This is the second installment in an open-ended series of song analyses entitled “The Most Engrossing and Satisfying Songs Paul Has Ever Come Across in a Lifetime of Listening to Music”. More volumes will follow at irregular intervals.

SELECTION CRITERIA: No formal benchmark exists beyond the song being, to my estimation, sufficiently “engrossing” and “satisfying.” To “engross” a song has to come to dominate my thoughts for some meaningful period of time and provide fertile avenues for contemplation. To be “satisfying” implies that the song is essential to me — that its existence has satisfied some need that I have in my life.

By requiring that songs that make this list be engrossing and satisfying, we eliminate songs that are satisfying but insufficiently engrossing (examples include Lithium by Nirvana), and songs that engross but do not satisfy (e.g. American Pie by Don McLean).

My “Favorite Songs” go on mixtapes and get handed out. I put them on at parties and I turn them up when they’re on the radio. These songs are different. They have educated and informed me and set up their own outposts in my mind. As lame as it might sound… they have changed me in some small way.

In this installment we will discuss the song:

MANILA

By Seelenluft (ft. Michael Smith)

Seelenluft – Manila

SETUP:

Right or wrong, I’ve always had a kind of knee-jerk weariness that is summoned up by the conversations that surround (or even address elements of) the canon of existentialist thought. The whole thing just seems to trot out this parade of attributes that I would find in some way contemptible in a person; paralyzing introspection and self-importance, indifference, sanctimony, smugness, and a habituated self-pity. When I recognize these things in myself (as often happens) I cringe and start making resolutions to change—how on earth could I get along with folks that wallow in this stuff like a pig in shit?

I mean, it just seems like “all questions, no answers” are always….

EXISTENTIALIST: (interrupting) But Paul, why should an inability to provide “answers” be an indictment of any kind?

PAUL: I know in my head that you’re right duder, I’m just saying that it’s a little tedious to get through all of y’alls…

EXISTENTIALIST: (interrupting) And you’re “too good” for tedium? You’ve not any time to spare to hash out the tough questions?

FIREFIGHTER: (overhears, chimes in) He’s right, Paul, you know, the entire foundation of logical positivism is pretty much based on people asking the right questions. Questions raised by existentialists are still being debated to this day, how can you be so dismissive of…

PAUL: (interrupting) Ok, ok… I was just saying I didn’t like talking about it… not that it was worthless. (long pause) Fuck both of you, by the way.

I’ll not pretend to be an expert, but in my unqualified mind I’ve created an image of the type people who can manage to take joy out of an ad nauseum consideration and re-consideration of existentialist thought as petulant rich-kids summoning this cold, academic, and antiseptic treatment of human suffering on doctors’ couches… complaining about how “nobody understands him.”

It’s really a shame that we need to address these issues to the degree that we do—and I suppose I’ll cop to the fact that we do need to. I’m as susceptible to the middle-of-the-night “Oh fuck, it will definitely happen one day…I WILL DIE” freakout as the next guy. It gets to everyone at some point, and what can you do about it, amirite? Go to the library tomorrow with a wheelbarrow and spend the next six months curled-up with your new kill-me-now reading list of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, et al just to stave off the next panic attack, right? Bah, who’re we trying to fool? There ain’t no way we’d get around to reading all of that.

Hold it right there cousin! Before you run out and join a church or something, let me tell you about a song.

Manila is a song by Seelenluft with lyrics and vocals by Michael Smith. A 12-year-old boy named Michael Smith is about to give you enough ammunition to combat any existential crisis you will ever have for the rest of your life.

You might think that because it came from a 12-year-old I’m giving it a “from the mouths of babes” level of interpretive importance (like when a Nobel Laureate physicist comes up with a great theory because of something his dry-cleaner said, or how some Cuban fisherman is an “engineering genius” when he uses an old sewing machine to rebuild an outboard motor) but I’m not. This is real-deal, fresh-from-the-tap, pure lyric-writing genius.

ARTISTS’ BACKGROUNDS:

I don’t know much about Seelenluft. Internet searching came up with a poorly translated press kit. He seems to be a single guy, a “Swiss entrepreneur from Zurich”, named Beat Solèr. Apparently he has four albums so far, hell if I can track down a single one. Though I have heard a handful of his other songs and they all suck. I have no idea how Beat Solèr came to meet Michael Smith and record him — the entire thing sounds nebulous and unlikely. The press-kit says that “[Solèr met him] during a three month stay in L.A. He then visited the boy at his home with his laptop to record the lyrics of the track.” How this pretty, light-loafered-looking Swiss dude found himself meeting a 12-year-old boy in Compton I have no idea. Smith displays a pretty instantly-likable and affable charisma in the video for the song (which I strongly encourage you to watch, but not until listening to the song a time or two). He’s always smiling. I’m not guessing that this song would go over too well in Compton… I guess this is what has caused me ascribe some good “misunderstood idealist” vibes to him. You really want to like this kid even before you hear this completely awesome song he made…This is one of my favorite songs of all time. I’ll go out on a limb and say that it might be “the favorite.” Just listen to it already.

Annotations for Seelenluft’s song:

MANILA [2002]

VERSE:

On my plane to Manila/

Passengers sittin’ row to row/

The flight staff served the curry chicken/

When I heard the turbine go/

Yeah

Out of my window was the sunset/

On the wing a funny glow/

Then my seat started rattling/

I’m sure that wasn’t part of the show/

So I started to dance!/

Without wearin’ no seatbelt/

So I started to dance!/

Without wearin’ no life-vest/

I started to dance!/

My plane nose went down/

I heard the pilot talk regrets/

But the people didn’t panic/

‘Cause they all stared at me!/

And they started to  dance!/

Without wearin’ no seatbelts/

We all started to dance!/

Without wearin’ no life-vest/

We all started to dance!/

It was quiet a ride/

I started to dance (x3)/

PAUL’S EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS

For the song Manila by Seelenluft (ft. Michael Smith) [2002]

I don’t have any acute fear of flying, but I can totally understand people who do. It makes complete sense to me. You get into this aluminum tube and it goes tens of thousands of feet in the air, then it’s expected to survive this controlled…collision with the earth at the end of it all. The whole thing seems sketchy. What better time to ponder mortality than on an airplane? Once you’re up there, you can’t have them just let you off. Even a pretty calm person can really work up the beginnings of an amazing slow-boil freak-out by thinking about the right things on an airplane (if you don’t believe me, just give it a try).

PART ONE:

What better way to address the issues he’s about to address than in a narrative involving people on an airplane—which is exactly what Michael Smith has done.

On my plane to Manila/

Passengers sittin’ row to row/

The flight staff served the curry chicken/

If you’re going to be parsimonious with your scene-development before getting right to the action, might as well make the setup as rich and interesting as possible. Props to Michael for both destination-selection and food-choice. Manila? Why is Michael flying to the Philippines? And why curry chicken? If it would’ve been me at 12-years-old trying to write a song, I would’ve picked “Paris” and “Hamburgers”. When kids write things it seems like it’s always about aspiration, memory, or preference. Ask a kid to write a story about a city and he’s going to pick somewhere he wants to go or somewhere he went, he’ll never just come from left field and pull Kinshosa out of his ass. Am I saying that this is what Michael is doing (intentionally inserting specific, non-traditional, and curious story elements)? Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying he’s doing. (You would’ve picked “New York City” and “Pizza” and you know it.)

When I heard the turbine go/

Michael dooms the plane in the first verse. He’s already showed you he’s a good “dialogue and concept” guy in the first three lines—a fantastic scene-setter—and he’s got no interest in jerking with you for another couple verses just to prove it. The song’s got some bigger issues to tackle, so let’s not hesitate.

Out of my window was the sunset/

On the wing a funny glow/

Michael (who seems to know about airplanes, probably one of those kids who builds model F15s out of balsa wood) has heard the turbine malfunction. Whether this is, like “uh oh/plane’s gonna crash” or if it’s just “bad thing that can be fixed” we don’t know right now. We don’t even know if Michael knows.

Whether it’s to distract himself from a minor annoyance or to take in as much as his eyes possibly can before certain death—Michael looks out at the sunset. He must be thinking about that turbine, but he won’t miss the chance to ponder the only natural beauty available to him on the plane. He knows that the other passengers do not yet sense their (doomed? highly-threatened?) condition, and he’s using this moment of tranquility to prepare himself for what he must do if the situation threatens to develop into one of general panic…

Then my seat started rattling/

I’m sure that wasn’t part of the show/

That’s it—the plane is fucked, Michael knew it was a possibility, but this signifies to him that the worst of all possible outcomes is now inevitable. How long does it take for a plane to fall 35,000 feet? I don’t know, but I bet Michael does. He has been given a dreadful and calamitous gift that few people ever receive. He now knows with absolute certainty the time and the circumstances surrounding his death. I imagine it’d be enough to drive you bat-shit crazy within the time it takes to fire the single synapse that completes that realization.

It summons up a concept from Gravity’s Rainbow (that great book that all of us are too busy lauding to get around to finishing): Brennschluss [“combustion termination”], the moment a rocket’s engines stop burning and its characteristics and trajectory revert to passive ballistics. It is at this point that any semblance of control over his life is wrested from him, utterly and completely. At this moment it’s worse than climbing the stairs to the gallows—there’s no rope to break, and no phone call from the governor.

Nobody knows anything about Michael’s intentions behind what he is about to do. Nobody can know. But what he is about to do will come close to epitomizing the virtues of decisiveness, brilliance, and empathy.

CHORUS:

So I started to dance!/

It’s hard for me to be surprised by lyrical developments in songs. Books have always done a great job of this for me, but songs not so much. This is a notable exception. Michael Smith has done such a great job of pacing to this point in the song, that by the time he drops this total non sequitur of a behavior on me—even when I listen to it now for the thousandth time—I still feel that little shock of counter-intuition.

There are a thousand reasons why Michael started to dance and all of them are informative. The thought-exercise of sifting through the universe of possible motivations behind this behavior is synced up perfectly—a one to one equivalency—with the identification of every single reason why you are alive.

Was it just immediate impulse-fulfillment? Celebration? To occupy his mind during something impossibly stressful? Avoidance? An empathetic gesture to soothe his fellow passengers (an effect he achieves whether this was his intent or not, a little later in the song)? Was it to relish in a moment of absurdity? Maybe he didn’t want to dance at all and was compelled to by some outside agency. Or maybe he was just mentally-ill, deluded, and thought that dancing could save the plane. Michael started to dance for the same reasons you didn’t kill yourself last night: the answers synch perfectly… one-to-one.

Without wearin’ no seatbelt/

So I started to dance!/

Without wearin’ no life-vest/

When your airplane plunges into the Pacific from altitude, you die. Cleaving to things like seatbelts and life-vests at this stage would be a futile gesture. There’s something a little childish about a person who would seek out false comforts at a time like this. More than that, it’d get in the way of Michael’s ability to dance. You got, let’s say, 9 minutes left to live—who can spend two of those in an empty, useless gesture, rooting around for a life-vest under the seat?

PART TWO:

My plane nose went down/

I heard the pilot talk regrets/

Michael has already delivered the message he wanted to get out there, this passage just sort of gives you the refractory period necessary to let it sink in. He also throws in another “the plane is going to crash” just in case anybody out there left their rose-colored glasses on.

But the people didn’t panic/

‘Cause they all stared at me!/

Who knows? A little cathartic panic might be the absolute best way to spend your final moments on earth… it might be peerlessly, perfectly blissful—but I doubt it. Everyone on that plane shares the exact same fate. No behavior by any individual can buy him more time, and no behavior could make his lot worse. Michael is dancing and the rest of them are staring at him. Quite a spectacle—a 12-year-old kid from Compton dancing on a commercial jet that was once en route to Philippines but is now plummeting into the Pacific ocean… yeah, I’d watch.

REPRISED CHORUS:

And they started to dance!/

Without wearin’ no seatbelts/

We all started to dance!/

Without wearin’ no life-vest/

We all started to dance!/

Well, why the fuck not, right? We ALL started to dance. We ALL gave up on those seatbelts and life-vests and other worthless gris-gris that we were clinging to in such craven ways. One guy had a plan—who can know if it was the best plan, but a plan nonetheless—and he put it in motion (which is probably more than most people would’ve done). And now we all get to dance instead of screaming or crying or whatever else one could be expected to do in this situation.

I know enough about myself to know that I don’t have the qualities that would compel (or even “allow”) me to be the “Michael Smith” in this situation. It’s not like I “freeze up” in a crisis or anything, but I’d definitely be several beats behind. I’d be in sort of “wait and see” mode there for quite a while (thereby losing valuable dancing time).

I will however credit myself with the foresight to recognize a good plan when I see one. I can tell you with certainty that I believe I would be the very first convert, the First-Called and First-Martyred—the Andrew of Bethsaida—of this new and exciting movement designed to ensure that I spend my last conscious minutes engaged in not screaming in terror.

There is no doubt in my mind that there are men to whom these displays of a Messianic disposition come more readily and quickly, and for the most part all of them are pretty much aces in my book. What a pretty awesome urge, even if you happen to fall short. I’ve always had respect for the biblical Jesus for this reason. I guess I like the Footprints-Jesus better than anything—the guy who knew me so well because he had to put up with all of the shit I have to put up with. I also like the Perfect-Moral-Example-Jesus… the guy who lived without sin. I thought that was awesome in a “walk the talk” way—sort of like when my boss at the truck-stop would yell at us dishwashers all the time for being too slow and then when it was really busy he’d just blow us away with how quickly and skillfully he could wash the dishes himself.

Jesus starts to get pretty complicated, pretty quickly. He’s the greatest guy of all time and he’s the best friend you could ever have, and he’s just the perfect example of how you should be… but then he dies and becomes part of God? Yeah, I’m real happy that you even want to still be my friend and all, Jesus, but you realize that the nature of our relationship kind of… changed in a huge way when you became God. I’m happy for your promotion, but now you’re my boss, kind of…

Michael Smith on that plane is my perfect Jesus. He shows you the right thing to do by doing it — and then at the end he dies with you (none of that guilt-inducing “for you” shit), and then you both go to the same place.

OUTTRO:

It was quiet a ride/

Wasn’t it, though? The (I should think deliberate) use of this exceedingly common elegy/senior-yearbook quote/ break-up-summarizing /going-away party/retirement speech convention is the point where it should dawn on most people that the suggestion is being advanced that this lesson could be applied to a larger context (Yer life, son… duh).

I started to dance (x3)/

And the song ends by having the object-lesson repeated three times. I guess the thought behind it is “well, if you missed it, it’s not because we didn’t try.”

POST-SONG SUMMARY:

Just like the people on that plane, you know right now that you’re gonna die. That you don’t know the exact time is irrelevant—a plane crashing was surely picked as the metaphor just to reinforce the fact that “awareness of mortality” (something that we all have but that we can’t be counted upon to have queued up at all times) could be assumed to be on the minds of everyone in the story.

In offering an example of someone who chose to “dance” deliberately, Michael Smith isn’t giving some sort of hedonistic imperative or offering up any trite carpe diem aphoristic platitudes; he is illustrating that while the natural order of things can’t be subverted (dance, don’t dance, whatevs… plane’s still going down), there are these pockets of deliberate effect that you can have on your situation in the here and now.

We have no idea if Michael even likes dancing… If it sounds like he likes it, it’s because we’re making assumptions or projecting. But he danced, and Sartre wrote, and Bergman directed film, and a bunch of other folks did whatever they did, and, to be sure, a ton of other folks did very little that would catch anyone’s attention. Whether they liked it or not is their business. Let’s just all agree that Michael Smith gave you a little piece-of-mind and saved you a shit-ton of reading.