Killing Me Softly With His Song
Roberta Flack
Strumming my pain with his fingers.
Like a wisp along a fresh scar. A feeling we’re not supposed to want but nevertheless crave. I know this is sad and moving, but it’s always made me think of masturbation. Vagina lips like guitar strings. He’s not there. She just imagines him.
Singing my life with his words.
To be sung rather than to sing oneself. Possessive, with a twisted touch of caring— caring enough to try to make “my life” beautiful through song.
Killing me softly with his song.
“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.”
Killing me softly with his song.
We know that he is currently “killing [her] softly,” so it must be soft enough that she may in fact write (and sing) this. How soft must a killing have to be for it to feel good?
Telling my whole life with his words.
Where he formerly was singing her life he is now telling it. Where there used to be a caring (albeit possessive) tune, there is now a medium-height white dude telling his bros about the girl he’s manipulating. He gestures in the telling of her life; an abstract expressionist painter cutting his woman to bits.
Killing me softly with his song.
She redirects our focus. She’s had enough of his yammering, his garish gesture. She needs to remind us that this killing is not a victimless crime. Me is the one being killed. No matter how beautifully, musically, or softly. Don’t you fucking forget it.
I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style.
This is the song’s first recollection. What was being done is now what happened before. Additionally, doing rather than being done, this is the first moment she positions herself as the subject. Then there is the word “good.” Not that enthusiastic.
“How are you doing?” “good.”
“How’s the food?” “good.”
“You’ve just become the first woman to land a triple axel in competitive figure skating history, how does it feel?” “good.”
Now while “good” leaves a bit to be desired, “a style” feels purposefully vague. It suggests something enigmatic, alluring. He did not just have style he had a style. So is “good” a hint at her indifference, or, is it a tactically placed attempt to play it cool. As cool as this “style” she’s heard about.
And so I came to see him to listen for a while.
These words are said as if she is talking to someone she’s just met at a concert. She calmly explains her interest in the event, as to seem intrigued but not desperate. Not I “went” to see him but I “came” to see him. Additionally if her life is one of his songs, the rest might be a collection of women. Laying on the floor. Stuck there like bugs on their backs but speaking with the (perhaps performed) confidence of ambivalence.
“Oh no big deal, I heard he was playing so I thought I’d check it out,” I say, heart pounding in my fragile beetle chest.
And there he was this young boy, a stranger to my eyes.
The temporal discontinuity, that she was previously in the room and now remembers it, could suggest that even as she tells this story, a part of her wishes to be living it still. She remembers, but cannot help placing herself back in the moment.
Chorus
I get all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the crowd.
Comparing this to its parallel line in the first verse, the writing is much more visceral and imagistic. She wrote about him and all she could say was “good.” Writing about herself she employs an alliterative, tangible description with a nostalgic tone. I am also inclined to say that “to be embarrassed by the crowd” might be wonderful. There’s a validation of one’s feeling that comes with it. To have that many eyes on you, and for all those eyes to be able to recognize that you are “flushed with fever,” affords that feeling some amount of truth. A whole crowd of people knowing how you feel, “embarrassing” you with the undeniable truth of your love and lust. You clench your jaw and your cheeks are a warm pink.
I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud.
“He” is now Rizzo from Grease. Pink sugar perfume stains the air and you ask, “Are you makin fun of me Riz?” Maybe it hurts your feelings. Or maybe you are a little poppy. You use your petals to shield your blushing and think about how lucky you are to be embarrassed by him.
I prayed that he would finish, but he just kept right on.
I’m wondering if I indulged a fantasy of public love for too long. Half of me is saying yes. This woman is clearly aching and for some reason I’m taking it as a questionable, 2000s rom com, teased-into-loving ache. But another part of me wants to stand by the sensual implications of this public display. She wrote him letters, presumably love letters, and now he reads them aloud. He sings them softly into beauty and the whole audience knows they are hers. Sounds like a fantasy. 14-year-old me trying to look hot and aloof in the crowd at a One Direction concert. You don’t know you’re beautiful is unequivocally about me and everyone knows. I beam with self satisfaction. My cheeks shine with “embarrassment.”
Chorus
He sang as if he knew me, in all my dark despair.
Realizing that your brain betrayed you, that it ignored its own logic long enough for you to be flown away on the wings of your pleasure, only for that logic to return and send you hurdling into whole-body shame. That is when you feel embarrassed. Not when you are being looked at by the crowd with your little flushed feeling, but when you realize that to fantasize is just to spend all your time thinking about someone that spends none of theirs thinking about you.
And he just kept on singing, singing clear and strong.
It’s like he’s swallowed her and her life force keeps his voice on pitch. His ability to continue is the most repulsive thing about him.
Strumming my pain with his fingers.
Now that I know what the tips of his fingers might feel like– inconsiderate and chiseled– I can feel my arm hair shrieking.
Singing my life with his words.
Why steal something if you’re just going to pretend it’s something else?
Killing me softly with his song.
There is always the inclination to forgive.To keep yourself from imagining he is all bad because then when he finally realizes his mistake, and sees you in the crowd, you’ll be too sour to give him a chance. He’s killing me, but oh how softly he does it.
Killing me softly with his song.
The repetition is an acknowledgement. She knows she is being too easy on him. She reminds herself (though not too loudly) that she is hurting. But it’s hard to stop.
Telling my whole life with his words.
It seems all the more blatant and cruel when he is not even singing.
Killing me softly with his song.
At least someone is singing about me. And at least the song is beautiful.
I want to start with “heart pounding in my fragile beetle chest.” When I was in second grade, a kid told me that some ladybugs are really just beetles dressed up as ladybugs. I’ve thought about it every time I’ve seen a ladybug since. There is absolutely no way I could distinguish between a ladybug and an imposter ladybug. And if there is, scientifically, I do not want to hear it. Instead, I just believe every ladybug is a ladybug. Because that is the most delicious option. I find it very upsetting and wholly unattractive that anyone would choose to believe that a ladybug is really just a beetle in disguise. Fantasy is almost always more fun.
I am so committed to fantasy, apparently, that I interpreted a song, something already outside of the “real,” as having several additional layers of irreality within it (see my reflections on One Direction, public embarrassment, Grease, and masturbation). So what does this commitment reveal? First, there is my desire to (obsession with?) always be feeling more than everyone else. The idea that I have tapped into extra emotional processing is a seductive one. I am overcome by fantasies not only because what happens in them is exciting, but because my ability to construct them, to live and yearn in them as if they were real works as a testament to my capacity for feeling. But I am not quite that delusional. I know that to live in fantasy can often prohibit the fullness of life. Not because of a nihilistic notion that nothing will ever be as good as fantasy (given the millions of different things that can happen to us, I remain optimistic), but because such imaginings make it impossible to believe that potential partners are feeling as deeply as I am. How could they be? When my fantasies are so vivid that they sit on my tongue and drip like oil from my ears. My fantasizing goes beyond a fear of loving my partner more than they love me. Rather, its most sinister implication is that my love life will never be as sunlit as my fantasies because I am the only person that feels as much as I do. That believes every ladybug is a ladybug.
Second, fantasies can be comforting because they offer the delight of secrecy. Whether or not the narrative of a fantasy relies on characters engaging in secrecy, the simple fact that it exists in your head, only with you to hear or feel it, elicits the feeling of confidentiality. There is the obvious notion that secrecy can be sexy, but I am more interested in why I feel comforted by secrecy. My first-ish (there was one before but I’m talking about the one who gets to truly enjoy the title of First Love) boyfriend and I kept our relationship (mostly) a secret for the first few months. We didn’t want to be talked about, didn’t want people coming up to us to ask about the new relationship and make it feel performative. Generally, privacy was the justification. Which even now I think is fair. High schoolers do in fact get into each other’s business in ways that cross the line, but I wonder what other psychology might have been at play.
Was he embarrassed of me? I don’t think so. Was he embarrassed to admit to be feeling literally anything? Maybe. Was I afraid that people wouldn’t think I was feeling enough? Also maybe. But choosing to make something secret rather than just ignoring what people say and do puts far too much weight on what other people say and do. Being afraid of their opinions made them all that much more powerful. Powerful enough that I find myself still afraid. Afraid—not that people won’t think highly of my potential partners. This is not an egotistical embarrassment. Rather, I am afraid of being psychoanalyzed by strangers or friends on the basis of who I might be interested in. So was it an initial dependence on secrecy that now makes me crave it for comfort in a relationship? Probably. Killing Me Softly confronts this tickling embarrassment of others knowing who you love. It can be experienced as a story of heartbreak, a sensuous love affair with the act of being seen, or an inability to stop loving something that is bad for you. My desire to turn each one of these storylines into fantasy, to romanticize every interaction I have, is not something I am proud of. But it makes me feel safe. It makes everything soft.