My musical thoughts, let me show you them.
So I love music, and I listen to it a whole lot. Some of it is…well…problematic. Some of it is REALLY problematic (Jesus ******** Christ on a pogo stick, do not even try to talk to me about Brad Paisley right now, WHAT A PRIVILEGE-DENYING RACIST APOLOGIA-SPEWING a*****e.) And sometimes, a song will pop up on my radio that just makes me so, so happy.
That’s what happened today with the Script’s “Six Degrees of Separation.”
Now, normally I’m not too fond of the Script; they’re a bit heavy on the self-pity for my taste. But my God, this song, where do I even begin.
Oh, I know! How about with: “Fifth, you see them out with someone else…”
Them! Not he, not she, them! This is a song about breaking up, and this is the best framing I have ever seen for it. You know why?
This framing disappears no one who would be in a relationship to begin with. A QUILTBAG person who is not in a relationship with a female-identified person, a polyamorous person, a person in a relationship with someone who identifies outside the gender binary, hell, a straight woman can listen to this and not be jarred out by hearing the inevitable “her” when sung by a male singer.
And let’s talk about those other listeners. If the singer was talking about “I” and if he is interested in female persons, it would be totally okay to use ‘her’ for that line. But he doesn’t! And why doesn’t he? Because he’s not singing about himself. He’s singing about “you”—you, the listener, have broken up with someone that you cared about and are going through these degrees of separation. The singer isn’t addressing his audience as though they are all interested in women—he is not ignoring the existence of, say, straight women or gay men in a song addressed to “you.”
I love this so much I cannot even begin to express my joy. I am going to admit that I don’t know if that’s what they were aiming for, but I LOVE IT.
Another thing I have to love is that it doesn’t have to be a romantic song. Obviously, with the Script’s back catalogue, it’ll come off that way if you know of them. But the closest I’ve ever come to feeling the way the song describes is when I broke up with a good friend after I realized that being around her made me exhausted and that I dreaded seeing her. We were never in a romantic relationship, but ending our friendship hurt me deeply.
And it’s okay for me to read the song that way! Because there is, nowhere, any clear designation of “them” as a romantic interest—sure, “see[ing] them out with someone else” kind of implies it, but I can easily read that as my ex-friend hanging out with others, at parties or get-togethers I once would have gone to as well.
I love this song because it lets me apply it to my own life, without insisting that I have to be a certain gender, sexuality or demographic in order to, ahem, know that feel.
It kind of makes me sad, though, how such a small thing is so rare that I had to write an entire post about it.
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SilentShadowDreamer
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August 1998 - October 2011; 1998 - October 2013; 1997 - August 2014; ? - August 2017
RIP, my babies. I love you, and I'll see you again someday.
Mostly on tumblr these days. Find me there!
Life is short. Take your chances, let them change you. Nobody said it would be easy, we just said it'd be worth it.
RIP, my babies. I love you, and I'll see you again someday.
Mostly on tumblr these days. Find me there!
Life is short. Take your chances, let them change you. Nobody said it would be easy, we just said it'd be worth it.