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Kalaitzi Maria

AMLIT 315: Studies in American Culture

Dr. Kristin J. Jacobson

29 May 2018

As hard as it is to fit many themes in something as compact as a song, I made

an effort to express ideas both through the lyrics and the much-ignored functional

aspect of music, which is the one setting the tone. Musically influenced by Pink Floyd

and inspired by my grandfather’s playing, heard in the introduction of the song, I

managed to sum up in verse and melody a small part of what I’ve contemplated on

throughout the semester. Through great American writers and poets like Walker,

McKibben, Oliver and their works “Everything Is a Human Being”, The End of

Nature and “The Summer Day”, I gained insight into grave matters like the

relationship between human and nature, pollution, environmental change and most

importantly personal initiative and action.

Concerning the song, Alice Walker was a major influence since its lyrics are

abundant with the themes and overall tone of her essay “Everything Is a Human

Being”; the idea that trees have consciousness albeit differently formed from people’s,

the cruelty of the latter against the natural environment and, consequently,

self-destruction. The personification of trees which renders them able to reason and

speak is quite a frequent literary device, which brings the readers closer to the fact

that trees are living organisms not as far from us as we might think. With the powerful

image of “old conifers . . . suffering from some kind of disease” which resemble

“badly rheumatoid elderly people” (660) in mind, there sprung another equally, maybe
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even more powerful image, that of a poisoned and wilted “sentient sapling” (13), life

that ends shortly after it has just begun, because of pollution and chemicals. In addition,

Walker asserts that while ideally “the land can exist without the country”, in the sense

of an organized human society, the opposite is not feasible; yet still, “the land is being

killed” (665). In the song, the concept of self-destructive human behavior is expressed

in the final stanza, where it’s implied that man has proved he cannot live in harmony

with nature, so the prosperity of one is based on the elimination of the other (17-21).

Similar notions are expressed in McKibben’s excerpt from The End of Nature,

which goes on to describe the loneliness and at the same time the crowdedness the

speaker feels while contemplating next to a waterfall. Loneliness stems from the fact

that even the most independent natural phenomena, rain and snow for instance, have

become an outcome of human activities. At the other end of the spectrum, congestion in

the forest is owed to every single harmful decision made, the excuses and everlasting

not-guilty pleas of politicians as well as of everyone else who aggravates the problem

(722-723). Another important feature in McKibben’s writing is the share of blame he

takes when saying “I've done my share to take this independent, eternal world and turn

it into a science fair project” (723), an element which was replicated in the lyrics with

the pronouns “we” (10, 16) and “us” (19). Furthermore, the writer spoke of the distinct

“snarl of a chain saw” (718) in the first few paragraphs, while throughout the excerpt he

analyzed the devastating consequences of greenhouse gas emissions (719-720), two of

the main themes that couldn’t be omitted from the lyrics (7-8).

Be that as it may, both lyrics and music mostly revolve around a different

theme than the aforementioned, a central concept, which is prayer. The first stanza

recreates with a tint of irony the conventions of the Christian religion about prayer in

the image of Sunday bells that invite the faithful to pray (1-4). However, the peaceful
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image is soon distorted, as “there haven’t been Sundays for years” (5), whose

interpretation, on the one hand, lies on the belief that Sunday is a day of bliss -but how

could there be blissful days when everything that follows in the song takes place? On

the other hand, it is inferred that Sunday and prayer in particular needs to be reinvented,

because in its conventional form it is the reason that the “change is barely perceived”

(6). That is to say, the faithful should cast off passivity and take action rather than rest

in their being “heard” (4). In that context, the bells are ringing for everyone. In “The

Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, although the speaker “[doesn’t] know exactly what a

prayer is” (737), she can appreciate everything around her, from the tiniest grasshopper

to the greatest field, showing a remarkable connection with nature. Thus, in a way,

prayer is unknowingly (re)invented here and this time it is in accordance with nature

unlike the passive prayers of the song.

At this point I would like to explain the reasoning behind the musical choices.

The introduction to the song is taken by an old cassette with pieces of music played in a

“Hawaian” guitar (Havaya in Greek, closely related to Country’s steel guitar), by my

grandfather. The specific musical part is taken from an otherwise unrecorded and

unpublished to my knowledge song called “Prayer”, which I thought was the most

suitable in theme and tone to introduce my creative project. When it comes to the

composition of the rest of the song, my main influence are Pink Floyd. Usually

speaking about sociopolitical issues, I considered their dramatic, sombre style of music

the most fitting to approach weighty subjects, such as the ones having to do with the

environment.

All in all, environmental change is directly affecting our everyday lives, so my

creative project focuses on it as seen through readings of Walker, McKibben and Oliver

and goes further to analyze some of the causes of its continuation. On the bright side, it
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is about initiative and most importantly being active, instead of passively “praying” for

someone to save us. Finally, I hope that listeners will stop and think about what they

have listened to and that I’ll have contributed in their changing their everyday habits for

the better.
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Works Cited

McKibben, Bill, editor. American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau.

Library of America, 2008.

McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. McKibben, pp. 722-723, 718-720.

Oliver, Mary. “The Summer Day.” McKibben, pp. 737-738.

Walker, Alice. “Everything Is a Human Being.” McKibben, pp. 660, 665.