polyphonic
This started as a footnote on my post about this year's Folk Fest, but it got too big and too tangential, so I shuffled the bits around and now it's over here.
Okay, where are all the songs about polyamory? Or other forms of/more general consensual non-monogamy? There are gazillions of songs about kink, whether explicitly about actual kink practices & practitioners (either laughing with or laughing at), appropriating kink imagery for "poetic" purposes, or just handily lending themselves to kinky readings (pervertibles for your ears! :D ) --c.f. the enormous Kink Bingo playlist and participants' further suggestions in the comments. There are songs about serial monogamy. There are songs about jealousy, and about "cheating", which mostly imply a very narrow understanding of "fidelity". But I don't know of many songs about multiple concurrent, low-conflict loves.
I'm thinking about this because Romi Mayes has a song called "Sweet Somethin' Steady". I didn't hear her play it this year, but I mentioned it to a couple of people while in Winnipeg because it is the most interesting thing she's done that I know of. I have mixed feelings about it. I feel like it could be nudging towards a consensual non-monogamy anthem, at least the first verse, but the songwriter had no such aspiration. Here's a video of her playing it live in Nederland; skip to ~3:45 for the song, ~2:00 for her not agreeing with me (with annoying gender normativity on top of the mono-normativity), or ~1:00 for her pestering Danny Michel into doing a Christopher Walken impression:
The part that tickles me is:
don't want no fancy diamonds, don't want your mother's pearls
I don't want you to tell me that I'm your only girl
just want [someone] to come on over, pick me up and take me for a ride
why can't you be my sweet somethin' steady on the side?
And then it kind of goes downhill (I guess it still works as far as empowering women to enjoy 'casual encounters', which is what Mayes seems to want from it, but it in a way so detached as to be potentially exploitative?), and I ask, is this the best we've got?
I thought about it briefly, and put together a handful of examples of could-be-poly-if-you-read-it-right songs. The download link is here (32mb zip), my notes on why each track is included are behind the cut.
Of course, it's always possible to read poly into songs that aren't intended that way, which I suspect is the case with most of the examples below (in some cases it's a stretch). One way to do this is to read serial naming/descriptions of 'the Beloved' as referring to separate people, like for example the "old lady" and "little girl" in Bruce Cockburn's "Fascist Architecture". With this one, that actually spins the whole song into one about coming out into poly, defeating the mono-normative script (fascist architecture of my own design/ too long been keeping my love confined) of "you must choose [this one] or [that one], you cannot really love them both", embracing the billion facets of brilliant love/ the billion facets of freedom turning in the light, ecstatic that there isn't anything in the world/ that can lock up my love again. Which of course only works if both Old Lady and Little Girl support this enactment of relationship, but.
Another song that subverts the "you must choose" edict, this time by confronting it directly, is "The Weakness in Me" by Joan Armatrading. The speaker laments I have a lover who loves me, how could I break such a heart?/ yet still you get my attention, acknowledges that, according to the serial monogamy script if I choose now I'll lose out, one of you has to fall, but refuses to declare a 'winner'. Instead she (maybe) embraces the power of "and": I need you . . . and you.
The only song on this list that I am even fairly confident is actually meant to be about a happy poly relationship is Veda Hille's "Three", in which the members of a triad (as I read it) struggle with their relationship as both a haven and a source of anxiety while also trying to work on their own issues:
Three, crazy at a bus stop, three in a shifting bed
Three congregated at the church of midnight madness
Three entwined, three divine, three embraced to stave off sadness
Who are we noisy fools?
Who laugh and bend the rules
Is this a word that can be spoken?
The solace that we seek
With grasping becomes weak
We must love each other whole or broken
Then there's "Soft Picasso" by Vic Chesnutt (I've uploaded Kelly Hogan's cover because it's the version I have and because Kelly Hogan deserves more attention than she gets), a fable about doin' it 'rong, where "it" is "ethical sluthood". Basically: Modern Man and Modern Girl have kind of a casual relationship. Modern Girl starts exploring her sexuality, enjoying connections with people of several (at least two) genders. Modern Man, puzzled that she is not waiting by the phone for him to call, asks whether she's been sleeping around. She happily admits it, and he, apparently disagreeing that what's good for the gander is good for the goose, winds up lonely and confused. It's cute?
"Tomorrowland", by the Nields, has a few layers. Most baldly, there's the line we want to go to Paradise, everyone there says it's so nice/ everyone's got their own tv with their own episode of Biography/ everyone's got 25 lovers and each of them dreams only of me, which, yeah. Says what it says. But there's also the bit before that, you and me and she and he and he/ and we agree to be happy happy happy/ and we will be completely in control, which I know is actually about the band, and that is a kind of relationship with five participants, but in this case it included two sisters and their respective husbands, and I don't think they were all sleeping together. But if you ignore that, well, you don't even need to apply the Dinosaur Comics advice of assuming that the people on stage are singing to each other rather than to some hypothetical third party :)
Six million ex-army fighting machines (hot hot two three four), sing Boys Boys Boys! in "Ex-Army", all lined up to make sweet love to me/ I'm gonna have to take a day off work. It's on here because it's catchy more than because it's a great example; the implication is that this kind of promiscuity (ooh la la!) is an acceptable, if hyperbolic, excess in reaction to breaking up with a partner in a context of serial monogamy, though probably not appropriate 'everyday' behaviour. It's also a fine segue to another Nields song in which it's okay to have sexy fun times with someone you're not in a long-term monogamous relationship with, "Mr. Right Now". With this one I'm mostly interested in the fact that, as I read it, the speaker is fascinated watching Mr. Right Now talking softly to some other girl/ he's healing her/ against my will I am compelled to come closer/ he's stealing her, but not jealous of that attention nor interested in interrupting .
"Williamsburg Bridge", also by my dear Veda, leaves a few different clues. On one hand there's the this is not my beautiful wife and now there's gonna be a kid/ there was an accident bits, where the delivery more than anything else has me imagining someone facing pregnancy from an encounter with someone whose other partner doesn't know--so what happens next? On another, "I was in bed with all my friends" is all it takes for my imagination to concoct a Tribe, a meshwork of intimate connections and irregular consummations.
Lastly, the song that becomes more and more the song of my tribe the more I get in with a tribe who think of themselves as a Tribe: "Easy People" by, again, the Nields (maybe they do get it?). The "we" and "you" have always sounded collective to me, even before it seemed at all relevant to me whether the fragments composing it were dating one another in other than a paired-off way. I just . . . yeah.
oh to you I would give the songs I write
the words I play and the morning light
that comes into this room today
if you would only rise, if you would only say
'I want you to take up all of my time
I want you because you're funny and kind
we'll be easy from now on
Your turn now, dear readers; anything to add?
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, where there are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.
Okay, where are all the songs about polyamory? Or other forms of/more general consensual non-monogamy? There are gazillions of songs about kink, whether explicitly about actual kink practices & practitioners (either laughing with or laughing at), appropriating kink imagery for "poetic" purposes, or just handily lending themselves to kinky readings (pervertibles for your ears! :D ) --c.f. the enormous Kink Bingo playlist and participants' further suggestions in the comments. There are songs about serial monogamy. There are songs about jealousy, and about "cheating", which mostly imply a very narrow understanding of "fidelity". But I don't know of many songs about multiple concurrent, low-conflict loves.
I'm thinking about this because Romi Mayes has a song called "Sweet Somethin' Steady". I didn't hear her play it this year, but I mentioned it to a couple of people while in Winnipeg because it is the most interesting thing she's done that I know of. I have mixed feelings about it. I feel like it could be nudging towards a consensual non-monogamy anthem, at least the first verse, but the songwriter had no such aspiration. Here's a video of her playing it live in Nederland; skip to ~3:45 for the song, ~2:00 for her not agreeing with me (with annoying gender normativity on top of the mono-normativity), or ~1:00 for her pestering Danny Michel into doing a Christopher Walken impression:
Click to viewThe part that tickles me is:
don't want no fancy diamonds, don't want your mother's pearls
I don't want you to tell me that I'm your only girl
just want [someone] to come on over, pick me up and take me for a ride
why can't you be my sweet somethin' steady on the side?
And then it kind of goes downhill (I guess it still works as far as empowering women to enjoy 'casual encounters', which is what Mayes seems to want from it, but it in a way so detached as to be potentially exploitative?), and I ask, is this the best we've got?
I thought about it briefly, and put together a handful of examples of could-be-poly-if-you-read-it-right songs. The download link is here (32mb zip), my notes on why each track is included are behind the cut.
Of course, it's always possible to read poly into songs that aren't intended that way, which I suspect is the case with most of the examples below (in some cases it's a stretch). One way to do this is to read serial naming/descriptions of 'the Beloved' as referring to separate people, like for example the "old lady" and "little girl" in Bruce Cockburn's "Fascist Architecture". With this one, that actually spins the whole song into one about coming out into poly, defeating the mono-normative script (fascist architecture of my own design/ too long been keeping my love confined) of "you must choose [this one] or [that one], you cannot really love them both", embracing the billion facets of brilliant love/ the billion facets of freedom turning in the light, ecstatic that there isn't anything in the world/ that can lock up my love again. Which of course only works if both Old Lady and Little Girl support this enactment of relationship, but.
Another song that subverts the "you must choose" edict, this time by confronting it directly, is "The Weakness in Me" by Joan Armatrading. The speaker laments I have a lover who loves me, how could I break such a heart?/ yet still you get my attention, acknowledges that, according to the serial monogamy script if I choose now I'll lose out, one of you has to fall, but refuses to declare a 'winner'. Instead she (maybe) embraces the power of "and": I need you . . . and you.
The only song on this list that I am even fairly confident is actually meant to be about a happy poly relationship is Veda Hille's "Three", in which the members of a triad (as I read it) struggle with their relationship as both a haven and a source of anxiety while also trying to work on their own issues:
Three, crazy at a bus stop, three in a shifting bed
Three congregated at the church of midnight madness
Three entwined, three divine, three embraced to stave off sadness
Who are we noisy fools?
Who laugh and bend the rules
Is this a word that can be spoken?
The solace that we seek
With grasping becomes weak
We must love each other whole or broken
Then there's "Soft Picasso" by Vic Chesnutt (I've uploaded Kelly Hogan's cover because it's the version I have and because Kelly Hogan deserves more attention than she gets), a fable about doin' it 'rong, where "it" is "ethical sluthood". Basically: Modern Man and Modern Girl have kind of a casual relationship. Modern Girl starts exploring her sexuality, enjoying connections with people of several (at least two) genders. Modern Man, puzzled that she is not waiting by the phone for him to call, asks whether she's been sleeping around. She happily admits it, and he, apparently disagreeing that what's good for the gander is good for the goose, winds up lonely and confused. It's cute?
"Tomorrowland", by the Nields, has a few layers. Most baldly, there's the line we want to go to Paradise, everyone there says it's so nice/ everyone's got their own tv with their own episode of Biography/ everyone's got 25 lovers and each of them dreams only of me, which, yeah. Says what it says. But there's also the bit before that, you and me and she and he and he/ and we agree to be happy happy happy/ and we will be completely in control, which I know is actually about the band, and that is a kind of relationship with five participants, but in this case it included two sisters and their respective husbands, and I don't think they were all sleeping together. But if you ignore that, well, you don't even need to apply the Dinosaur Comics advice of assuming that the people on stage are singing to each other rather than to some hypothetical third party :)
Six million ex-army fighting machines (hot hot two three four), sing Boys Boys Boys! in "Ex-Army", all lined up to make sweet love to me/ I'm gonna have to take a day off work. It's on here because it's catchy more than because it's a great example; the implication is that this kind of promiscuity (ooh la la!) is an acceptable, if hyperbolic, excess in reaction to breaking up with a partner in a context of serial monogamy, though probably not appropriate 'everyday' behaviour. It's also a fine segue to another Nields song in which it's okay to have sexy fun times with someone you're not in a long-term monogamous relationship with, "Mr. Right Now". With this one I'm mostly interested in the fact that, as I read it, the speaker is fascinated watching Mr. Right Now talking softly to some other girl/ he's healing her/ against my will I am compelled to come closer/ he's stealing her, but not jealous of that attention nor interested in interrupting .
"Williamsburg Bridge", also by my dear Veda, leaves a few different clues. On one hand there's the this is not my beautiful wife and now there's gonna be a kid/ there was an accident bits, where the delivery more than anything else has me imagining someone facing pregnancy from an encounter with someone whose other partner doesn't know--so what happens next? On another, "I was in bed with all my friends" is all it takes for my imagination to concoct a Tribe, a meshwork of intimate connections and irregular consummations.
Lastly, the song that becomes more and more the song of my tribe the more I get in with a tribe who think of themselves as a Tribe: "Easy People" by, again, the Nields (maybe they do get it?). The "we" and "you" have always sounded collective to me, even before it seemed at all relevant to me whether the fragments composing it were dating one another in other than a paired-off way. I just . . . yeah.
oh to you I would give the songs I write
the words I play and the morning light
that comes into this room today
if you would only rise, if you would only say
'I want you to take up all of my time
I want you because you're funny and kind
we'll be easy from now on
Your turn now, dear readers; anything to add?
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, where there are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.