me rambling again

I enjoyed the conversation about B.S. in love music. I found it to be a very interesting topic. I agree that most love music is filled with B.S. Many of these are, however, are just exaggerations used to prove a point, and part of me thinks that that shouldn’t count as B.S. What’s the difference between telling someone that you’re always thinking of them or you’re thinking of them most of time. Heck, we do that in our daily lives. A man doesn’t tell his girlfriend that he thinks of her most of the time, he tells her that it’s all the time. If he only said most of, it wouldn’t be taken as much of a compliment.

They can also be given as examples or as “if I could, I would”s. Some of the examples may be physically impossible (an “if I could, I would”) or others may be implicit and could imply other things as well. The examples could be used symbolically and that’s not really B.S.-ing. Such as the lyrics “I would climb any mountain, sail across a stormy sea…” Now maybe that person would be willing to take those risks, full well knowing that he may fail (and probably die), but it is used not only to mean that he’s willing to give his life for this person, but also that he would do anything that he possibly could for her. Also, obviously this person can’t physically climb any mountain. I doubt he would reach the top of Everest, and on top of that there are Hundreds of underwater ones, some taller than Everest, which presents the problem of being able to breath. This person says I would, though, which would mean that if he could do this then he would, but the task is simply impossible.

All that I’m trying to say is that while these songs are filled with “B.S.” it can be used for other reasons than to simply make the song interesting, and I don’t think that some of them are filled with B.S. because they use “qualifiers” such as I would. Meaning that I can’t, I’m unable to, but if I was then I would. They can also be used as literary devices such as allusions, metaphors, and symbols and aren’t supposed to be taken literally which would kind of mean that they aren’t B.S.