The Ramones “Questioningly”
I’ve Been Here So Long No One Can See Me, 24 Apr 21
I have my pet topics. I guess we all do. I wish I didn’t pay attention to some of the stuff I pay attention to… I have no idea how tolerance mechanisms became a thing I *see* everywhere, but humans are weird and I’m just like everyone else, so…[shrug]
In conversation with friends we usually abbreviate this as (+incorporate into the general concept of) inflation, both literally and metaphorically. One of the things I hated about Emo—once it started happening enough that people came up with the name Emo—was how these bands somehow decided if they yelled louder the lyric would hit harder. Worse still with earnest delivery of words stripped of their gray areas.
Another thing I can’t help is coloring in a story outline I respond to. Or maybe that’s my own personal definition of “respond to”. It’s happening right now with this Miles Davis record as I write and these potatoes boil, so I guess words aren’t even a prerequisite. Food smells help.
This song—the only Ramones song I’ll take to the grave, though I truly love the band and this album in particular—is the opposite of Emo. I’m torn here, since I want to talk about how great it is and my own emotional response to particulars, but picking this apart is an exercise in point-missing even I’m embarrassed by.
But now I’ve read Brett’s response—wondering aloud how this might fit the theme—and I’m like: ??? So I’ll risk some dancing about architecture.
90+% of the power of impact is coming directly from Joey, so may as well let him tell it. Even in print these lyrics are a miracle of economy. He has a particular genius for disarming potential cliches before they happen:
Questioningly
Her eyes looked at me
And then she spoke
Aren’t you some one I used to know
And weren’t we lovers a long time ago?
His delivery is amazing, of course, but even as text on a page this unfolds to about the largest wingspan that word count is capable of. Go back and dig the space between each of those lines—you can feel what he’s actually thinking, composing these thoughts in this way. This is totally a “Baby shoes for sale, never worn” situation.
Looked at her close
Forced her into view
Yes, I said, you’re a girl
That I once may have knew
[by now I’m involuntarily smacking whomever is standing next to me with the back of my hand, LOLing at awesomeness]
And IMMEDIATELY there’s a next gear, as he enters the mode that Phil Spector must’ve been thinking about when he said Joey Ramone was the best singer he’d ever heard. (I read that somewhere, or maybe I made it up. It doesn’t matter; it’s believable.)(Speaking of Phil Spector—and recalling Emo’s misstep—let’s remember why The Ramones exist in the first place: as a course-correction for the too-long, aimless, self-indulgent, pretentious bloat that colored any music you might have heard on the radio by the mid-70s—and there’s inflation again.)
But I don’t love you anymore
What do you want to talk to me for?
You should have just let me walk by
Memories make us cry
Again it’s all there in black and white, but I’m in this deep so I’ll spell it out some more: those lines could do a round robin of paired association, any order; they tumble out entirely convincingly in a way that manages to capture his brain’s sudden hijacking—here, on this sidewalk, totally unprepared—by some wounded part of himself, barely keeping it together enough to put her off… that choice of “us” in the resolution is more subtle genius.
(Here, just for Brett, I’ll point out the dumb (and super-unenhancing) detail I associate particularly with the “Looked at her close/Forced her into view” couplet, which I immediately thought of when I saw those Cecilia Paredes photos, distorting my read on the theme itself. It’s that Joey’s a dude from the neighborhood, not a cosmopolitan type. He’s able to blend in—even that tall, that peculiar-looking—by going about his routine unassumingly. He’s in his own world, maybe walking some pathetic dog, his attention not often wandering up from the pavement. So he’s invisible in a way, but so is the world to him. That he sees her at all is a shock. That he’s able to register her confusion—the first word out of his mouth—means he saw her first. And here comes the first bit of complexity: has he already convinced himself it’s not her?) Anyway, he wastes no time moving on, back to the daily:
In the morning, I’m at work on time
My boss, he tells me
That I’m do-ing fine
…the immediate turning of the page…
When I’m going home
Whiskey bottle
Movie on TV
Memories make me cry
And I’m alone just me
Just me
Questioningly
…and like *that* the book dissolves in front of our eyes; we’re left holding a one-sheet. There’s no more to tell.
Very unusual guitar solo for a Ramones track (love love love), plus a feeling I always get that the song is over here; of course all the “content” has been delivered already.
Check though how something extra happens in the recycling of the material so perfectly introduced so far. He runs through the lyric again, BUT BACKWARDS THIS TIME—I don’t love you…/ Looked at her close…/Questioningly her eyes looked at me…/—so he can end with the question mark, sure, but it also reads as a metaphor for the endless loop of his days, and the torture of living with a mind that won’t let him off the carousel.