Embarrassment - Madness
Je Ne Regrette Rien - Edith Piaf
Not One Bit Ashamed - King Creosote
Losing My Religion - REM
Chagrin - Geraint Watkins
So Sorry - Feist
Tortoise Regrets Hare - James Yorkston
Jealous Guy - John Lennon
No Regrets - The Walker Brothers
Shouldn't be Ashamed - Wilco
This is rather in response to Alex Frith wondering if I could put together a tape about Embarrassment - the answer is no, but this is the best I could do, and it comes together fairly nicely.
It's remarkable how few songs there are about embarrassment, considering I am surely not alone in finding its avoidance the single most important driving force behind my words and deeds.
I've got a rather red face - hey, it's no secret, it's no crime - but it's remarkable how often it chooses to get even redder. It was once said to me that in summer you couldn't ever quite tell why it was always so red - it could be sunburn, drunkenness or embarrassment. It was a fair combination of all three most likely.
There's a condition called Idiopathic craniofacial erythema, which is basically extreme blushing, and I do sometimes wonder about it, so often do i change colour if i so much as speak to someone in a shop, or think about something odd on the tube. I don't necessarily see it as tied up with actual social unease, it's more like embarrassment for embarrassment's sake, but it's such an unpleasant, mortifying sensation that practically everything I do considers the possibility of its occurrence. Though I'm pretty practised at avoiding it now, to those who don't get embarrassed easily, I say Fuck you, you fucks, and leave it at that.
Equally, I can't say I live a life of great regret, I'm pretty at ease with the choices I've made and the forces beyond my control - you can either regret everything or regret nothing, in a way, so in that sense I think I'm rather lucky. To be tortured by regret, to believe that one missed huge chances that could definitely have made life better, that's not a good state.
The four states above are an odd mixture of the controllable and the uncontrollable, that relating only to yourself and that which relates to those around you - shame, remorse, regret are driving forces behind many of the world's great tragedies, basic embarrassment less so - in fact, it's the force behind many great modern comedies, so perhaps I'm lucky that's it embarrassment that's a constant red dog on my shoulder and not one of the other darker forms.
[NB I note, a couple of years after writing this post, that it's the one
that people most often enter this blog with. If this is is your first look here,
feel free to look at other stuff in the blog, general musings at popular
music, and often more entertaining and self-involved! Thanks]
Well, I don't know if this contradicts what I've said above, it's just some words
My Oxygen
This could be worse than I thought;
the dams that have burst won't be easy to mend.
We could be treading on eggshells
until we relax and relearn to pretend.
See us now, skirting the truth and
stumbling reluctantly into maturity.
See me now, caught in a compromise
still banging on about ethics and purity.
This could be half of a blessing -
the end of an era we'd rather forget.
We could say we've all learnt our lessons and
we've all done some things that we'd like to regret.
But I know remorse is as pointless as
throwing your hopes behind progress and science
and I know the mistakes that I've made
mean a million times less than the casual triumphs.
Funnily enough, this has been sitting around for ages and the word in the last line has been 'more' not 'less', but i changed it and I guess changed the whole point. I'm not sure which one's right
No comments:
Post a Comment