POTF – Clearview through the looking glass
Alright, I have not said my last word about Clearview, nope I am not done… There are some afterthoughts and inspiration that need to be addressed so that, for now, I know I really said everything I wanted to say and did not limit myself to this one post for custom’s sake. You see, a lot can happen in a couple of days, even though it might not look that way for many, for me it is a lot and it did. I had my first written feedback on what I wrote about Poets of the Fall, and beyond the fact that it made my day, I got inspired which kind of is the whole point of having a blog to me, I think…
Exceptional Storyteller
Among the fan reactions to Clearview, I have read many times how exceptional a storyteller Marko Saaresto is. I agree of course, and it so happens that I had mentioned it in my post about Maybe Tomorrow is a Better Day. Marko is a poetic storyteller or a poet that tells stories… anyway, I don’t like labels they are limiting our imagination.
Anyway, you might wonder why I am writing this post, but did not do the same for the other Poets of the Fall albums. Despite the fact that I am new in the Poets of the Fall “community”, it is also the first time that I feel and somehow see clearly that I am told a story… You could say that I am finally getting more familiar (better acquainted) with the whole idea that makes Poets of the Fall tick and ultimately so special. I am, as we say in French “good public“, and I love a good story whether it’d be told in a book, in a movie or in music. A good story is always a good story and this is what Clearview is. This post is therefore another angle on Clearview that I could not possibly write about just a few days after the album’s release. As I wrote then: Clearview will continue to grow its roots in my heart and soul… and so it did and it still does.
Child and Healer
When Marko Saaresto was asked to define Clearview as if it were a human being, he said that it’d be both the child and the healer. Of course, this got me thinking… because he also explained that Clearview is about seeing clearly where you are, where you wanna go and how you’re gonna get there without losing the sight of your bigger picture; at the same time, he also said that releasing an entire album (I’m sorry, I have to say this again, but Clearview is too d***** short, brilliant, but too freaking short) is and I quote:
an opportunity to reinvent yourself and it gives you an opportunity to tell an actual story and maybe make a point somewhere in the way
source: vk.com interview, English translation
So now, we have an album that tells a story through the child and the healer, so that the path we’d like to follow, or to find and then follow, would get clearer in front of us. This is a very simplified summary, but yeah in a nutshell that could be it. This is probably why I feel Clearview like a somewhat more “serious” album. I have mentioned this before, in my post about Once Upon a Playground Rainy, but I did not say more mature and maybe I should have. Marko said in the vk.com interview about Clearview:
It’s the next stage of evolution in the band’s music.
source: vk.com interview, English translation
So what do you say we look through the looking glass to find some of Clearview‘s red threads? I won’t go through all the songs, but I think it is worth a shot…
In a way, and if I understand Marko‘s purpose in the vk.com interview, Clearview is somehow our Mental Versailles which sentences us to Drama for Life if we let it… at the same time, Clearview is the child and the healer… In fact, we all have this Clearview in us, and all we have to do is allow it to work its magic (that is to say work with it) so that we can go through life and grow and maybe find the essentials that make it all worth it. In other words, Drama for Life sets the stage… it’s the canvas of the play within which the story is going to be told. Let’s explore that then… The Game of love maybe, within which we follow every steps society (aka, the puppet master) dictates on how and what love should be; if we are not careful we’ll lose ourselves and forget to feel. In the end though, it is all about love… so when you forget and play The Game as you are dictated to by the puppet master that is when you sentence yourself to Drama for Life, right… If Drama for Life is the canvas, then The Game is the state of play. What then? I guess the story needs to begin for there are only ten songs after all… just teasing.
The story begins with The Child in Me… The inner child is disappearing as we grow up – especially if we let him/her – and we get swooped up by life and we’re looking for something without knowing really what it is… maybe a better world,
a world a child would see…
and as time passes, we maybe realise that we’re missing something… or maybe we got it but don’t know where to look. Anyway The Child in Me will be the object of another post, because I love that song (all of them really…) so let’s move on to Once Upon a Playground Rainy. In this song Marko is remembering his own dream as a child, and the constant inner battle he goes through for he knows that he has to grow up but doesn’t really want to (thank you Susan for this interesting insight & viewpoint). Children of the Sun sounds to me like Marko is singing to the future generation. Almost like it is some pieces of advice to them, and at the same time to his own inner-child and ours (the listeners). Take your dreams and make them real without forgetting who you are and where you wanna be. Shadow Play is still a bit of a mystery to me, but I’ll get to it later…
Now I realise that I see clearly the child Marko was talking about when defining Clearview as a person, but the healer is not as obvious. However, I can say this… my own inner-child to whom my therapist advised me to talk, appeared to me as I listened to Clearview. I took her by the hand and I, indeed, spoke with her as we took a walk within Clearview. I guess the understanding of this album is what makes it a healer as much as a child. This is one of the reasons why I am not going through the entire story (all the songs), because I know I’ll probably walk each and every one of them through the looking glass. Besides, for those of you who did not read the entire book, aka did not listen thoroughly to Clearview, I should not reveal everything… that would not be fun nor fair.
As I wrote before, there is more to Clearview than meets the eye.