The Minstrel's Prayer: A Look at Rhetoric in Cartel's Lyrics

So, this will be my first foray into looking at the connection between music and rhetoric. I’ve enjoyed pondering over this particular piece for the last couple of weeks, so I doubt this will be my last foray. This is not my academic writing, so it may not be as clean, crisp, and clear as some of my other pieces you may have read. That’s ok. Get in it, get messy, muddle through these lyrics with me. 

The Minstrel’s Prayer

by Cartel

Wow. I love this song. I love the goosebumps I get. I love how the song is stripped down to nothing but drums and an acoustic guitar at points, swells into strings and other percussion, and has sometimes quiet, sometimes soaring vocals. I’m a big fan. I love the tone of this guy’s voice. I love the energy in this song. I love almost all of their songs. But there are also interesting things going on in the lyrics here. 

The first thing I want to note is identity, or voice (not sound produced by vocal chords, but the voice of the writer in the lyrics). In the first verse of the song we hear: “Even if you’d listen, I never had much to say. Cause it’s the same old song I’ve written for today.” In the second verse we hear this: “ All these minstrels through the ages, that is really all we are.” There’s a connection here I think. More to come on this a little later, I just want you to get it started rolling around in your head. 

So, audience: this song is titled “The Minstrel’s Prayer,” single minstrel. So what we can assume? Is this a sweeping use of a definite article to actually address a generalized group, (e.g. the father’s role in the family, not your specific father, rather what all fathers should be)? Is this is to be accepted as the prayer of any minstrel? But that would technically have to be “A Minstrel’s Prayer,” with the indefinite article, wouldn’t it?. So is this the prayer of the minstrel (our lyricist) or a minstrel? I argue that it is both. I believe that each segment of the song has a different audience. For example the first verse: 

“All these stupid, silly songs keep trying to catch your ear. 

I’m trying desperately, it’s just so hard to persevere. 

And even if you listened, I never have much to say. 

Cause it’s the same old song I’ve written for today.” 

The use of you/ your makes it clear to me that this verse is addressed to the object of the Minstrel’s writing. The second verse: 

“All these minstrels through the ages, that is really all we are,
simply singing for the girl, that makes us try so very hard

to craft the perfect limerick,

to wield unending woe,

to write such silly songs

and the difference never know.” 

The use of we/ us here makes it clear to me that this verse is addressed to fellow minstrels. I’ll discuss the chorus in two sections:

“Shelter me, oh genius words. 

Just give me strength, 

to pen these things.
And give me peace to well her wings.

———————————————- 

And oh, oh carry on, all you minstrels of the world.

We will catch our lady’s ear,

we will win for us the girl.” 

In the first section, I think what we are seeing is a conversation internal to the minstrel. He is having an internal dialogue, gearing himself up to write, praying for strength, peace, and genius words (through which he will receive protection). 

In the second section the audience shifts back to the other minstrels. I imagine this shift as the author looking down at the page while having the internal conversation and then looking up to address his peers. Lastly the bridge: 

“And I’ll hold on to the dream, this beggar’s plea, and optimistic fantasy. 

Just hold the hand and drop the knee.

You’re facing love.
You’re embracing melody.” 

This is where it gets complicated. I think everyone gets addressed on one line or another here. The first line could be addressed to anyone: the object, the fellow minstrels, or an internal address. I suspect that it is addressed more towards the fellow minstrels as a kind of “I’ll hold on to the dream, and you should too!” comment which would match well with the solidarity we see being established throughout the song with our minstrel and the minstrels of the world. The second line I think is definitely an internal address. Here I think we are dealing with a minstrel that is not inherently confident or who is overcome with nerves or emotion as he attempts to win the attention and assumably the love of his object. As such, he psychs himself up to perform communicative acts. Anyway, What we are seeing here is a clear depiction of a marriage proposal: holding the hand of one’s love object and dropping to one knee. After we receive this internal address I am torn. “You’re facing love, you’re embracing melody” is equally as likely to be an internal address as it is to be addressed to the object. At least, I think so. Hmm. 

So we have a constantly shifting audience being addressed by our minstrel. Ah! Our minstrel? So we’ve decided that the voice we see in the lyrics is the minstrel? Yes. I think we are definitely hearing the same individual throughout the entire song; the prayer that we are hearing is his own prayer, but it his prayer for himself and also for all minstrels. 

At the beginning of this piece I discussed the connection between the second and first verses: 2nd: “All these minstrels through the ages, that is really all we are,” 1st: “And even if you listened, I never had much to say. Cause it’s the same old song I’ve written for today.” I sense that what we hear first in verse about the “same old song” is a connection to “all these minstrels through the ages.” I think that our present minstrel is talking about how the situation he finds himself in (unrequited love or unknown love that seems impossible) is not a new one to the human condition and is not new material for those in the profession of minstrel. It is the same old song. So here we see the writer’s frustration more clearly in the first verse, see my ‘translation’:

“I feel like an idiot writing these songs.

I am begging for your attention,

but I keep getting shut down. 

And I don’t know how much more self-loathing and embarrassment I can handle. 

If you finally paid attention to me, so what?

I’m writing the same shit a thousand, million people before me wrote.” 

Certainly my ‘translation’ makes the minstrel sound way more emo than I really think he is, but you get the idea. Our minstrel faces a real issue here, he is desperate to catch the ear of his love object, and longs for something original to say, something empowering and genius. I feel that this is something we can all relate to. I know that when writing for classes, I often wonder: “How many papers that make exactly the same argument as mine have you read, oh mighty, tenured Professor of 40 years?” I wonder: “Is what I’m saying original, meaningful? Or is there a finite amount of things to be said, that after thousands of years have already been said. And so all we are left with is a set number of things to say that we pull blindly, perhaps even unconsciously, from this pool of collected thought.” I don’t know the answer, I don’t know if anything that I say is truly mine, is truly original, or is truly meaningful. (Bakhtin and his polyphony do not help clear this issue up, BTdubs.)

What I do know is that by writing, by producing, through my work as a minstrel, I am contributing to and continuing the line of minstrels through the ages. And if that is really all we are, I’m probably ok with that. I think that this song presents a lot of interesting ideas, and even though I doubt that this song was designed as bait for a graduate student of rhetoric to dissect, I think it’s very interesting to look at all of the meta-writing that is happening here. We have a minstrel who is writing about writing. We have author’s self-doubt, we have questions of modality, originality, confidence, solidarity, and a number of other issues that come up in the lyrics. (Peter Elbow would have plenty to say to our minstrel trying to craft the perfect limerick!)

There are loads of other things in this and other Cartel songs that I’d like to spend time looking at critically, and I’d like to invest some time in talking about the rhetoric in the actual music of the song. There are just so many neat things that I haven't even gotten to mention. Sadly, as it stands I am not at liberty to devote any more time to my leisure writing as I have too much required writing to complete. But I hope to revisit this song in the future and spend some time looking at the second verse: 

“...to craft the perfect limerick, 

to wield unending woe, 

to write such silly songs, 

and the difference never know.”

And eventually I’d like to work my way through another Cartel song: “If I Were to Write This Song.” I think there are a lot of interesting things going on in that song too regarding motivations for writing an ethics of writing.