The Case for Briefness

Italian poet Eugenio Montale once said that the American writer Thomas Stearns Eliot could say in 10 words what a Romantic poet would have said in 100. Since it was surely meant as a compliment, evidently Montale believed that synthesis could be seen as a quality in the arts. I think he had a point.

Take, for example, the first verse from Hate My Way, by the Throwing Muses, the third track on their probably not very famous 1986 debut album:

I could be a smack freak and hate society

I could hate God and blame Dad
I might be in a Holocaust, hate Hitler
Might not have a child and hate school
I could be a sad lover and hate death
I could be a neuro and hate sweat
No
I hate my way

If you had never heard about the Throwing Muses and their main singer and songwriter, Kristin Hersh, you might be in for a big surprise. It is an interesting track from many points of view. Clearly, Hersh knew a thing or two about singing and songwriting, even when she was just 20 years old. Although the images she chose for these lines are not very compelling to me, I like their sound, the way they progress towards the titular line in the end, and the change in melody that follows immediately after. But even though the overall effect is quite good, and it is clear that she needed to build up, somehow slowly, towards the final “I hate my way”, it always struck me that she needed 7 lines before reaching her grand finale. Synthesis, it seems, was not an arrow in her quiver.

Now take instead the very beginning of Serve the Servants, the probably much more famous initial track from In Utero, Nirvana’s last album:

Teenage angst has paid off well

Now, I’m bored and old

These two lines have always sent me KO, in a way that Hersh’s verse, however beautiful, could never do. Evidently, Kurt hates his way, too, but, far from Hersh’s 7 lines, he only needs 11 words to make it crystal clear, smashing in a few seconds Gen X’s signature angst towards everything which he, like many others, had subscribed to as a teenager.
What a way to open an album.