Writer's Commentary: We Don't Care
On Post: We Don’t Care
Date: January 23
This song gave me absolute fits.
My first effort at this entry had absolutely nothing to do with the approach I eventually took here. Eventually, as I will put it up as “Alternate Take” but sufficed to say, I thought it was all sorts of lousy. Certainly not worthy of ‘Ye’s (as he’s known to his nearest and dearest) music. Or his personality for that matter.
So I took a hard turn away from it and decided to not even try to “fix” the initial idea. Instead, I listened to the song another five times and re-read the lyrics over at least twice as many times.
The first entry was drawn to the lyric “Stack your money til it gets sky high” because, well, that’s just great—if clichéd—imagery. Great imagery or not though, it was not connecting so I had to abandon it. Eventually, from the listening and the reading, the lyric “Wasn’t supposed to make it past 25/jokes on you we still alive” began to increasingly catch my attention.
By happenstance, I had also recently rewatched Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrman edition. That’s the biggest “joke’s on you, I’m still alive” moment in the history of literature—even if the fact that everyone took it seriously kind of undercut the punchline—and so I was inspired to take a similar approach here. Thankfully, no one in the story committed suicide in response, but I got to believe the community was none too thrilled about the hoax or what I imagine was the rampant zombie speculation that consumed their sleepy town.
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