“our connection with music comes from such different places”
I know everyone consumes music differently, but it always takes me by surprise when people say they don’t listen to the lyrics of a song at all. A friend recently described music as a way to curate a peaceful space, i know others who are invested in the perfect running playlist, and a few more who just want something to dance along to.
Maybe it’s my proclivity for words and writing. There’s definitely some historical element, as i spent a lot of my childhood looking up the meaning of words in dictionaries – a habit that i had no idea would echo throughout my adult life. Growing up in a household rich with a language other than english makes you appreciate the depth and soul of a language, not just the words that are said but what they can mean. While encyclopedic knowledge and a few spelling bees along the way has served me well most of the time, i am sometimes still mocked for the way i say things, or the way the word sits on my tongue after only ever reading it out loud in my head.
This practice, of immediately being curious about words, is a shared sentiment with my friend and co-host. When the aptly titled “Language games and blurry terminology” paper was published to question our use of words like talent, i was immediately hooked. We had a little too much fun with the episode title, called “Tongue Twisters: Exploring the Etymology of Existing Terminology”. This is what happens when you give poets a platform.
I think it’s deeper than this though. We use words we barely know the meaning of because we’ve heard them before, and now more than ever we are seeing the co-opting of concepts from various theoretical frameworks that are being woven and warped in ways that are no longer tethered to what they truly meant in the first place. I often joke that as a ‘translator’ for many of my brilliant colleagues, i find myself searching for ways to use different words and storytelling to help people connect with meaning, not just letters. If we truly cared about where these words (and stories and theories) came from, then perhaps we would be more humble in our use of them.
Take the word “education” for example, one that I have found myself using a lot in the last few years. There is a growing body of work that reminds us of the two origins this word has: educare (to teach) and educere (to lead out). As Woods (2021) elaborates on the work of Masschelein (2010), educare is the form we’re most familiar with in Western society, where being aware or conscious about a topic is the objective and this entity of knowledge must be instilled in less knowledgeable others. We are educated to know more about topics.
Alternatively, educere as leading out is more concerned with displacing our view, exposing ourselves to the world so we can learn to pay attention to it – venturing out alongside the naive to hear, see, feel things for themselves. I find my growing frustrations in how we (attempt to) support the learning of others can often be traced back to this distinction. In my own attempt to weave this through the world of coaching, we join other authors in (re)positioning mentoring as leading out with an experienced other, which means we favour leading out into the world of those being mentored rather than extracting them from the world they wish to know so they can witness us (mentors) in ours.
To quote Sandman again (Season 2, Episode 11):
But I find it helps to remember that there’s no such thing as a one-sided coin.
[Death] defines life.
Despair defines hope.
Desire defines hatred.
Destiny defines freedom.
[Dream] defines reality, perhaps.
Okay wait but how does this connect back to my attentiveness towards lyrics? To wax lyrical on this point (hehe), I wanted to thread through songs by The Wombats, who I witnessed from the second row last night 😍 starting with ‘Turn’.
There’s a special irony in my ability to recall and learn lyrics of music incredibly quickly given i am terrible at retaining auditory information in most other formats. Want to give me instructions to follow? Please don’t tell them to me, as i will forget them the moment you finish speaking. Many conversations are incredibly rich in the moment, and gone in the next. I carry a notebook around to diligently take notes not just because i love the creative outlet, but also to remember what the fuck just happened.
I earned the nickname ‘the irrelevant elephant’ for my ability to recall the most unhelpful things… but jokes on you because it turns out Anna Meares loves fun facts, and I was able to recall that there are 81 determinants of fun just for her delight (thank you Amanda Visek).
There’s a line in this song that I keep in my mind for those moments where i personally question if my brain is functioning at all, or when i casually receive comments like “you’re a bit weird” in my line of work.
I like the way your brain works, I like the way you try
To run with the wolf pack when your legs are tired.
I like the way you turn me inside and out
I like the way you turn
As you can probably tell by now, my sources of inspiration are endless. I have my notebook open when i’m casually watching tv shows because you never know when a line might appear that stops you dead in your tracks. I draw on the covers of my notebooks and you’ll find countless quotes from songs i love, by artists i adore. They are never just words, but a constellation of meaning that resonates beyond the 4 minutes in which they are recorded. In the same way that i wonder where journal articles are written, because i feel these spaces are in some way imprinted in the ideas on the page, i find myself wondering where these lyrics emerge.
The ability for artists of any form to create poignant social commentaries is an art form i have all the time in the world for. Whether its monologues that have the whole world wondering if the fascism of The Empire in Star Wars is maybe not as fictional as it seems in tv shows like Andor, or the consistently confronting stereotype of Earthers being ungrateful for the planet they live on in The Expanse, i want to pay attention to these things so i can know my world better. These sources of media are leading me out in ways i could not have done alone.
Which brings us to our second song for the edition: ‘Method to the Madness‘. I thoroughly enjoyed singing/shouting this with/at the bassist as he stood mere metres from the crowd.
Fuck your sadness, fuck your roleplay.
No construction, I’ll build it my own way.
No more subscribing, no reviews.
Fuck your options, and fuck the life plan.
No more worry, i killed it with both hands.
Just give me something to light the fuse.
You can almost tell that this song was released in 2021, and i find that in and of itself fascinating. When we talk about the pandemic years now, i hear people joke that they don’t really count. That our development halted, that we’re actually two years younger than our calendar years as a result of the world locking down. Is that mainly because many of my friends are reaching age milestones that they’ve placed value or pressure on? Probably. But i’m also hearing the notion more and more regularly that people feel they are falling behind in life – to which the bridge of this song combats simply with a, fuck that noise.
I know it seems unlikely at this stage, but i’m actually going to connect this back to our earlier thread on educere, because it wasn’t until i found myself here, writing this very paragraph, did i see that connection – a poetic realisation given what i’m about to say.
If we are to lead out into the world and experience it for ourselves, then what we come to know is grown as we go. That means any notion of something that ‘should’ be done by a particular time or pre-determined milestone may fit within the educare definition of being taught that we need a house and a car and a spouse and children to be fulfilled, but it doesn’t sit as well through educere. The distinction here is not to say that these things are not important, or to dismiss them as unworthy in any stretch of the imagination. The emphasis here is that their importance (when, why, how) is not something that exists before you venture out into the world but rather, as you do.
Therefore, you cannot be behind, or be on the wrong path, when the goal is to get oneself out-of-position.
And finally, we end with the song that solidified my love for The Wombats: ‘Greek Tragedy‘.
So free up the cheaper seats
Here comes the Greek Tragedy
I was starting to build a vinyl record collection and i stumbled upon the Glitterbug album, pressed in a gorgeous, transparent pink to match the album cover. It was a work of art, just like the themes that run through the entire album, and i adore the storytelling and consistency as much as the catchiness of the tunes.
I love the notion of these final lyrics, because the tragedy is about the singer themselves, putting the listener in their shoes as they sing about their romantic woes. Of course, a Greek Tragedy is a performance often centred on romance, humour or violence but as the name suggests, it never ends well. In the tongue-in-cheek nature of many of The Wombats’ lyrics, the undertone is thus, why would you buy the cheap seats to watch your own life fall apart [greek tragedy]?
You wouldn’t. But how often do we, in a way? By passively spending the time we do have, succumbing to the things we mindlessly consume, searching for any way to avoid the kind of friction that would wake us up to our own ways of being. Well, it’s definitely easier not to disrupt those things. Just as it is easier to remain within educare, waiting to receive knowledge from others. Or, to become institutionalised and stop wondering if things can change.
I won’t say that my life isn’t a Greek Tragedy because it sure as shit feels like it some days, but the real question is, why have you positioned yourself in the audience of your own life?
and why did you buy tickets?
If you read this post before 6th October 2025, you may notice the absence of Spotify links now. I have moved to Deezer, as artists an listeners boycott the platform. From funding military drones to pitiful pay-per-stream rates, the little things we do to push back are important.
asl 
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