Helplessness Blues – The Song
I figure the best way to start with this song is actually posting the lyrics:
Lyrics to Helplessness Blues :
I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking
I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Serving something beyond me
But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will see
What’s my name, what’s my station
Oh just tell me what I should do
I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night
That would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful
And say “Sure take all that you see”
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls
And determine my future for me
And I don’t, I don’t know who to believe
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will see
If I know only one thing
It’s that every thing that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable
Often I barely can speak
Yeah I’m tongue tied and dizzy
And I can’t keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues?
Why should I wait for anyone else?
And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I’ll come back to you someday soon myself
If I had an orchard
I’d work till I’m raw
If i had an orchard
I’d work till I’m sore
And you would wait tables
And soon run the store
Gold hair in the sunlight
My light in the dawn
If I had an orchard
I’d work till I’m sore
If I had an orchard
I’d work till I’m sore
Someday I’ll be
Like the man on the screen
I have been stuck on this song for the last month or so. What I find awesome was that I completely disagree with my review on the song (and my review of the Fleet Foxes) album.
It’s not that I am wrong (or that I think that I am wrong) but rather the song has amassed a meaning beyond that of a single narrative and yet carries enough weight with it to be, in my opinion one of the best songs of the year.
After seeing the Fleet Foxes at Pitchfork Music Festival this summer and re-inspiring my desire to listen to their latest album, it’s made some inroads up the Zimmermann Notes charts as one of the best of the year. I complained in my earlier review about it’s lack of politics or social pursuits and I believe that my review shortchanged this just a bit.
As of late, it has been the Occupy Wall Street movement that made me refocus how this music will have a lasting effect as its title track is chilling as it explores the impetus of the generation making their case against the world.
I posted the lyrics as a whole because I think they need to be recited. Part of me listens to the first three stanzas of what has been written as Generation Y’s prelude to Occupy Wall Street.
However, it’s more this innate desire to return humanity to a more natural state but also a call to action. It tilts the emotional scales with its beauty providing a sense of purpose and understanding for those that feel trapped in similar scenarios. The generation that distrusted corporations at the same time lives off corporations has to try to balance out the inequities of life and reevaluate their own. We hear the protagonist wish to work the land, to work in an orchard, creating their own fruits of their labor, feeling a sense of accomplishment and still able to appreciate the beauty in the world (‘gold hair in the sunlight’).
‘Helplessness Blues’ is a timeless treasure, one that will be redefined in my head for different causes and events, but a song that should be examined for it’s depth for the era that we are living in now.