The Greater Scheme
“I was thinking 'bout you, crossing Southern Alberta / Canola fields on a July day / About the same chartreuse as that sixty-nine Bug / You used to drive around San Jose.” The first time I heard the opening lines to James McMurtry’s “Canola Fields,” I was at turns dazzled and dejected. On the one hand, a living person had sat down with pen, paper, and guitar and written these poetic lines. (Nowadays, of course, it’s more likely he sat down with a computer or iPhone and a guitar). On the other hand, I couldn't wrap my head around the intimidating finesse and virtuosity of the lines.
When you’ve peered behind the curtain of musical craft long enough, when you’ve lived your life with full attention to how songs are made, you don’t frequently come across lyrics that seem otherworldly. Most songs don’t bear the markings of the mystery. The lyrics of most songs seem doable, and it’s comforting to think that I could probably write something similar. But “Canola Fields” gave me the fear immediately — that this kind of writing was something I couldn’t do. The lyrics strike the perfect balance between specificity and universality. The imagery and word choice are exact and particular; the characters are so distinct, yet the song invites you to imagine this experience as your own. It feels as close to perfection as a songwriter can get.
Take the use of proper nouns. This drive isn't just happening anywhere; it’s happening in “Southern Alberta.” These aren’t just any fields; they’re “Canola fields.” It’s not just summer; it’s “July.” And this moment reminds the speaker of a car, but it’s not just any car; it’s a “sixty-nine Bug” which is being driven around not just any city but “San Jose.” What’s so uncanny about the exactness of the location and symbolic imagery here is that it’s both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. I’ve never been to Southern Alberta or San Jose, and I’ve never driven by Canola fields; still, I was able to immediately imagine myself on some lonesome, desolate drive at the height of summer with the windows down thinking about the past. What kind of magic trick is this — where a songwriter can weave exotic detail seamlessly with intimate experience?
And while it’s not a proper noun, “chartreuse” is a peculiar color to choose. It’s not a color — like blue or red or yellow — that can be easily placed. And once I took the time to look it up, I realized that chartreuse is a greenish/yellow color named after a French botanical liqueur produced by Carthusian Monks during the 18th century. (It tastes awful, by the way, in all its varieties). So take a look at the lyrics again, and this time move beyond the majesty of the visual impressionism. Wafting from the opening lyrics are also distinct smells. In bloom, Canola smells like cabbage. Chartreuse smells like rosemary, sage, and pine. If you immerse yourself even deeper in the lyrical dream, you can also smell the Polypropylene and plastic of the car’s dashboard baking in the July sun. The evocation of these earthy and industrial smells is not unimportant, in the song or to the listener. Smell is deeply ingrained in our emotional memory. Both smells and songs conjure memory, and that is exactly what’s happening in this opening verse. The Canola fields remind the speaker of the car his former lover used to drive while at the same time the song itself is asking the listener to remember, to connect this song with his or her own lived experience.
During each and every listen, I find the opening four lines of “Canola Fields” (not to mention the rest of the song) to be sensorially, emotionally, and intellectually all-consuming. The song takes me on a journey filled with memory, regret, and (by the end) a real shot at redemption. It’s the work of a songwriter at the height of his craft. There’s much grace to be found in art, and the more time I spend with “Canola Fields,” the more approachable, the less mysterious it seems to me. On occasion, I think I even catch a glimpse of McMurtry: the lonely songwriter, the mason toiling away at the stone.
I told my good friend and fellow songwriter J Seger that I felt like I really turned a corner in my own songwriting when I wrote “Hermès Scarf.” I’ve been stretching myself to locate that lyrical balance that McMurtry found between specificity and universality. I wanted to move beyond all those clichéd and reliable turns of phrase that seem to be the first to surface when you’re working on a song. They’re always available and could work, but these easy lines are often not worthy of the kind of song I’m striving to write. The key, I’m finding, is in word choice, in the timely invocation of proper nouns and the intentional arrangement of vivid and unique adjectives. It’s about the synchronized dance between wording, meter, phrasing, and phonology. This approach seems more attainable to me now, and I think I’m stumbling in the right direction with “Hermès Scarf.”
The first thing people do when they focus their attention on the lyrics of a song is try to imagine themselves in the song. As authors Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas point out in their insightful book on the intersection of music and neuroscience This Is What It Sounds Like, “Talented songwriters recognize that listeners' imaginations work alongside their literal perception when they are enjoying a record. Even as we process the words, our minds are spinning out imagery and memories and emotions.” Therefore, exacting imagery has to be used in order to evoke the most vivid imaginary world. At the same time, the scenic landscape and emotional narrative have to be vague enough so that the listener can put himself or herself into the song’s situation, so that the listener can fill in the blanks left by the songwriter with his or her own life experience.
In the third verse of “Canola Fields,” McMurtry sings: “We all drifted away with the days getting shorter / Seeking our place in the greater scheme / Kids and careers and a vague sense of order / Busting apart at the seams.” How could this line not be about me?
There’s a reason your favorite songs are sacred. At times they speak for you; they perfectly express your experience and emotions. Other times, they offer you a chance to imagine a different life. Even more, they expand your understanding of other people. Expressed more concisely in This Is What It Sounds Like, “Lyrics can make us feel seen, heard, and understood.” And they do all this even though the words aren’t yours, even though the story isn’t exactly yours. Still, you step through some magical portal and become part of this deeply personal mise en scène. Within this whirlwind of language, sensory detail, and imagination you find meaning and understanding.
More and more, I am convinced that, amidst the messiness of life, songs help us in our quest to find “our place in the greater scheme.”
