Get to Know What Real Is

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

People don’t realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature... I think a person finally emerges from all this nonsense when he becomes aware that his life has a much larger meaning he has been ignoring — a transcendent meaning. And that his life is, at its most serious, some kind of religious enterprise, not one that has to do with the hurly-burly of existence.

(Saul Bellow, from Conversations with Saul Bellow [source])

…and:

I
Don’t trace out your profile —
forget your side view —
all that is outer stuff.

II
Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be who you aren’t.

(Antonio Machado, Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs)

…and (paired with the Bellow quote above):

That it doesn’t strike us at all when we look around us, move about in space, feel our own bodies, shows how natural these things are to us. We do not notice that we see space perspectively or that our visual field is in some sense blurred towards the edges. It doesn’t strike us and never can strike us because it is the way we perceive. We never give it a thought and it’s impossible we should, since there is nothing that contrasts with the form of our world. What I wanted to say is it’s strange that those who ascribe reality only to things and not to our ideas move about so unquestioningly in the world as idea and never long to escape from it.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Not from whiskey river:

([The] Tick and [his sidekick] Arthur run up to the bank)
(We now see the Idea Men talking in muffled sentences to each other because of their masks)
Arthur: They’ve got guns!
Tick: This is definitely illegal. Arthur, do you fly?
Arthur: My wings are in my briefcase. Back at the diner. I’ll go get them.
Tick: No time!
(The Tick grabs Arthur and they jump to the top of the building and through the skylight in the ceiling. They land in a cloud of dust and the Idea Men all turn and point their guns at them.)
Arthur: I think I’ll just lie down here for a second.
(Arthur faints.)
Tick: Criminals! You face the sworn protector of this fair city. You face… The Tick!
(The Idea Men all mumble assorted garbled phrases)
Tick: Speak up! I can’t understand a word you’re saying through those stupid masks!
…
(Shot of Tick watching TV. Gunshot, screaming sound effects as announcer talks)
(Flips Channel)
Sally (on TV): Good evening. This is Sally Vacuum with a special report. I’m here at the City’s hydroelectric plant. Apparently the notorious Idea Men have taken the City dam hostage. Although we can’t understand a word they’re saying.
(Idea Man is talking in muffled speech)
Man offscreen: What? I’m sorry, we didn’t get that.

(from Episode 1 of The Tick: “The Tick vs. The Idea Men” [source])

…and:

The emotions triggered by fiction are very real. When Charles Dickens wrote about the death of Little Nell in the 1840s, people wept — and I’m sure that the death of characters in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series led to similar tears. (After her final book was published, Rowling appeared in interviews and told about the letters she got, not all of them from children, begging her to spare the lives of beloved characters such as Hagrid, Hermione, Ron, and, of course, Harry Potter himself.) A friend of mine told me that he can’t remember hating anyone the way he hated one of the characters in the movie Trainspotting, and there are many people who can’t bear to experience certain fictions because the emotions are too intense…

…Of course, people get fooled, as when parents tell their children about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, or when an adult mistakes a story for a documentary, or vice versa. But the idea here is more interesting than that — it is that even once we consciously know something is fictional, there is a part of us that believes it’s real.

(Paul Bloom, “The Pleasures of Imagination” [source])

What do a popular song’s lyrics mean? What a stupid question, right? Assuming the meaning’s not obvious from the start, we just have to ask the songwriter. If the songwriter’s not available, or otherwise unable or unwilling to tell us, well, you know the experts — the academics and music critics — will always be happy to tell us!

Just one problem: what if a lot of experts can’t agree? What if all the conflicting opinions are equally plausible?

“C.C. Rider” is a song like that. Maybe the main problem is that it’s been remade (and made over) so many times, with each performer/lyricist applying his or her own twists, that no single definitive version of the lyrics exists. In any case, the theories as to the title’s source, at least, span a bizarre range.

NPR’s “Song of the Day” one day this week featured a smooth, rollicking version of the song recorded over 25 years ago, but only recently released:

A gruff yet jaunty voice declares, “We gonna do this thing about CC Rider because we get so much reactions. Here we go.” A tinny piano picks up the beat of the classic blues song, pounding the keys in barrelhouse style. The left hand builds a pounding bass line while the right strides up octaves with ease. The singer/pianist is Willie Lee Perryman, known as “Piano Red” (he was an African-American albino with ruddy skin) and also as “Dr. Feelgood” (the name of his early-’60s hit)…

[Below, click Play button to begin ‘C.C. Rider’. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:32 long.]

What reality of “C.C. Rider” sounds right to you? (See the NPR link above, and the note here, for some ideas.) Does it matter?