A bitter sweet symphony

Back in a hot summer, a blue scented candle stood over a mesh standing over a ream of papers in my working desk. One day I arrived and the candle had melted with the heat. 

When I looked to the paper that was at the bottom of this stack of things, I saw and heard music in it.

It was the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony. 

I then wrote "it's a bitter sweet symphony" on top of it, and magic happened. The ink mixed with the wax and the paper into a blur. 

Many of the things Richard Ashcroft sings about in this music are metaphorically here: the bitter sweet (the rough texture and the sweet scent it still has), the change of state (from solid into melted wax), the mold (the mesh), being a slave to the money (the shape of the mold as a cage or grid) and being down (descending direction of the typography and the color blue - having the blues type of mood). In my mind, the "million different people" in the lyrics of that song became different mediums fused here.

There are some interesting facts, with many twists and turns about this song. 

The original music was written by The Staple Singers in 1956 and can be heard in “This May Be The Last Time”. 

In 1965, the Rolling Stones made a cover from it, called "The Last Time". In that same year, their manager and record producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, recorded another version of The Last Time. David Whitaker was the author of the symphonic arrangements in it. 

Those are the ones that, in 1997, were sampled with the record label's (Decca) permission by the English band Verve. Richard Ashcroft's wrote the lyrics. Verve's song was a huge success in Europe and in the USA.

Seems the bittersweet mentioned in the lyrics became even truer since it turns out that, besides all the success this hit had, the Verve were sued by Allen Klein (Rolling Stones' manager in the 60's and the one in charge for the band's song copyrights in the 70's) and by Andrew Loog Oldham.

22 years later, in 2019, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards gave away Bitter Sweet Symphony's royalties to Richard Ashcroft.

Sounds ironic that Ashcroft's first two verses in these lyrics are: 

"Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life

Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die"

Sixty three years afterwards, the original mold of this music was changed, as it occurred in the shapes that created this piece. Change might be uncontrollable but what we can do about it, is not. 

As much time as it takes, a choice for a change is possible and, the story of this song and of this drawing are a living proof of that.