A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .

THESE ARE THE LEGACIES I HAVE - The Year's Swansongs

As this topsy turvy year of reckoning reaches its finish line, I leave written snapshots of the eminence the music world had to offer and the only stability lay in triumphing by dint of artistic sensibilities, none of which together is ever big or small but always durable. So here we are inching to the top and the last frontiers, towards 2018 with lyrical compositions that mattered, in a demographic where mediocrity often scraped the bottom of the barrel and ingenuity was in remission. Also, since the pivot of transformation in our culture occurred a year before, few of the songs or albums mentioned here had released then but their impact lasted well into this one so the companionship of both years produced joint memories and they all form a composite whole as the passage of time may be too swift sometimes to take stock of every movement around us. Hence, here they are giving heft to pure creativity and the gift of melody.

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** LOVE by LANA DEL REY - -

the enchantment of the female voice has always fascinated me for its power of transportation to realms of a divine order and something I hold very close to my heart for its intimacy. Lana Del Rey - the high priestess of aesthetics - who, for me, had already defined undulating landscapes of her lyrical melodies with a polished vision( finesse is the word) in this second decade of the twenty first century, replenished her craft to bring clarity and her customary mystique to a year where state of affairs all around explicitly spelt society's downward spiral. That drone effect produced at the beginning of the track plucked at our internal depths of being as if some warning was at hand but ultimately it calmed us, soothed our frayed nerves and was a thing of limitless beauty in terms of an instrumental prologue to the vocals and a constant rhythmic accompaniment. LOVE was built around this drone of quite and Lana's voice was mellow befitting a mood of introspection. It was the quiet silence reassuring us that there was no dearth of the universal emotion that it addressed in the title. LOVE was all about the ecstasy, uncertainty and youthful resurgence of hope in these trying times. Lana beautified it with a nod and wink to her own penchant for past glory, her classic style as in the lyrics, " look at you kids with your vintage music, coming through satellites while cruising" and its expert juxtaposition with symbols of the everyday made her labour of love to this generation stand out. " you get ready, you get all dressed up/ to go nowhere in particular, back to work or the coffee shop/ doesn't matter cause it's just enough / to be young and in love..." encapsulates the spirit of the under 35 demographic in a matter of fact, amiable and characteristically poetic way, in a magically relatable vein rich with verisimilitude, in the language and attitude ensconced in the present . It is the chorus of youth and the future that will be remembered for times to come. It's like practicing meditation and in a dialectic of cynics, honours hard earned innocence in its imagery that somehow remains on virgin territory. The "it's enough just to make you go crazy" refrain is timely and listening to it, you will find cues about our interdependence on each other and technology and this matrix of entanglement that makes and breaks us. Especial is the way the point of view reverses from ' you' to 'I' in the last chorus making it available for every perspective. However, hope and a smiling disposition from Lana herself sets the coast clear for a song that heralds another year of pure music on her part and a rightful legacy in the right direction. LOVE will remain the apex of twenty seventeen and a welcome addition to the singer's already prodigious output of soulful takes on life. It's beauty, personified and verbalized.

*** LUST FOR LIFE by LANA DEL REY----

For an artist whose initial output made a section of the media dub it as ' Hollywood Sadcore', Lana Del Rey has come a long way in plumbing depths of our existences and a certain degree of sadness that plagues our mortal playground. What she conveyed was complex yet universal and grand yet humbling in its testimonials of fate. For this song, she mined gold by working with songsmith Max Martin, the industry's most prolific hit maker and viable presence, to launch her strident yet hushed little gift of sonic stillness from the very H of the Hollywood sign, tipping her filigreed hat to the industry summit from where lives and careers are launched and few reach the heights that she has in a span of six challenging years. The lyrics start with the same," Climb up the H, of the Hollywood sign. " It's a precarious launchpad but Lana circa 2017 was on a different footing and embraced positivity of the kind that renders uncertainties infirm, at least for the present moment in time. Her vision expands to the greater world out there, reaches to the cosmos of our being as listening to the lyrics in her restrained prophetic voice made us visualise a transcendent idyll as she intoned , " cause we're the masters of our own fate / we're the captains of our own soul". Some say this narrative centered around Hollywood allegedly references a suicide from the same site that occurred in the twenties so that dark core is alive and kicking at the curb of harsh realities of tinsel town. But this is an angelic sound and musically pleasing to the senses as is the wont with her song craft. Meticulous, melodic and timeless are the words to describe this song and her silken partnership with The Weeknd - one of the biggest stars of our times - strikes perfect give and take bonhomie. The most striking line, " take off, take off, take off all your clothes" is about spotlighting our deviation from inhibitions of any kind, embracing freedom before the mortal coil snaps and we are plunged towards darkness. The song title sounds simplistic but the beauty here is in interpreting it for ourselves as we deem it fit. Lana's mothership is bound for a voyage to the future of promise from here and with this mellifluous soundscape, we are all aboard. She keeps her alternative integrity intact and brings it to the very mainstream with measured ease, like always .