Posted by Karen Imms
Like buses, things seem to come along in twos, threes and fours, and I’ve been involved in rather too many funerals recently where there’s been an immense amount of anguish caused by a dead person’s addiction/s. Sometimes it’s led directly to their deaths, sometimes not. And sometimes it’s been difficult for those people left behind to find words to express the pain and misery those circumstances have wreaked in their own lives.
I really like words. I seem to spend my days moulding and shaping them to try to express the inexpressible for people. But in three particular cases, the bereaved chose to rest their case not in speech but in song. These three songs have, for different people, expressed their varying degrees of fury, disappointment, understanding, impotence and deep, deep sadness:
Thank you for sharing. Great songs. First time I’ve heard that Elbow track – sadness, anger,despair – it’s all there.
They say a picture paints a thousand words…. But music, oh music, give me excess of it! Music most definitely reaches the parts that words alone can not.
( those Elbow lyrics come close though)
The booze turns a tall, gentle boy to a terrible totem
And the kids gather round trying to see what’s inside
I think when he’s drinking he’s drowning some riot
What is my friend trying to hide?