California's Fault

California’s Fault

California is the paradise of the United States of America and the song “San Andreas Fault” by Natalie Merchant, which represents the positive and negative side of California to this song overwhelmed the hearts of the dreamers with the beautiful sound of milk and honey, but with the notion of the earthquake being quite literal and killing the protagonist or dreamer from the first few verses. The song communicates you to go to California with a warning of a disaster that can happen and will tear your dreams down.

The encouraging words of the song to “Go west, Paradise is there, you will have all that you can eat of milk and honey over there” describes the beauty of going to California because is offering to us the buffet of dreams and hopes that we are craving for. Everyone wants the honey and milk of life and what a great place to get it in California. If you go to California “you’ll be the brightest star, the world has ever seen, sun-baked slender heroine of film and magazine”. In California most of the people wants to be a star and be the biggest and shiniest of all, but with the sun-baked slender heroine is a meaningful down hill killer, with a, “The dizzy height of a jet-set life” means it would be crazy and hard for an easy steady life, which you can never dream. The famous Arnold Schwarzenegger, it’s a great example of the music line. He came from Germany to California to make his dream come true as a bright star; years later he managed to become a super star in the movie Terminator. Unfortunately he had his slender heroine when he got addicted with steroids and became the Governor of California and was called the Governator. His fame did not last and now he is just a guy getting divorce and in bankruptcy.

When beauty becomes a necessity or a priority on which most cases is; people get crazy to get anything to look beautiful and spend million of dollars just to look like a star. In the fifth verse when Natalie Merchant sings “your pale blue eyes, strawberry hair, lips so sweet, skin so fair” I pictured the actress Lindsey Lohan, I found something interesting with this verse because it makes you think about how you can look to be famous and a bright star. So, I got the imaged of Lindsey because she is famous, rich and beautiful.  “Your future bright, beyond compare, it’s rags to riches, skin so fair” when people came from rags and become rich, they completely change physically and mentally. The famous evidence from this sickness is the Kardashian Family, they were a good family to all America with values, morals and dreaming so big to get their California Dream, and both Lindsey and the Kardashians are beautiful only from the outside. Once they throw away their rags and became rich monsters with skin so fair. The people of California were not longer accepting them because they became a menace to the young generation. This famous people were getting beauty surgeries and the young people that wanted to look like them were doing the same. However, not all the surgeries to the people were successful, some of them die for following the Kardashians, Lindsey and their California dream to become a bright star.

Then the song shift in a way by taking you to the natural disaster of the San Andreas Fault by using the metaphor of "San Andreas fault moved its fingers through the ground" becomes itself a fault line in the song, breaking it in half and changing all that came before into something almost unrecognizable. In the same concept of meaning Merchant sings “o promise land, o wicked ground, build a dream, tear it down” her choice of words to express the quake itself there - using almost gentle imagery to contrast what would necessarily be a very massive violent moment. Also it turns to how Arnold, Lindsey and the Kardashians are going down by the massive earthquake of people and drugs of California’s fault. I love how the lyrics themselves take a hard right turn halfway through, becoming something entirely different than what the first half is setting up.

The song is very inspiring of coming to California, but with a warning label of a wicked ground. It reminds me of the book The Sillicon Boys by David A. Kaplan when its says, “Out here, you wake up everyday knowing the whole thing could come crashing down in a moment. It produces anxiety, but also a subliminal force that drives people to keep over achieving” this relates to the song in a way that people do not care of the danger of the place because is more important to get what they want instead of thinking on the future; it would function as a demonstration though as to how a random, senseless tragedy or disaster can destroy the dreams of people going about their daily lives, with no greater purpose or meaning than the damage it causes. Another quote from the same book that goes hand to hand to this song is “Get it today, because it may be gone tomorrow” I think that is what most people think about California and its hope, to come and get it before is gone. Also if you think in a different negative way like the other states do because of hate and jealously is that they just drive you to go to California to destroy you and be nothing in life and go back to them. Is the California’s Fault that make people keep dreaming and overachieving in this wicked land of hope.