prog: (coffee)
[personal profile] prog
Listening to my iPod today, I started wondering if anyone had ever written a Radioheadesque song about Lynn Truss-style punctuation rage and titled it "Comma Police".

Then I started thinking that, instead of doing the obvious thing and changing the original song's lyrics into those dealing with comma bad punctuation, it would be funnier if the song's speaker was actually the bad punctuation user, futilely trying to bring down the Comma Police on the infractions he perceives. And then it of course occurred to me that you could transform the whole song as it currently exists simply by understanding that the speaker actually is saying s/karma/comma/i (something aided by the singer's accent) and that his notion of the song's lyrics as written contain flagrant comma misuse:
This is what, you get
This is what, you get
This is what, you get when you, mess with us



BTW, serious question: when talking about a lyrical musical piece that explicitly reflects someone's thoughts or feelings, how do you refer to that person? I know from high school that in poetry this entity is conventionally called "the speaker" (or at least 'twas so with my poet-geek English teacher), and I use that when talking about songs as well. It doesn't seem quite right, though, since (unlike with written poetry) a song features the literal presence of an actual voice, and that voice is singing, not speaking. But "the singer" seems quite incorrect, since that's definitely a pointer to the person who is standing here (or who has been recorded) singing, and not the "character" he or she is portraying, dig?

Date: 2005-12-27 07:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ruthling.livejournal.com
I use point-of-view (POV) character, or sometimes protagonist, although not all protagonists are POV characters and v/v.

Date: 2005-12-27 08:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] metahacker.livejournal.com
Protagonist? Narrator? That's a tough one. And it might depend on which Person the lyrics are written in.


Applying your above filter to the lyrics I often misheard as a child:

,,,, , chameleon! You , go! You , go...

Date: 2005-12-27 08:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prog.livejournal.com
No, I didn't mean that he was actually singing aloud all the commas as the word "comma", I just meant that the printed lyrics for my version of the song are filled with spurious commas. They are undetectable in the recorded version, which is why it sounds exactly the same as the original song.

Date: 2005-12-28 02:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] metahacker.livejournal.com
Ah, yes. The guideline I use is well summed up in the quote, "Don't use commas, which are unnecessary." They're up there with their poor bretheren the apostrophe, thrown in by people who want to look erudite (if only they knew any three syllable words): Hot Dog's, Three "Bucks".

Date: 2005-12-27 10:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kahuna-burger.livejournal.com
I think "narrator" is best....

Date: 2005-12-28 01:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rikchik.livejournal.com
The writer, maybe? My neighbor on the couch here suggests "persona" which sounds pretty good to me.

Also, I once saw someone ask whether the Karma Police or the Dream Police would win in a fight - my money's on the DP but that may just be because I like Cheap Trick.

Date: 2005-12-29 06:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrmorse.livejournal.com
I've been running into precisely this problem with my podcast. I've been using "narrator", mostly, but finding it unsatisfactory.

Date: 2005-12-29 06:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrmorse.livejournal.com
PS: Writer doesn't work for the same reason singer doesn't. The writer may be writing from personal experience, but may also be writing from the perspective of a persona. My use of "persona" there indicates that it might be the right word, but I think I'd feel uncomfortable using it in a podcast.

August 2022

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28 293031   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 9th, 2025 01:16 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios