Song of the Week: "Ghosts" by Laura Marling

Song of the Week is, for now, the only feature on Stetson’s Garden. I absolutely love listening to music, and more than that, I love sharing the music I love with other people. So, I plan on showcasing one song at the end of each week and writing about why I love it, why I felt the need to share it, why I think it is a special song worth sharing.

Laura Marling is a fantastic artist, part of whatever you want to call the nouveau folk movement that seems to currently be taking place. Ghosts is the first song on her first album, which was released when she was around 18 years old. I can’t assume your assessment of this song, but I think that is a rather impressive feat. Not only for an individual to have written, performed and produced an entire album of songs by while still able to be called a “teenager,” but to have songs of great quality and insight.

Art most affects me when it takes a feeling or idea that I struggle with and addresses it. First, it is a great feeling, to know that there are other people who have similar thoughts and feelings to me, especially when I am able to demonstrate, whether by the critical or popular reception of the creative piece, that one is not crazy for simply having these thoughts or struggling with these feelings.

Secondly, and this is especially important with music or literature, every creative person seems to be able to perfectly phrase, and resolve these troublesome ideas. The rhyming structure most lyrics are contained within make them incredibly soothing, if not only memorable. These are the lines of the poem or song that become personal mantras, life preservers when the waters of life seem to be steadily inching above one’s breathing orifices.

Lover please, do not fall to your knees,

It’s not like I believe in everlasting love.

The entire idea of “ghosts” (at least in the sense of the term used in the song) to me, is quite a rabbit hole. Certainly, we all carry around remnants of our past relationships, and this has been well-documented and theorized about in psychology. From Freud’s stages of childhood to Beck’s more empirical theories on the assimilation of the world into childhood schemas, for the past seventy or so years, most American experts on the human mind and behavior would agree with this “ghosts” phenomenon. But what I find most interesting to think about is how even the smallest, most trite relationships in our lives can have important impacts upon us. I remember a friend I briefly made during pre-school, who served to inform my understanding of the whats and hows of friendships ever since, even after I have long forgotten his name!

What I find to be Ms. Marling’s songs most important feature is their ability to tell a story. The hallmark of great folk musicians long past, effective story-telling through music has been a diminishing feature over the past decades. But, in Ghosts, a romance is introduced and resolved in just about 3 minutes. And, I may be revealing some personal bias in saying this, but her characters are particularly identifiable. I’m in hook, line and sinker whenever the protagonists is a slightly paranoid, overly thoughtful, hopelessly romantic knave.