| Bill Callahan – Drover Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I'd be more inclined to give this less of a symbolic reading. Sure, there is plenty of symbolism in there in small flashes, but the overall tone of the lyrics seem to be direct enough in my eyes. Maybe I'm being too cursory; I'll let you decide. I agree with 'kevingarywilkes' about the introversion apparent in the text. The song could have been placed back-to-back with 'America' on the album as folk songs (in the true meaning of the words) the dream of America and the reality; 'Drover' being the former and 'America' being the latter - the time of the cowboys to the time of international conflict as a result of oil and ideologies. I think of the song as an exaltation of the humble farmers, ranchers and cowboys (and, I suppose, any hard-laborer) that built the US. It's also steeped in the imagery of classic westerns and their stoic heroes such as Gary Cooper in 'High Noon' and Montgomery Clift in 'Red River'. In particular, Montgomery Clift in 'Red River' battles against the land in a monumental herding of cattle that takes place within the film; John Wayne's anti-heroic character rounds up a posse of cowboys at the start of a film with the intention of herding hundreds of cattle across either hundreds or thousands of miles to sell them. Clift's character is the most stoic, committed and respectful of the animals, as is the narrator in Callahan's 'Drover' - he realises that it is the cattle that bear the most strain, and to treat these animals that sustain us with their milk and flesh as anything less than noble is to commit a cardinal sin. I love the line "And anything less, anything less Makes me feel like I'm wasting my time". Maybe it's the Calvinistic work ethic of the America (I say this as a lapsed-Catholic Irishman) this song represents that pushes men to prevail under such extremes and chastise themselves for having down-time or not working enough, I don't know. In a more trivial sense, I feel like this after reading Shakespeare or Yeats - anything less seems insubstantial, and even though there is plenty that rival them, I just don't get the same feeling from it. Maybe that glides into what the Callahan song 'Riding for the Feeling' is about. Like Paul Thomas Anderson's 'The Will Be Blood', this could (at a stretch) be compared to the Afghanistan/Iraq wars (a subject Callahan touches on in 'America'). The cattle, with the highest respect, represent the troops; they, uncomplaining and unselfishly cross the terrain to provide the public with a liquid of life - milk. Oil is the milk of the desert. "My cattle bears it all away for me and everyone". But this is merely an observation made for the pure fun of dissecting texts. |
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