Rage & Sorrow

There are a lot of emotions on the scale we feel our way along in life. Happiness is one that we all seek. Unalloyed happiness does promote creativity, but in my experience happy art is generally rather tacky and shallow. There's a general lack of 'oomph' to it, and everything seems overly bright and flat. The result is bland, rather than expressive. It's not beautiful. It's merely decorative.

The two passions that bring out the beautiful work in most of us seem to be rage and sorrow, as they pertain to love, the third and most commonly expressed artistic theme. What is it that causes this? I have a theory, but it's embryonic, as I've only started developing it since I've been working on LILT.

I think rage and sorrow are negative feelings, and as they're harnessed to create art they often stem from love, a positive. This naturally creates contrast and depth. The basis for the rage and/or sorrow needs to be described, or the negative is merely a blackness. There's no detail, and thus no expression or depth. Given that the underlying need in art is to express oneself in such a way that will provoke feelings in others, the detail and contrast are necessary, so the love is put into the work as well; positive and negative for contrast, allowing high- and low-lights, finer detail, and profundity.

Unmixed happiness doesn't span much of the emotional scale. That said, when happiness is expected and not achieved the result is more often than not sorrow or rage. So, theoretically, if you expect too much and don't get it you bring the negative in. If you want to create beautiful art be arrogant about your emotional future. You never know. It may bring about your magnum opus.

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What if...?

Most of Rammstein's songs involve sex, violence, or both of them. Many involve fire and/or water. Almost all of them are about love in some shape. They're all about people. There are recurring themes. Like many people, I speculate about the themes Till uses in his songs.

What I'd like to know is whether all the imagery and ideas for the songs' words are Till's, or if the other band members throw out ideas for him to work with. What I'd also like to know is whether or not he takes poems he's already written and adapts those into lyrics to work with new music. Does he perhaps write lyrics, and then when music that suits the subject matter comes up, adapt those lyrics to work? How much do his poems and his lyrics overlap?

The reason for this speculation is my own recent thoughts about all the poetry I've written and binned throughout my life. I've only just gained an interest in lyrics, but I've written hundreds of poems over the years, and don't have any of them now.

What if I'd kept them?

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Ruminations

I've been thinking about the songs I don't think should have English lyrics, but which I really like the imagery or ideas in. I've decided to write English versions, but as poetry, rather than lyrics.

I agree with whoever it was that said that a lot of the frisson created by Rammstein's work stems from the German language, and while I've gone counter to that by re-lyricising Rammstein songs in English I have worked very hard to try and preserve the 'vibe' created by the sounds of the words used in German, where I can, using English words with a reasonably appropriate sound. It's hard to create verse that fits Till's singing style, the music, the German lyrics, and the feel of the verbal sounds, and I'm loving the challenge, but there's more to it than that.

Now I'm getting familiar with the songs, their meaning, and their devices there are some that, while I firmly believe they should stay German, I do want to create English verse for, if not lyrics. I plan to do that at some stage. The primary subject of this branch of my LILT project is Ich Will. The song is very powerful and very compelling, but there aren't appropriate English words to convey the meaning and the sound Till's lyrics do, so it will probably be my first poetic adaption.

These adaptions won't be listed as or classed with the LILTs. They simply don't belong in the same category of work. I guess they should be LLITs...

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Tyska Läsförståelse = Deutsch Lesen-Verständnis?

My Swedish is not good. I studied it at Uppsala University's summer session 19 years ago, and really haven't used it since. Part of the problem is I only have my parents to speak it with, and I'm very reluctant to do so when non-Swedish-speakers are around, which is most of the time. I consider it discourteous to do so. I'm ashamed of my lack of ability in speaking, understanding, and reading Swedish, most particularly where vocabulary is concerned.

A disadvantage I'm now feeling as an extension of this lack is my inability to comprehend the German language. I need to study German if I'm going to get a real idea of what Till is doing. His work is diluted unless it's read and understood in German. The basis of the work is lost in translation, in terms of the flow, rhythm, and mood. I trust the real German-language adepts to capture and convey subtext in meaning, but the 'movement' of the words is what attracted me to Till in the first place, and that doesn't exist in the English translations.

You can see how this whole project came about if you think about that for a minute...

*pause*

I'm trying to re-apply those currents and wave-forms to the translations. With that in mind however my attempts to reanimate the translations do not mean the original is being felt properly. For that I have to be able to read Lindemann's work as a German-speaker does.

My mother is a Swede and is adept at understanding other languages, despite not using them in her every-day life. I can't honestly say I speak Swedish any more, despite having done so in the past. That feels wrong, because I want to learn more about the country I was born in and the people my mother comes from. Yes, I get to meet and know them, but not the nation they're part of. I need to develop my Swedish further.

I also want to learn the German language to get the whole picture from Till's words. You might consider this an extreme step to merely appreciate the work of one author. Maybe it is. I think however that it's going to end up being much more than that in the end, and it's something I have added to my plans for the coming years.

Adding to my self-imposed burden of language-learning is the fact that I'm married to a Greek family and am off to Greece for a month in June, to holiday with my in-laws at Kyparissi. I don't speak Greek either!

Yeah, good one Camilla. You can picture me rolling my eyes at my own preposterous situation here. I have three languages to [re-]learn. At least two of them share characteristics...

By the way, the title of this post is meant to read as 'German reading-comprehension' in Swedish and German. My success may be mixed.

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Messer & Connecting

I've been looking at trying to get hold of Messer (meaning 'Knife' or 'Knives', I think), the book of Lindemann's poems. Right now it's beyond my budget (and I need to learn German anyway), but I found a YouTube video showing the pictures from it. Without taking in the poetry these made me sad. I'm not sure what precisely it is about them that provoked this, but they first and foremost give me the feeling that he feels pretty thoroughly cut off from other people, so that's probably it.

I'm sure that like me and (I would imagine) everyone else you have an inner life that nobody else touches. That's the nature of self-awareness. We're restricted in our ability to connect with other people by their honesty, our honesty, and the limitations of language. We're individuals and are necessarily isolated by our narrow interface with the world. There's also the fact that in some contexts people avoid new connections.

I've noticed the contrasts in this since we moved out to the beach. We live in a beach resort, for want of a better phrase. There are permanent residents in a growing number, but a fair number of the homes here are beach houses, known as baches. People come here from Wellington and from other parts of the country during the summer, and on long weekends, when they can get out of town and enjoy the wonderful feeling of coastal New Zealand at its best. During the off-season many of these are empty, and there's a feeling of slumber and quietude here that is restful and pleasant. During the season it's humming with happy, relaxed people, all soaking up the holiday feel.

I used to walk a lot when I lived in cities. I'd walk for hours, and have always been prone to smiling and making eye contact when I pass people. It's just 'me'. In inner Wellington and Auckland this sometimes gets a responding smile, returned eye contact, and perhaps a few words of greeting or observation. The vast majority of the time this gets responses ranging from a strange look to averted eyes and a hurrying of pace. Avoidance behaviour in response to the most basic and benign of initiations seems the norm, and is unpleasant and saddening. Why does it happen? Are people so cynical and jaded that it offends them to have friendly overtures made my a perfect stranger?

Up here, at the beach, in the midst of all this wide open freshness people respond differently most of the time. Up here most of the responses are warm and reciprocal. Those who avoid interaction are in the minority, and all but a minor few at the very least return my smile. I've had fairly long, involved conversations with people I've never before or since, on the basis of a smile and simple greeting in passing. This to me is what community is about, but it doesn't exist so much in the city. I don't see why it shouldn't.

Added to that, there are a lot of people out there who interact with others only for what it can get them. Their social lives are self-interested and ego-centric. They don't connect on any genuine level, possibly because they fear the vulnerability they experience when they do. I don't understand this.

Does Lindemann feel alone and isolated? I need to get the book and work out what the words mean to get a better idea of what he's wanting to convey, but in the meantime, if someone makes eye contact and offers you a little human interaction, even if it's just a small smile, please reciprocate. You really don't have anything to lose, and possibly have much to gain. You might even make a relatively big difference in someone else's life.

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Taking Words From Another

Sometimes you hear something said in a language you don't speak yourself, and it just works, even when it's meaningless due to a lack of comprehension. Sometimes just the flow and rhythm makes it into art, simply as the aesthetics of sound make it so.

I've found that I get huge amounts of amusement and pleasure from listening to the work of Rammstein, though it's almost entirely in German, and I don't speak German myself. The lyricist is a poet, and so comprehension is not necessary for enjoyment of the words. It also helps that I like the music itself, and that I could work out some of what was being sung (or threatened in the case of some songs).

I've found that a gentleman by the name of Jeremy Williams has published English translations of the lyrics of Rammstein's music. Note these are translations, not adaptions. They are not lyrical or poetic. They bring the words from one tongue to another, and are good prose in their own right.

Having read his translations, and those of others around the place, I've become even more appreciative of the lyrics. Very simply put the lyrics are brilliant, and as far as I know they're mainly written by Till Lindemann, the primary singer, hence the name of this page.

Many of the lyrics are tongue-in-cheek, and there's a screamingly in-your-face theme of love (and its siblings hate, lust, and resentment), but it's also really beautiful, even when it's deliberately provocative or brutal. Some songs are utterly blatant, such as Rein Raus, but others are really heavily layered with ambiguity and extra meaning, so it'll be pretty tricky to try and cover everything that might be taken from the German lyrics. It's also going to be close to impossible to work in German plays on words with English. I'm going to try really hard though!

I haven't heard back from Jeremy yet, but I have asked for permission to make use of his translations, as I attempt to take poetry translated and re-lyricise it.

I also contacted Rammstein's management firm to get their blessing, but they're also not responding. At this point I figure I'll just go ahead and if they don't like it maybe they'll finally get back to me. Nothing better for whipping people out of their lethargy than doing something they don't like, right?

I'll post my work here, though not Jeremy's translations. I like what he's done with Herzeleid.Com, and will not harm that by reproducing his work in that way.

With regard to the works of Rammstein, they are absolutely within their rights to shut me down. Until they do I hope I'm not doing them any harm and that whatever I come out with is enjoyed. What I'd really like is their approval, but the odds of them acknowledging me are slim to none.

More to come...

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