“Gather ye rosebuds
while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles
today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The
higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to
setting.”
“To
the Virgins to Make Much of Time” -- poem by Robert Herrick, 1599
“Tonight, we are
young.”
“We Are Young” -- song by Fun, 2011
One of the things I always loved (and now miss) about being
a high school English teacher was having the daily opportunity to show high
schoolers that no matter what weird order the words are in or what ancient type
of vocabulary is being used, the messages in literature have remained (largely)
the same throughout time. Another lesson
that I emphasized in my classroom was that literature is all around us. Sure, it’s usually found in books, poems,
short stories, and essays; however, it can also be found in music. Music was often a central part of my lesson
plans, and I still find myself listening to songs muttering, “How can I apply
that?” (Just as an example, I once used a 50 Cent song to help teach the pastoral poem “The Passionate
Shepherd to His Love”. J)
So, after hearing the song “We Are Young” by Fun adnauseam
on just about every genre of radio station here in the Metro Detroit area, I
started to think about the concept of “tonight”. Fun says that word a whole lot of times in
their song, but I learned a long time ago that just because someone says
something a few times doesn’t mean they always know what it means. I looked up the lyrics, and then started to think
about other songs that use the word “tonight”.
Here are the song lyrics I read for this series of posts
(besides the Fun lyrics):
(F.Y.I…I’ll not be including the lyrics in their entirety
during my discussion, so if you’d like to see the full lyrics, just click on
each song name. If you’d like to see the
video, click on the artist’s name.) (F.Y.I. #2...the Elton John video is so cheesy that it's fantastic. And The Shirelles video is a live performance from 1964! Check it out!)
After reading all these songs and mulling over it for a bit,
I decided that the idea of "tonight" is presented in four different ways. I’ll deal with two in this
post and two in the next. Let’s go!
#1 – Tonight as possibility.
To me, this is the romantic version of “tonight.” Possibility is a cloudy concept, and that
leaves room for the anticipation of what’s to come. The night is full of questions – What’s going
to happen? Where will I go? Who will I meet? – and, as such, it’s a time
of day that’s riddled with uncertainty.
Instead of that uncertainty bringing these singers to their knees,
it brings them to a place where they grab onto the possibility of the night and
use that as their certainty. Tonight is
exciting and it brings exciting things along with it.
“Tonight” – West Side Story
For those who have never seen the
musical (and, I must confess, I’ve only seen parts of it), this is an updated
version of Romeo and Juliet, set in
New York and centering around two young people whose association with rival
gangs makes their love seem impossible.
Not long after they see each other for the first time (and immediately
fall in love), they sing “Tonight” to one another. Neither one knows how they will make this
love they’ve found work out. But here
are a few things they do know:
“Today
the world was just an address / A place for me to live in / No better than all
right / But here you are / And what was just a world is a star / Tonight.”
However it will all come together, Tony and Maria realize that the world before they
met each other was ordinary. Now that
they have seen what the world could be, they want that world all the time. The potential for more seems to become a
reality in the middle of a tonight that is not a reflection of normal life. Tony and Maria believe in the possibility of
getting more than what they have already, and tonight’s new love is how they’ll
achieve those bigger things, no matter how unrealistic it might be.
“Tonight, Tonight” by The
Smashing Pumpkins
Apparently, this song has been
compared to Robert Herrick’s poem “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” (quoted way up top). The part of the song that stuck
out to me includes:
“Tonight,
so bright / Tonight / And you know you’re never sure / But you’re sure you
could be right / If you held yourself up to the light / … / We’ll crucify the
insincere tonight, / We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight, /
We’ll find a way to offer up the night tonight, / The indescribable moments of
your life tonight, / The impossible is possible tonight, / Believe in me as I
believe in you, tonight.”
This one might seem obvious since the lyrics
mention possibility, but look around that mention at what exactly is possible:
getting rid of insincerity, making things right, offering up the night,
believing in “me”. These things are
labeled impossible, but yet The Smashing Pumpkins suggest they are
possible because of what tonight means: a beginning. It is a
launching point for what’s going to happen in the future, and that future
includes achieving the impossible. Even
amidst uncertainty (“You know you’re never sure / But you’re sure you could be
right”), there's a chance for something great to happen.
#2 – Tonight as an
end in and of itself.
I’m pretty sure this type of
tonight centers around casual sex and/or partying. It’s sort of an “eat, drink, and be merry
for tomorrow we die” attitude. And it’s
pretty dangerous! I think of all the
types, this tonight is the one that can cause the most regret and destruction
because it’s completely focused on wanting a specific thing – healthy or not –
without stopping to consider the fallout or the consequences. In order to think of tonight as an end in and
of itself, the idea that there might be some kind of
negative result from living for the now cannot even be brought to the table. Now is all there is, so who cares what the result might be?
“Give Me Everything” by Pitbull
I have to be honest: this song was not
on my original list. However, as I was
cruising north on I-75 going 80 mph today, my radio flipping brought me to this
song. I felt like it was a sign since
the lyrics fit perfectly with this category.
The lyrics that made me think that?
Here:
“Tonight,
I will love, love you tonight / Give me everything tonight / For all we know,
we might not get tomorrow / Let’s do it tonight / … / I want you tonight / I
want you to stay / I want you tonight.”
Part of the big problem with this “tonight
as an end in itself” thinking is that it doesn’t take into consideration what
happens if you DO get tomorrow. If you’ve
used up all the good stuff tonight, what will you have left over for
tomorrow? I think this ties in with the
current acronym of choice with the young folks: “YOLO” (which means “you only
live once”). I just read an article that
talked about how this little abbreviation is being used to sanction all kinds
of stupidity. I don’t have a problem
with taking risks or living on the edge of glory. But I do have a problem with the idea that
whatever happens in the now can’t possibly be better than what might happen
tomorrow so grab all the good stuff you can in the moment. Pitbull really isn’t helping the little ankle biters
of the world make better choices.
“Take Me Home Tonight” by Eddie
Money
I have to be honest…again: I love
this song. While I totally and
completely disagree with Mr. Money’s ideology, I cannot help but blare the song
every time it comes on the radio. (Plus,
it makes a great karaoke tune to “sing” with my pals Natalie and Greg!) But I’m not here to spout my particular loves
for a particular song. I’m here to pick
it apart! The lyrics’ greatest offenders
include:
“I
get frightened in all this darkness / I get nightmares, I hate to sleep alone /
I need some company / A guardian angel to keep me warm when the cold winds blow
/ Take me home tonight / I don’t want to let you go till you see the light /
Take me home tonight.”
For this singer, tonight is about
getting what he needs. The goal is to
avoid being alone. Since darkness is
coming no matter what happens, the tonight he is personally seeking is an end in itself. However, seeing tonight this way is
completely subjective, and I think it leads to framing everything that happens
in terms of how it well it satisfies (or doesn’t satisfy) a person's need for what tonight might have to offer. Just count how many times he says “I” or “me”. It's clear that this singer's desires are front and center, but once the night is over, he puts those away until they rear their ugly heads. On to the next night.
So those are the first two categories. I guess what strikes me the most
about these two is how alike they are. In both scenarios, the person who is
embracing tonight is unsure of what tomorrow might bring. Therefore, tonight seems like a pretty solid
rock. Fear is really the motivator for
these tonights, and the people populating them are going to do whatever it
takes to overcome that fear. I think
what sets these two categories apart is that in the first, the fear of the
future never completely negates the future, it just looks at it unrealistically. (So, I suppose you could argue that fear, in fact, does negate any future because it creates a false tomorrow rather than accepting what's real.) In the second, the future doesn't matter
because the only thing that could possibly matter is what goes on tonight.
Either way you slice it, both tonights carry with them the possibility of something happening. But the darkness that comes with night also makes people myopic. There's a sense of people working hard to get what they need (to believe the impossible, to avoid being alone) or want (a less ordinary world, a lover for the night) because nighttime is dark, quiet, and lonely. The world is smaller at night (which sort of contradicts the idea of possibility...but onto contradiction with the next post). Smaller is more manageable and it's easier to predict what might happen. If you know you're going home with someone tonight, you can at least feel sure about what's going on in your love life right now even if you have no idea what's going on in your love life in the future.
But the question I ask is this: are we short-changing ourselves into believing that the possibility of tonight is more satisfying than the possibility of tomorrow? Things seen in dim light are more attractive, but it's an illusion. Have we welcomed nighttime possibility and convinced ourselves that it's just as good as big, morning, bright light possibility?
I'll work through this more in the next post, but I really wanted to get that question out there for people to think about.
More tonights soon…
Thought-provoking as usual, Ms. C! And I love your vivid terms: "little ankle biters" was especially apt (maybe because I'm literally surrounded by them? :)).
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer: you know I agree with you about your last few statements, but to be an advocate for the live now pay later generation, Is it really all that bad to take a sure thing tonight and deal with it tomorrow? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush sorta thing? In the Enrique Iglesias masterpiece "Tonight (I'm loving you)" he says:
ReplyDeleteHere’s the situation
Been to every nation
Nobody’s ever made me feel the way that you do
Enrique is voicing a Carpe Diem attitude that he sees a sexual opportunity that he might not see again. Missed opportunities are not something to be dismissed.
Not to be outdone, in the same tune, one Christopher Brian Bridges, more commonly referred to by his stage name Ludacris, laments:
You stuck with me
I’m stuck with you
Lets find something to do
Mr. Bridges is salvaging an evening by making an economical proposition to a young woman (although the video suggests several). Here, LUDA is making the best of his situation. Tonight is a part of a whole here, a part that by itself could salvage a day's efforts.
In yet another song titled "Tonight", Ludacris and John Legend protray ...
I just spent 45 minutes thinking about Ludacris. Good job karen.