption Barred and someone else sees a diffent storyline. If I needed to tell myself a story about Angel moving to LA and building his stable of Man-Whores to get me through structuring the first part of "Cowboy", in order to give me a base to display the Angel I see, and no one but Dawn knows that when Angel slips the business card into Lindsey's pocket he is saying "You're beautiful, come work for me" or that Wes is Angel's biggest money-maker. Or that in an earlier draft Angel fired Spike, but I had to cut that part and I always crack up when Angel takes back his bling-bling (Ring of Amara) from one of his man-bitches - if no one else sees that then actually, I am kinda relieved cause my mind is not always the classiest place to be (witness me vidding two Kid Rock songs) and turning Angel into Eddie Griffin in Deuce Bigelow is probably not my finest moment. But that is how I vid.

I love stories. I am fiction-addicted and I have always been this way. I am wired like this. I am also wired to make everything I listen to and see relate to whatever it is I am thinking about. What I am thinking about is usually a story. Finding out I could make videos was one of the happiest accidents that has ever happened to me.

When I love a song - I want to vid it. Simple. This is how I find songs - I listen to what I love and sometimes it wants to be a vid. Sometimes this is easy. "Paradise" was not a difficult song choice. It is a song I would want played at my funeral, so it was easy for me to give it to Cordelia. The fact that it is all about Angel was simple as well (other than everything being All About Angel) since funerals are for the living, not the dead. Er, well - you know what I mean.

And the lyrics are just vague enough to allow numerous interpretations. I could have easily gone literal on the You'll be there by the mountains, by the crystal streams as I have source of Cordy in nature. But that would suck. There is no emotional resonance there, other than "we miss Cordy - here look, more Cordy" - so what is the intent of that lyric?

To me it was the reinforcing of the narrator's belief that the object of this song would be in the Paradise and that he would be there with the object as well that he has a hope that they "We'll meet in another place. You'll turn around and I'll see your face" and anyone who has ever lost anyone knows that you never really stop looking for them. You see them out of the corner of your eye and there is always that stupid irrational hope that this time you have finally found them. This song really touched me, because it gave words to that feeling. This is a song about longing and love and I had to figure out first what I see as a Paradise and then see if I could make that Angel's desire as well and this is because - if they were not the same things - then I could not do this vid. Not in my current emotional state. I had to really feel like what I was doing was real and true and right and what hurt Angel hurt me too and thank god Angel agreed. We both agree that pretty locations are all well and good -- but having the people you care about - your family - whole and happy and together - is true Paradise. And we are both devastated that this is just not really possible outside of fantasy. Things happen and cannot be undone. There is no fairness in the world and pain is your only guarantee. Therefore, grab and hold tightly any happiness you might chance upon, except you probably will not recognize it for what it is, until it is past. And this makes memory both a treasure and a torture device. Also, without Cordy, things fall apart. This last one was more for Angel then me, although I respect his opinion on it.

And now that I have sufficiently lightened the mood, let me move on to talk about vidding the narrative song. I'm still working this out - so watch me rationalize. Okay, the way I see it - with an extremely narrative song that does not match the source exactly (and really - wouldn't vidding a narrative song exactly by the source be a really boring thing to do. Like Dylan's "Hurricane" to the movie? I don't know if it would be boring to watch - probably better than the movie cause of the whole - condensed into 5 minutes - but making it would probably put me in a coma) then you could either go one of two ways: Constructed Reality or liberal/metaphorical interpretation of lyrics.

I tend to immediately go to Constructed Reality. There are benefits to vidding this way -- you get to free yourself from contextualization of clips and finding appropriate source can be fun. The danger lies in being ridiculous. If the entire goal of the vid is to be ridiculous - then mission accomplished!! "Goodbye Earl" was never intended to be anything other than stupid and literal. I think it succeeded in both goals. Heh. But, I don't want to sully the good story of Pancho and Lefty by mocking it. This is a real love story, with betrayal, and death and pain. This song makes me feel - it makes me feel so much that if I were in the bathroom in "Seeing Red", Spike would be all "I'm gonna make you fee...oh, wait, sorry. My bad. You okay? Need a tissue?" that is what this song does to me.

So I don't want to make it a comedy. And that is a problem - because a danger with Constructed Realities is in interpretting the lyrics literally. And too literal interpretation is one of the biggest mistakes that can be made. It is also the one most people new to vidding make the most. I know I was guilty of it. Hell, I am still guilty of it. And strict literal interpretations have their place - just - you have to realize that its place is usually bound in humor and an unexpected chuckle in a dead serious vid is not your friend. So the constructed reality would have to be loosely based and you are gonna hafta have a team of betas on hand for renegade giggle watch and there is still no guarantee that your vid is not gonna end up looking like a joke. It's enough to make you stop before you begin. Which, is probably the right reaction if you can't get past the hurdles. Knowing when *not* to vid - ah - now that is a skill. I need to develop it more.

But you are still plagued by this song. Or rather - I am still plagued by this song. Years have gone by and I *still* absolutely believe it is all about Angel and Spike (except for that period of time when I was reading mpoetess's fic and it was all about Spike and Xander - sigh - good times). This brings me to my second option:

Make the song canonical.

This is actually more like construct a reality, only make it less literal. I don't control canon. If I did, the show wouldn't actually be that different; Lilah'd still be around, boys would kiss, there would be Wild West flashbacks, but really - I like the canon. There is a reason I am obsessed with this show. So I have to figure out a way to make this very specific song very specific to the Angelverse. I have to interpret this song as if it is All About Angel - as if it was written for this purpose and that right there is what I believe the key to song choice really is. We can talk all day long about how the music fits the source, or how genres conflict - but my number one criteria for vidding a specific song is "Do I believe the reason this song exists is to tell a story about X?" If the answer is yes, then I can probably make a vid work. Somehow. But I have to truly believe that the song was written for this purpose. So some people might hear a song and think it is about Easy E dying too young of AIDs - I'll hear it and it will be all about Angel.

Do my vids work for everyone? No. They do not. They work for me.

Can I make "Pancho and Lefty" work for me? Remains to be seen. The emotional elements of the song all fit except for one. We have pain in the song - pain in the source. We have two men bound together in a partnership in the song - same in the source. Character designation is a no-brainer. Angel is obviously Pancho, Spike Lefty. We have source that spans decades so a sense of timelessness can be easily imparted. James Marsters gives good face, so there will be no trouble achieving poignancy with Lefty's decision and resulting guilt and loneliness - BUT - there is big trouble with doing that and remaining in canon. Spike never killed Angel and the beauty of this song is in the betrayal. He's tied him up and tortured him a few times (and I love being in a fandom where I can nonchalantly toss that out) but no betrayal and death. Hell, Wes would make a better Lefty at that. Wait a second...maybe this song is about Angel and Wes...

And this is how I process a song Pre-vid.

Comments

[barkley.livejournal.com]

If you vid this song, I will love you, it, and the world no matter who it ends up being about. I love this song (in all four incarnations that I own) and I've always just written it off as "a song I love, but will never vid" because I don't have the vision to jump from Pancho to ____. I get hung up on names despite the examples that show me that good vidders can and do map songs with names to fandom source. In a way, it's kind of freeing for me, because it means that there are a subset of my favorite songs that I will not be endlessly replaying in my head trying to find the perfect fit for them. But I do fervently hope that this song works for you.

[lonelybrit]

He only did what he had to do
and now he's growin' old
Hmm. That phrase, to me anyway, just has Wesley written all over it. Makes me think of Sleep Tight and the isolation that followed. Having said that, I can usually twist just about anything to somehow centre around Wes, so my opinion is probably a little tainted in that respect...

Out of curiosity, what was the song you were listening to in the car earlier?

Hope life's treating you well! :)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

"Buy It In Bottles" by Richard Ashcroft was the song from earlier. It devastated me, in that good way, though.

Hee - maybe Lefty is Wes - I know that whoever we are fandomly attached to the most is who we generally see first when figuring out a song. valarltd just commented on my previous entry that she always thinks of Han Solo when she hears this song.

[lonelybrit]

Hee - maybe Lefty is Wes - I know that whoever we are fandomly attached to the most is who we generally see first when figuring out a song.

LOL! Yep, that's me.

I guess if you want to do Spike and Angel, the easiest way would be to do it about the events of BtVS Season 2. If you cut back on Buffy herself and just have Dru then you could use her as the catalyst for the betrayal? And then at the end you have Angelus getting sucked into Hell, and Spike going off with the girl only to lose her anyway.

Just some rambling thoughts while I strive to avoid revision... :)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I guess if you want to do Spike and Angel, the easiest way would be to do it about the events of BtVS Season 2.

Yeah, except none of that really resonates with me. They didn't have souls then - acts of betrayal were commonplace and expected. I need the history to give them depth - but the souls allow for remorse. Lefty has to be conflicted. The song only works if Lefty does what he had to do and now he lives in pain. Like - what if Spike had to stake Angel to save the world?? Something like that. Like in "Just Rewards" when Spike and Angel are in the graveyard and Angel is about to smash the amulet and Spike says that he is glad that it is Angel doing it - it seems fitting. That kinda pain.

[piper47.livejournal.com]

sisabet you're my hero.

Seriously, I know most of this entry was rambling on your part, trying to get your thoughts in line about what this vid might be, but you made a point that absolutely floored me.

I love stories. I am fiction-addicted and I have always been this way. I am wired like this. I am also wired to make everything I listen to and see relate to whatever it is I am thinking about. What I am thinking about is usually a story. Finding out I could make videos was one of the happiest accidents that has ever happened to me.

Again probably just all part of your rambling, but weeks ago, when I was still attempting ( poorly ) to vid anything from Jossverse I was hit with something. Vidding is *exatly* like storytelling, like fic writing. They were are similar, just one is told with words while the other is told with moving images. Not everyone can do it and not everyone can vid everything. That's why I get seemingly irritated with people who will "Oh! I'll vid whatever you want, couple, character, you name it. I'll do whatever song you want to." In the end, the video might look pretty, if you're lucky, but it's not going to be successful. Unless you are amazing and have the ablity to be one with every character for said show you are vidding for and then at that point the entire fandom would be naming you God and move on. That's never going to happen. You have to love your characters and be able to understand them enough to vid them. Same goes for writing.

That's why I love you so much and that's why your vids are always successful. You see that... you see that storytelling aspect and you know your characters. You can blend their emotions with that that are running through the song and have it come out so beautifully. That's why Paradise was so incredible. I don't know if you looked at this way, but you probably do and don't know it. You have to crawl inside the character and become them in order to vid something that emotional. In a sense you *were* Angel, you bared all his pain at losing his family and losing Cordy and then you projected that into the video with those clips and those lyrics all matching up together until you told the world *exactly* how Angel was feeling perfectly. Then you could step out of being Angel, look back at the video as it was finishing and feel all the pain Angel felt. That is truly an amazing thing and I applaud you for it.

This of course had *nothing* to do with whether you can vid "Pancho and Lefty", but I think you'll eventually figure that out. You'll listen to the song so many times you'll start to feel numb and then it'll either click, or it won't. I sure as hell wouldn't mind seeing it. ;)

I hope this wasn't counter-productive. :-D

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, well first thank you. Second - yes - vidding is a lot like writing fic - just a different medium. I agree that vidding on demand is difficult if near impossible. This was my biggest fear during the vid auction. Then I realized that I am also highly suggestible and easily led - so the winner could probably make me believe their vid. In the end it was a lot of worry for naught since the bidder and I get along quite swimmingly in the sea of collaboration and she understands my limitations.

Vidding as Therapy was a crack I was making while vidding Paradise, and actually dealing with my own issues about death and destruction of family and loss was the main impetus. I hope my own deal is not too front and centered - I don't want the vid to be about me, it is about Angel - but it is also probably the most emotionally honest I have ever been in a vid. I cried a lot making it. I had to stop working on it several times because it was too difficult and at one point I almost deleted it. My biggest worry was that it would be too much. Too emotional and that would translate into just total cheese. I lived in fear that the vid would be lame and cheesey. Finally I had to just make it for me and pretty much not worry about ever posting it or showing it to someone else - I just made what felt right to me. Poor Angel.

[piper47.livejournal.com]

This is really sad. I didn't mean to throw you so off track by bringing Paradise back up, although out of all your vids, I find it to be the most successful. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that you have a personal tie to it. And you know, it didn't come out cheesy or anything, no one would really know that the hidden meaning behind Paradise was your personal life, cept for the fact that you no admitted it, but I don't need to tell you what everyone thought of it, you saw all your feedback. It was all about Angel. ::sniffle:: Poor Angel. I hardly even watch the show and I got all sniffly and sad. So you brought your point across to everyone.

Back to "Pancho and Lefty" you might as well try it, you know you have a great team of thought planners and betas... if it's not working you can always let it go and just move forward to the next piece. Which, we all have a list of unfinished vids in our closet. Nothing to be ashamed of. LOL.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

Great thoughts. Really, really interesting to read. And this:

Knowing when *not* to vid - ah - now that is a skill. I need to develop it more.

That resonates very strongly with me, because I utterly lack this skill. And I need it. Especially with what I'm considering vidding right now. But all I can think is - "Buffy's couch has a soul! And it needs to be shown musically!" Those are my issues.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I think your vids tend to wind up on the "metaphorical interpretation of the lyrics" side of things more than you think. I would never call "Cowboy" constructed reality; I'd say it's a playful exploration of a metaphor.

I have asked myself often about vidding songs that have their own stories, because I listen to a lot of folk music (and wow, how much would I love to vid Richard Shindell's cover of "Cold Missouri Waters"? a lot a lot a lot -- but I just don't have a fandom that would support it...unless, hmm, John Crichton...no, no, don't get me started). Anyway, yeah. I have stayed away from directly narrative songs, because I lack the kind of imagination you have: the kind that can create something brand new from something (apparently) completely different.

But I think a song like "Pancho and Lefty" is actually general enough to lend itself to vidding pretty easily. It does tell a story, yes, but the words themselves are not so blindingly specific that you just absolutely have to have Mexico be Mexico and the MoG riding horses or it won't fly. Any given verse of this song can be gently smoothed into AtS imagery without, I think, any jarringness or disconnection or, indeed, constructed reality at all.

Possibly we think of vidding in these arbitrary categories (literal vs. metaphoric, for example) when in fact it's more of a continuum, from most literal to most metaphoric, and where any particular vid fits on that scale has something to do with song choice -- again, not "narrative" or "non-narrative", but "more narrative" and "less narrative" -- but even more to do with the clip choices you make.

I guess what I'm saying is, yes, you absolutely can vid this song, and since you want to so much, I think you should. (:

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Oh, I never wanted anyone to see "Cowboy" as a constructed reality - no it is just how I see the character of Angel - and I like your phrase "playful exploration of a metaphor" - that works for me. I constructed the story about the man-ho's to keep myself focused on the first part of the vids. It was a private story. That I have now shared. Eeep.

I think I am going to have to agree with you about the continuum -- and I think you are right about P&L being sufficiently vague - just not vague enough... I'm blocked on the guilt of Lefty. If I could figure that out...

I'm just stuck on the idea of lyric specificity right now. Almost like a broken record. It is the KMart in my Rainman brain. I think it is because I've been listening to "Tangled Up In Blue" every morning for weeks now and everytime I think that this song is not viddable, but gee, I sure would like to vid it. Then I get caught up in Gender Specificity and then specificity in general and then I think about P&L. So it really isn't that I can't reimagine A/S as P/L -- I just can't make Spike into Lefty. Almost. But not quite.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Ah, a block. Why didn't you say so? (:

I know the broken record problem of which you speak. The only way I overcome that is by willfully going off and doing something else (writing, a different vid, whathaveyou).

Maybe give the idea a rest for a little while? Then try watching some older episodes again?

[renenet.livejournal.com]

You say "Tangled Up In Blue" and Gender Specificity and I think "mmmm...Indigo Girls version" because I love me some lesbians. But you're probably interested in exploring "Tangled Up In Blue" between men, so I'll just la la la over here in my dyke covers happy place.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

And you know, I have never heard the Indigo Girls' version and now I am intrigued. Suddenly gender specificity is not such a terrible thing...

[barkley.livejournal.com]

What can I do to make you hear this? I am a big fan of Bob Dylan, and yet? This cover is what covers should be about. If I was living for the day when you'd vid Pancho and Lefty, I could now live for the day when you put something to "We lived on the house..."

Let me go rip a cd.

[barkley.livejournal.com]

http://www.bonuspoints.net/misc/Tangled%20Up%20In%20Blue.mp3

[thefakeheadline.livejournal.com]

See, to me it feels like an Angel-and-Wes-and-Connor thing. Like, say, someone explaining his origins to Connor? 'Cause the first verse is so very Connor and it uses the "you" pronoun, and then when talking about Pancho and/or Lefty it switches to "he," like the narrator is talking about them to someone else.

That's my interpretation, anyway. I do tend to have a bias towards Wes for this sort of thing. *g*

[kitkatbyte.livejournal.com]

I could cry because I was playing what I thought was a safe CD but it turns out one of the songs is all about Wes thru Angel POV and I just now realized it and I freakin' lost it.

Aww. I just love you.

I'm pretty liberal on the whole "can this song be vidded" front. My typical reaction is, "I don't know - can it?" Does the song want to participate?

I have always been impressed by the huge range of songs you use. Typically, I will think about vidding a song, and then decide to, and then change my mind when I really start planning clips, when I realize just how lame the vid would be. I need to be absolutely certain about my song choices.

a danger with Constructed Realities is in interpretting the lyrics literally

I can't imagine ever doing a non-humor constructed reality. My favorite is "Don't Dream it's Over", which is about Buffy getting pregnant with Spike's baby, and Spike not finding out until after she loses the baby. And although that was a sad vid, my favorite part is when it fades from Buffy's face (and later, Spike's face) to a shot of a baby. It makes me laugh a little, and I heart it so.. but it does take away from the seriousness a bit. All of the other constructed realities I *love* are humor, becuse they are just so damn funny. And Country Calvicade -- still one of my favorites.

ask yourself "Do I believe the reason this song exists is to tell a story about X?"

That is a great rule to follow. And I think that for most of my vid ideas that I eventually throw out, it's really because I decide that no, the song does not exist to tell that story.

[crowie.livejournal.com]

That was a very insightful post. I love it when people wonder about the process of creating things.

I vid but I've currently not done enough vids to be able to figure out any trends. I don't think Ive done anything with narrative or been tempted to vid a very narrative song. I tend to be in an emotional/visual place when creating stuff. The mood of the song has to fit.

I'd love to see you vid "Pancho and Lefty" and I just realised that if you want to have Spike kill Angel, he almost Staked him in the episode when they were fighting for the Cup of Eternal Torment. So you might be able to take that footage and cut to a vamp more than half way into turning to dust and then an angsty Spike or something like that.

Although that's heading into constructed reality. If you want to have a deeper betrayal theme from canon in there you'd be better off with the vid as Angel/Wes. I think.

Im just thinking outloud here so ignore freely.

[drewsilla.livejournal.com]

I would love, love, love to see that song turned to vid. It reminds me of when I was a little Drew and country music was the only music played in my house. I'd sit by the radio for hours at a time, listening to stuff like Willie, Dolly, Kenny and the Judds. Old school country. Nothing like it.

And Spike is Lefty. I can dig it!