bootzy, i think you're right, but i think without considering the opening lines as ironic and un-ironic at the same time, you're leaving out the central tension of the song, and of much of the music broadrick has released as jesu, which is a certain yearning for what is out of reach. i think there is a part of anybody who is creative that wants to find a large audience, just as there is a part of everybody, no matter how nihilistic or self-abnegating, that yearns for connection. and that is the part that says "if i could just...." of course he can't, and we are free to fill in our own reasons why -- maybe he's too principled, maybe he's afraid of success, maybe he just doesn't have what it takes. but i think any reading of the song is incomplete without the acknowledgment that part of him wants it. the music makes this point brilliantly by being both aggressive and fritteringly poppy, amplifying that feeling of ambivalence, of at once desiring and rejecting, and it's this harmonious melding of the music and the sentiments of the lyrics, and broadricks' exploration of the psychology and emotional content of social marginality, that i find so powerful about his songs, particulary his jesu songs.
bootzy, i think you're right, but i think without considering the opening lines as ironic and un-ironic at the same time, you're leaving out the central tension of the song, and of much of the music broadrick has released as jesu, which is a certain yearning for what is out of reach. i think there is a part of anybody who is creative that wants to find a large audience, just as there is a part of everybody, no matter how nihilistic or self-abnegating, that yearns for connection. and that is the part that says "if i could just...." of course he can't, and we are free to fill in our own reasons why -- maybe he's too principled, maybe he's afraid of success, maybe he just doesn't have what it takes. but i think any reading of the song is incomplete without the acknowledgment that part of him wants it. the music makes this point brilliantly by being both aggressive and fritteringly poppy, amplifying that feeling of ambivalence, of at once desiring and rejecting, and it's this harmonious melding of the music and the sentiments of the lyrics, and broadricks' exploration of the psychology and emotional content of social marginality, that i find so powerful about his songs, particulary his jesu songs.