A Bullet, A Lever, A Key: Part Two
(Instead of using the album cover a second time, here’s a picture of Castleton performing live)
The third track off the EP, “2038″, describes the narrator losing his job as a computer programmer for the second day in a row. Because of the severity of his drug problem, the narrator has forgotten that he was fired the day before and come back to work: “It must’ve seemed strange when I came into the office/on the next day, like as if nothing had changed.”
“2038″, like “2045″‘s description of a marriage, fits an entire career into a short song. We find out about the dynamic between the narrator and his boss (Victor is younger and learned everything about the job from the narrator), the atmosphere of the office, and why he’s being fired. The narrator has “never made much of an effort to get along,” so there’s tension between him and his co-workers. He’s that employee that doesn’t do much anymore, but has been around forever and is difficult to get rid of.
The chorus of the song is the most we get of another character’s direct speech on the EP:
Take a year off, maybe you can come back.
You’ve done some good work, it hasn’t always been bad.
You’ve written good code, taught me most of what I know,
but you’ve been distracted and we have to let you go.
The boss spins the narrator’s termination quite a bit. We find out the narrator “shoved this girl” when he found out the coffee wasn’t ready. He’s probably never going to be offered another job by the company if he physically assaulted a female co-worker, but the boss just wants him to go away, so he’s being falsely optimistic.
The other employees aren’t described, but the narrator is embarrassed when he realizes he’s already been fired because “even though the door was shut, he knew that they’d be staring.” Though Victor tries to keep the narrator calm, the seriousness of the situation is emphasized again when “Jim and Barry came along to escort [him] out.”
All of the details in the song, including the drug-slurred voice Castleton uses for the narrator’s lines, indicate the work environment the character is being gently coaxed out of. Memory loss and violence seem to be symptoms of his addiction, and we can see how this episode could lead to the narrator’s divorce and abandonment in a hotel room.
Tracks 4 & 5, “2031″ and “2020,” develop the narrator’s relationship with his children and explain the anxiety that leads him to drug addiction. In “2031,” Sarah, the narrator’s wife, buys their son, Chris, a guitar for his birthday. The narrator is upset that Sarah did this without consulting him, but the underlying reason for his anger is that he doesn’t want to be reminded his abandoned pursuit of music. So he breaks the guitar one night when Chris won’t listen to him:
Finally, for once ever, Chris looked scared.
He bolted out the door and downstairs.
Sarah came up to see what all the fuss was about.
When she saw the guitar she started freaking out,
telling me how I’m taking my own life out on my kids.
She was calm when she said,
“You won’t be happy until nobody is.”
He’s satisfied when he scares his son, so Sarah’s criticism seems reasonable, but the narrator remains sympathetic because no one tries to understand why he’s upset. Sarah asks him why he doesn’t get his keyboard down from the attic to play along with Chris instead of getting angry, but he plays it off: “I laughed too quick and told her I wasn’t about to encourage this assault on our senses, but the truth is I couldn’t play a song if my pension depended on it.”
His anxiety centers around a loss of control, which the song’s chorus describes:
In the attic/in the corner/under sheets
I found my keyboard/put my fingers/on the right keys
but couldn’t find/a single chord/and
if my hands can forget all the songs that they wrote and the parts that they played
in the albums they made/who’s to say that they won’t just forget everything
one day/can’t cook/can’t code/can’t feel
my job, my skills demand/my hands
all wrong/paycheck/all gone.
The reason he’s anxious and unhappy to begin with, as we learn in “2011,” is his decision to give up music and return to school; but if he can forget everything about the one passion in his life, what happens if he loses the other skills he relies on to live and making a living, or even the ability to feel anything at all. Because of the album’s structure, we know that the narrator’s anxiety is valid. He’s on a self-destructive downward spiral that will result in exactly what he fears.
In “2020,” he takes his kids, Chris and Zooey, to the park while Sarah cleans the house for a party. He’s begun to worry about his health:
Two nights this week I dreamed that my teeth crumbled when I tried to eat.
When I wake up my gums feel weak – I make the kids brush their teeth til their mouths bleed.
I feel ambushed by my body or at least a little misled,
as if the blood that moves my parts can’t keep up with commands coming from my head.
The narrator’s dreams are another aspect of his anxiety over losing control. While his kids are playing, he watches a girl running laps around the track: “I watch the muscles sing in her thighs.” The girl’s youth and health are things the narrator is afraid of losing. When he turns back a woman is helping his daughter off the playground equipment. She misinterprets his reasons for staring at the running girl, saying, “Maybe you should keep your eyes on your own child.” He gathers Chris and Zooey and goes to the pharmacy for his prescription, because he can “feel the panic starting.”
“2011″ reveals the mistake the narrator refers to in “2045,” the turning point in his life, through the end of a prior relationship. His girlfriend, Keta, cheats on him with a musician, and he can’t figure out what he’s done wrong:
She wanted more stability, she wanted more attention
and I just wanted to have less tension between us
I told her I could change my whole life if she’d be happy
when she said I’d never change, I called her a defeatist.And then I did it – I put a knife in the thing I loved most
It was music that I burned at the stake,
as a toast to the girl and the world that I want to be a part of.
Maybe going back to school was when I started to lose.
“2011″ seems like a bit of a misstep in the narrative flow, since introducing a second relationship into a story this compressed feels disjointed. Continuing with Sarah would have added complexity to the entire narrative. If he caught Sarah cheating and confronted her, that information would influence the way both characters are viewed in previous songs on a second listen.
I’m also not completely sold on the narrator’s motivation for continuing to pursue his college degree after breaking up with Keta (italics mine): “I’m gonna prove to her world that I can always follow through.” Proving a point to the “adult world” by entering that world out of spite doesn’t seem reasonable, but it makes sense that he would stubbornly pursue his relationship with Sarah, even after finding out about her affair, because he’s already changed his whole life so “she’d” be happy.
Everyone’s got an opinion, as the saying goes, but this narrative blip doesn’t detract from my appreciation of the EP. I do wonder, however, if since the EP’s timeline is approaching the present of 2007, that maybe “2011″ is an extrapolation of a real life situation. In my own writing, I’ve often found it difficult to give up reality in order to tell the best story. Anyway, I could play guessing games until a new century rolls around if Castleton is right about the increased lifespan, but let’s continue.
The final track, “2007,” explains the narrator’s frustration with his musical career and his motivation for leaving it:
. . . when you have no luck to start with, you’ve nothing to part with,
and I’m not mad that I don’t have it,
I’m mad that luck should have anything to do with being an artist.[. . .]
There was a time when I thought that I could change the country
with a few choice raps and some odd time beats,
but noise plus noise equals noise,
and the only way that noise can make silence is defeat.
The narrator has reached the point in an artist’s life where idealism hits reality. Dramatic irony drives the tension in this song. We know what happens when the narrator abandons music from the songs leading up to “2007,” but at this point he’s optimistic about giving up on his dreams:
This is not how I wanna spend the rest of my life
’cause I got it in my head that I had to stand for something?
Once you get pass that the future actually looks bright.
The lyrics do a wonderful job of depicting the sort of rationalization people go through when considering whether to stop expending the massive amounts of sweat and tears that go into pursuing a poorly paid dream. Giving up the pursuit of a dream can be an enormous weight off your shoulders, but it’s possible to lose more than just the strain. When the narrator gives up music, he also loses the only thing that anchors him and provides a sense of control in his life. Without a dream to follow, he has nothing to strive toward.
And in under 20 minutes, we’ve experienced most of a person’s life. Hopefully, we’re all inspired to continue pursuing our passions instead of hopelessly depressed about the inevitability of failure and death! A Bullet, A Lever, A Key tells an old story worth repeating, that people should pursue their own course through life instead of letting someone else choose for them. Telling the story in reverse allows Castleton to painfully layer the consequences before revealing their origin, which gives the character’s decision to abandon his dreams the entire suffocating weight of his failed life.
Now that you’ve read about Gavin Castleton’s potential future if he can’t make music viable as a career, I’ll point you once again to the place you can buy his stuff. I’m going to hold off on looking at his most recent album, Home, until the New Year, so you’ll have plenty of time to listen to it on his website, gavincastleton.com, and maybe even buy a copy so he’ll continue to make music instead of becoming a computer programmer with a drug addiction and a failed marriage. How’s that for a guilt trip?
He has an interesting way of telling his story through his music and I’m fascinated by your commentary. His story makes me feel life isn’t all that bad. Wish I could write it in a song.
Reply to Aunt LaurieThe deterioration he’s [I'm] lamenting in the chorus of 2031 is demonstrated in the words themselves – the number of syllables in a phrase decreases by one ever three bars. It’s one of those rare moments in the writing process when the stars align mathematically and conceptually.
Also worth mentioning (but maybe irrelevant in a lyrical analysis) is that the emotion-regulating pill addiction is also personified in the mind-numbing 8th notes of the guitar parts unwavering over the frantic and far more interesting drum patterns. This is how I chose to connote corroding repression – something bubbling just beneath the surface of the harmony bed. The guitar parts in the chorus smooth out and become far more interesting… this is because they are supporting Victor’s voice.
This is true of all the songs – the rhythm patterns and styles are married to the character development and often times the monologue itself, but I’m particularly proud of 2038.
In regards to your comments on 2011: several things are at play there. The first is an intentional exclusion of the courtship and subsequent marrying of Sarah. Depicting a suddenly upbeat section of our story right before the punchline seems counter productive to me. More importantly, as I alluded to in this post: http://gavincastleton.blogspot.com/2009/05/09-15-2044-truth-exercise.html, the marriage was (will be? tenses get stupid when time travel is involved) less about finding Mrs. Right and more a response to the destruction that Keta left (expounded on here: http://gavincastleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/2014-meddling.html). That kind of massive mistake in matters of the heart is a whole other album, but I felt like giving Sarah any more air time around those early years gives her undeserved weight.
Another large factor is exactly what you guessed: 2011″ is an extrapolation of a real life situation.
And perhaps the biggest factor, is that there was a third song in the Keta era that was removed. Had she spanned 3 songs, you might not feel it so rushed? I removed the song because for where it fell (2nd to last) it didn’t deliver enough development. It wasn’t necessary enough (except, arguably, for pacing) to the unfolding tragedy. I removed it because I wanted to accomplish exactly what you’re finding impressive about this EP – extremely efficient writing (a product of heavy doses of Hemingway and Carver).
In response to this “Proving a point to the ‘adult world’ by entering that world out of spite doesn’t seem reasonable”
I think you’re absolutely right, and yet I feel like doing it all the time… especially after my breakup. The man just got completely emasculated… it’s entirely plausible that he would respond unreasonably!
Overall, I agree with you – it’s a sudden jump, and I apologize.
Reply to GavinNo need to apologize, Gavin. I wouldn’t have had anything to criticize if I hadn’t listened to the EP a million times because I loved it so much. Including Keta instead of relying completely on Sarah makes sense when you explain it, and I’m sure the decision to remove a song that may have developed her more fully was a difficult one.
I do think a third song with Keta would have fixed the imbalance I sensed, but in a narrative this dense, adding more, like you said, doesn’t usually work, and would probably just bring up other questions that would need answers, and the cycle would continue until you had a double LP that completely missed your original point.
The jump is sudden, but so are all the other jumps. I guess the problem is that I could anticipate the previous transitions. The jumps from suicide -> divorce -> loss of job -> anxiety/pills are all set up in the preceding songs, but when we go from “2020″ to “2011,” there’s not enough to help me understand why the end of his relationship to Keta is meaningful in the context of the previous songs. It makes sense in relation to “2007,” and I can fill in the gap between Sarah and Keta myself, but without any hints I’m really just making stuff up.
Not to belabor the point, but now that I’ve had time to think about it a bit more, I think that’s a better description of my impressions than what I wrote above.
Thanks for commenting on how the music supports the lyrics. I don’t know enough mechanically about music to recognize what you described on my own, and my vocabulary is limited, but even though I can’t explain it, the attention you pay to how the music interacts with the narrative is obvious, and that’s the reason I’m writing about your music and not someone else’s. I’ll listen for the specific connections you mentioned.
I attempted to write about the music itself in my posts, but everything I wrote was very surface, and would be obvious to anyone listening to the songs, so I took it out. Thanks so much for commenting! I’ve never had the artist behind anything I’ve written about respond, so it’s very much appreciated.
Reply to Travis Megillthinking about it further, there are a few other important reasons to write 2011 the way I did.
The relationship with Keta is crucial to the story because it is a foil against the relationship with Sarah. Keta and Sarah are two very different types of women (it’s not a coincidence that their names are interesting and bland respectively). Keta does not know what she wants – she pressures the narrator to stabilize and redirect himself so that he attends to her more and subsequently loses respect for him when he does. She is attracted to a man that does what he wants (in this case, another musician) – just not when it starts to seem pathetic. Sarah, on the other hand, knows exactly what she wants and always gets it: financial stability and status quo. She is fine carrying on a shell of a marriage as long as those things are intact (when they are not, she’s out). She wouldn’t cheat on him because in his new bored world she is the center of things. Keta, on the other hand, stays in a relationship where she is not the center of things (most likely due to issues with her own self-worth).
It is important that the narrator (hi!) runs from the first relationship to get to the second, never realizing that he is not himself in either situation, and that neither love is unconditional. For that reason, I think that having the story jump from Married Dad Guy hanging out in the park with kids (that are old enough to play on slide and whatnot) to College Guy getting cheated on has a wonderful way of suggesting that the move to marriage and family life was a rushed (and maybe not well thought-out) endeavor. I’ve seen this scenario often in my life—the rush to something safe as a reaction to heartbreak— and it never bodes well. I think that sort of mistake would be in keeping with the theme of our stupid narrator (hi!).
Reply to GavinYeah, I wrote the word “narrator” in these posts more than I ever wanted to over the course of my life, then I cut most of them out and it’s still annoying to read!
Your explanation of Keta and Sarah makes sense, and may be the reason I felt disconnected when the focus returned to another relationship. Until Keta comes in, it felt like my understanding of the central character was deepening with each song, and when “2011″ starts, I’m ready as a listener to focus on his relationship with music and how that deteriorated, leading to its abandonment. Instead I’m brought back to how his romantic relationships affected his the path his life takes, which even with Sarah, who’s given more time than Keta, doesn’t feel like the heart of the narrative.
This feeds into another disconnect I felt. In “2011,” the end of future-Gavin’s musical dreams is specifically attributed to his desire to please Keta, but in “2007,” his reasoning is more complex, and to me, feels like the direction the narrative was leading me. Obviously the decision to give up your entire life to lead a status quo life is layered and can be attributed to many things, but Keta’s involvement muddled the narrative through-line for me.
The reason I’m drawn to the EP is the complex character at the center and his conflict, which doesn’t seem to be women, but his dissatisfaction with the reception of his music and the return he gets on his investment in it (ironic metaphor?). I felt like as a listener, I was being led from his suicide, through a failed romantic relationship, through the anxiety, to get to the heart of his real problem, which is the love/hate relationship he has with music and all the bullshit he has to go through to make music and be “successful.” Returning to failed romance takes me backward (or forward? *head explodes*) in the narrative. It feels like doubling back down the trail when I expected to emerge on the scenic peak of the mountain I just climbed as a listener.
Even your description of the two women as types makes me wonder what the focus is supposed to be. Sarah and Keta can’t possibly get enough space in the narrative to be anything but props because of the story’s tight focus on future-Gavin, which is why I wondered if Keta needed to be introduced at all. The transition from “Married Dad Guy” to “College Guy,” for me at least, is less interesting than the transition from “Idealistic Artist” to “Empty Suicidal Husk,” and despite my personal preference, the EP seems to follow that trajectory up until Keta comes in. I’m probably just repeating myself at this point with different words.
Knowing that Home follows ABALAK, I’m intrusively speculating into your personal life (sorry!) and wondering whether what you experienced while writing this EP bled into it and was later fully developed on Home. Total speculation, of course, but I’ve had similar experiences writing stories that I realized after the fact were all about things going on while I wrote them and subverted my intention for the characters in that particular story.
Anyway, it feels really presumptuous for me to make guesses like that, but I’m always intrigued when artists explore their personal lives through their art (probably because I’m attempting to do the same thing). I’m interested in looking closely at your music (okay, really just the lyrics, I’m inadequate) because it engages me emotionally and intellectually in such an effortless fashion, so I want to figure out how it ticks so I can learn from it and enjoy it from new perspectives.
Thanks for talking!
Reply to Travis Megilli think the blogposts are wildly entertaining, especially the ‘truth excersize.’ number nineteen makes my stomach turn-not in disgust of the literal implications of the idea, but in disgust of the fact that if i were in the same situation, i’d react the same, and i base that on precedent. the idea that humans (specifically american humans) will remain together against all reason is both confusing and sensible.
when i was first getting into the album, i too was confused at “2011″‘s introduction of keta and had to ask a friend who she was; obviously she was one girl with whom the “narrator” had a relationship, but i actually thought that keta was an endearing nickname given to sarah that became phased out after years of mutual disregard. this is not a particularly logical conclusion but was simply how i’d interpreted it. i understand fully your decision to leave out that third song to develop keta’s character more, and the accompanying blog posts at this point are part of the album for me, making that third song unnecessary. however, not everyone will have the same amount of curiosity as i’d had in searching for those posts (not that they were particularly hard to find, but [i assume] you get my point). all in all, though, while it’s worth discussing once one has become more intimate with the album, the point is rather moot because this brief confusion is easy to overcome if you haven’t received all the exact answers so it detracts little from the story and even less from the quality of music; while “2011″ and “2007″ may be more confusing in terms of story than the preceding five songs, they are, in my opinion, the most compelling songs on the album.
musically, i find the entire album (and moreover gavin’s entire library) confusing because i honestly haven’t a clue how one person can create such diverse and complex art.
your discussion of “2038,” with the ‘miracle’ of being able to structurally and conceptually make the lyrics of the song work in your favor, i’m reminded of this video alluding to the fibonacci sequence in the song “lateralus” by tool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7CZIJVxFY
i’m excited to see your interpretation of Home and only see it fit to give my input once you’ve dissected it and i can weigh in on what you’ve taken from it
Reply to smith