The comment stream on Youtube for Frida Snell’s cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Bullet With Butterfly Wings is a bit of a battleground. Snell’s flat, seemingly emotionless delivery and the arrangement’s strained lethargy is a rather complete juxtaposition to the Pumpkins’ metallic growl of anger.
People often get verbally violent when cherished songs are re-interpreted this way. A frequent curse in the comment stream goes something like,
Oh. It’s there. It’s rage, no doubt about it. It simmers, just below the surface. Bottled up. Subdued. Disavowed. Restrained, bound, confined…
…caged.
Chambered.
The hammer cocked. Finger on the trigger.
She puts on her wings, adds a sallow smile, deflects the conditions causing her pain, pushes the pain itself down, down deeply under the anger, down into a psychological and spiritual Marianas Trench. She becomes uncomfortably numb.
But the rage remains. The pain remains. Right there. Ready to fire.
<There is no way to so violently suppress one emotion without suppressing all emotion. Even love. Feeling one, eventually, leads to feeling another.
Love is always a risk. Risk leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Leads to… The rage genie is out of the bottle. Love eventually pulls the trigger.
The trigger must never be pulled. The bullet never fired. Keep the wings on. Stay in the cage.
Go quietly into the night.
