2 kool 2 be 4-gotten – lucinda williams
Autor: Guilherme Semionato | Publicado: 2011-03-22T17:07:00-02:00

do álbum car wheels on a gravel road (best! record! ever!), de 1998. esta versão é de um episódio do programa saturday night live, exibido em 1999. no final do texto, você poderá baixar três versões de estúdio da música (a segunda delas, aliás, faz parte do bootleg mais valioso de todos os tempos no que concerne lucinda williams).no dia do meu aniversário, retorno com a que deve ser a minha canção favorita da lucinda, uma música estranha e críptica sobre a decrepitude da matéria e das relações humanas (ela abre com "you can't depend on anything really/ there's no promises, there's no point"). é uma canção sobre perda, e também sobre morte & perigo, desde o lendário pacto que aquele músico de blues famoso robert johnson supostamente fez com o diabo (em troca de uma habilidade inacreditável na guitarra), até um encantador de serpentes que consegue evitar ser picado e um homem prestes a pular de uma ponte que quase consegue convencer sua namorada a se juntar a ele etc.a música foi composta a partir de um livro de fotografias de juke joints – esses bares depauperados, de beira de estrada do sul americano – e o miolo dela traz diversas imagens do livro: "no dope smoking, no beer sold after 12 o'clock" (há uma placa com esses dizeres), "bathroom wall reads, 'is god the answer? yes'" (há essa inscrição numa porta de banheiro) etc. 2 kool 2 be 4-gotten tá grafado assim, inclusive, por conta de uma foto, e o "junebug vs. hurricane" que ela repete três vezes no final concernem duas gangues rivais (e não exatamente joaninhas e furacões, embora uma música aberta assim valide o que o ouvinte bem entender), e isso também está grafado numa das paredes de um dos bares.tudo isso parece preso ao passado, não se olha para o futuro nessa música – o "there's no promises, there's no point" atenta para a repetição infinita desse presente apático. é uma narrativa aparada no desconhecido, meio carnavalesca (uma sucessão de bizarrices desfilando à sua frente), anticientífica (gente vendendo alma ao demônio, gente bebendo veneno de cobra), quase antimatéria – e mágica, essa qualidade viajando-atráves-do-éter da vida. quando, na seção final, lucinda inventa a história de um cara que pede para a sua namorada pular de uma ponte com ele e ela declina, dizendo que ele está diante do reflexo de sua própria morte (e disso apenas), isso alça a música ao transcendental. aqueles hey-heys mágicos servem para marcar exatamente uma existência do "eu individual" só plenamente realizada mediante um contato com o outro. nós só conhecemos essa menina pelos olhos de seu namorado suicida, o que permite a ela compreender o mundo a partir de um olhar diferenciado e desencantado. a sensibilização pela experiência do contato marca tanto a primeira metade da música (uma colagem de imagens que une lucinda & ouvinte à ontologia de sua criação, algo partilhado por excelência com as fotos nas quais a música baseou-se) quanto essa segunda (uma narrativa de outra ordem, centrada em uma situação isolada e em dois personagens aparemente alheios a qualquer registro fotográfico prévio), e é esta a eletrizante humanidade nas músicas da lucinda williams. eu amo essa música, essa música me ama. feliz aniversário, kiddo!* o álbum car wheels foi gravado/mixado três vezes. em austin (1995), com o então fiel escudeiro gurf morlix; em nashville (1996), com steve earle; e em los angeles (1998), a versão final. não há grandes diferenças entre a segunda e a terceira versão, mas a primeira é bastante distinta, diferindo-se inclusive na letra (ela volta para os primeiros versos a fim de finalmente fechar a música).*há um bom tempo, escrevi umas coisas em inglês que foram postadas no fórum oficial:i once read somewhere (i think on last.fm) that "only prince could get away with a song title like that" (or something like this). it was nice to discover in the other thread that photo from the juke joint book that clears the matter up. i've always defended those numbers, but since i've seen the picture they don't need any defenses – it is what it is. the junebug vs. hurricane thing doesn't matter anymore (i mean, if there's some hidden meanings behind junebug and hurricane). the only solid thing is that photograph, the red wall. i love this song even more after that – because of all its randomness, a collection of images that features significant insight over lucinda's creative process. since i've never seen the book, i wonder if the last part of the song (the girl and her boyfriend on a lake charles bridge) is in any way hinted at the book, or if it's "pure" lucinda. *the question remains unanswered: where this image comes from? it basically divides the song in two halves, the first like a straight, descriptive narrative, the latter a disjointed vignette, a bit out of place (mississippi/lake charles). the girl and her boyfriend on a lake charles bridge... who are them? i'm satisfied with the fact that i'll never know for sure (or that "lu's personal experiences" is a sensible answer in every way possible) – and i'm not this annoying and obsessively interested in those kinds of stuff, but 2 kool has such a richly detailed first half and we got ourselves this photograph hinting (just hinting) to all of its most mysterious sections – junebug vs. hurricane, why the numbers on the title et al. – that, likewise, i think i feel compelled to look for some picture for the other half. part of the last section's appeal, to my mind, is those dialogues, lucinda is not merely a narrator to a (supposedely) external event, she incorporated what happened to her "catalogue" and is able to reproduce every word they say. her narration in the first part is, to my mind, even more "dramatized" than in the second (despite the fact that the latter is in first-person), since she seems to use the books to construct images and then, well, who knows – and this gives a creepy quality to the song. there's so much more at stake than just a did-he-jump/did-she-jump-along thing. deep down, i think it might be something she saw someday (an eye-witness account?), hence my curiosity for a (non-existent!) photo/record of it. oh well, i'll stop. yeah, i know it's a fruitless quest, but i don't mind.*now with 2 kool. in 2007, i had no idea what junebug vs. hurricane meant or what the reason behind those funky numbers on the title. and two years later the only thing i know for sure is that people once wrote some inscriptions on a red wall, lucinda saw them through the eyes of a photographer and the rest is history. i think i want to be familiar with every single aspect of this song because i was already nuts about it years ago, and those 14 months of heavy-listening only made the mystery richer: i'm still unable to grasp this song. it's not like i need to understand it, and more like i'd love to hear more stuff about it since there's so much potencial for storytelling in it. i guess i like to hear what people in general have to say about it. that's why i think that this project from robert (22 versions of the song) is so terrific. if anyone told me on april 23, '09 that a french guy would be shipping a year later from paris to rio a cd with TWENTY-TWO versions of a single song, i wouldn't believe it. and then, by listening to every single track of the compilation, you realize that lucinda gave credits to the author of the book that inspired the song every time – and you can't help but admire how these things work, how masterpieces are created almost randomly and how they can bring together two admirers from different backgrounds. of course this can be said of every song, but i always wondered about lucinda's relation with this one in particular, especially in which sense the second part is linked with the first, how the inscription on that red wall and all signs and details from those mississippi bars brought us those star-crossed lovers at that lake charles bridge.which is to say: i wonder but i don't think i really want to know; there's nothing to know really. the answer is obvious: lucinda's personal images & lucinda's astounding craft. it seems such a miracle that this song happened. i guess that when something strikes you as awesome you have a tendency to consider it a happy accident, a one-time wonder, and 2 kool is still the song i listen to the most. it's almost creepy to imagine what happened to me between 2007 and now, it seems like a watershed on most respects (not only regarding lucinda, obviously), but the idea that 2 kool is still able to entice me just as much as in 2007 is more than a reason to treasure lucinda for life. well, i wrote too much. i'm saving everything i've been writing on this forum. i think it should be... let's say heartwarming to read it all in the near future.*de fato, ler isso tudo meses depois é "heartwarming" to say the least.