Hey, What A Beautiful Mess This Is.

It's like picking up trash in dresses. 

On a day like this, with a light patter of rain shooting onto my window pane, I can't do more than listen to music and write and think about all the beautiful things in life I should be thankful for.

It often happens that you hear a song, and you instantly fall in love with it. And you listen to it on repeat, in your room, while reading, in the shower, in the cafe, inside the lecture hall, outside the Interview Room, and possibly in all those extra normal places where usually nothing ever happens. I don't think that this is the right method to approach a favorite song (you kind of get bored of it too soon) but then again there are songs which never burn out. 

I heard 'Beautiful Mess' by Jason Mraz after almost a year, and I fell in love with it all over again. People like music because of various reasons; some people judge an artist by the genre of music, some like the beats, some like the choice of instrument and some like the innovative lyrics. I've loved reading lyrical ballads ever since I was a child, and it is no wonder that I judge a song by the pattern of words which knit it together - the lyrics. 

                                       

 

So for a change, I decided to interpret 'Beautiful Mess' in my own words, yes pretty much like a song review. But I plan to do so against all the other interpretations that the Internet has come up about it, because strangely enough I found my own meaning to it. And I choose to do so (despite all the other lovely songs on the planet) because I think this song deserves a special mention for the combined lucidity and complexity of it's lyrics. 

 Before going on, I suggest you listen to this song, if you haven't heard it already.

Beautiful Mess - Jason Mraz

Most people think this song is about a traditional long-distance relationship. I beg to differ. Obviously, this song is about a woman, more specifically a lover of the singer's. 

But Mraz talks about a woman who is a blend of black and white. She is a jig-saw puzzle of virtues and vices. The woman is one of her kind, and she has a good way with words. She's a writer, or a poet, or a lyricist. He loves her despite all her flaws and he realizes that the fact that they have been together for so long, going through a billion ups and downs, shows how solidified their love is.  

                                                            

There is a small hint of sinful happiness in this song. Mraz believes that the girl brings a beam of joy into his life and she does it in an impeccable style of her own. So cursive, so elegant, joined together in a mix of rights and wrongs. But she is so reckless, she ends up making so many mistakes on the way, and he blames her mood swings for being the source of his happiness! (yeah, I mean how did he just do that?)

The chorus of this song is the best piece of music I have heard in ages.

Hey, what a beautiful mess this is

It's like picking up trash in dresses

Well it kind of hurts when the kind of words you write

Kind of turn themselves into knives

And don't mind my nerve you can call it fiction

Cause I like being submerged in your contradictions dear

Cause here we are, here we are

He calls her and this whole situation "a beautiful mess". This is such a lovely contradiction. I haven't heard anything like it. She's such a mess, she's like a tray of unwanted things, yet she is so beautiful unlike anything he has ever seen. When she writes poems/songs/stories about love, her words drive through his heart like blades. They are harsh, they are blatantly rude and she has no concern for his feelings. Although she calls it fiction, he knows they are true and yet he loves to see her contradict him, because these contradictions make her what she is.  : a beautiful mess.

And what a beautiful mess this is
It's like taking a guess when the only answer is yes

And through timeless words in priceless pictures
We'll fly like birds not of this earth
And tides they turn and hearts disfigure
But that's no concern when we're wounded together
And we tore our dresses and stained our shirts
But it's nice today, oh the wait was so worth it

The song keeps coming back to 'words' which I again believe are wrenched apart from the manuscript the woman is writing about their relationship. The words they say to each other, the times they spend together. What really separates this relationship from most of the other songs that Mraz has written, is the depth of reality in it. 

And tides they turn and hearts disfigure/But that's no concern when we're wounded together. 

It's so beautiful how he compresses a whole lifetime of truth into these two lines. In a relationship, both man and woman are hurt together. You can only be perfect soul mates if your partner is like your mirror. :) You go through hell, you go through a painful dramatic sequence (yes, like in the movies), you WAIT and finally in the end you come clean and everything is suddenly worth it.

                                       

While I sit with my own collection of words and look out at the lush greens imprinted with rain, I wonder who Mraz's inspiration for 'Beautiful Mess' was. What was she really like? Was she really a woman of contradictions? The whole allure of a man of contradictions is unlike any other. I'd rely on a man who is a patchwork of a million colourful conflicts to be my inspiration. Because how can you not love someone who is so faulty but yet so real? 

I'd listen to this song on repeat for the rest of my life, but never quite figure out how the singer crafted it so well. Maybe it would take a 'beautiful mess' of a person, or a bit of falling in love. Both of which, would be wonderful :)