During my visit home this Thanksgiving break, I was driving in the car with my family, headed to run some errands. My mom was scanning the radio with her usual speed and capriciousness when she came across a Prince and the New Power Generation song called “7” that she instantly identified as one of her favorites. Reflecting on the song’s title, Percival Everett’s poem “Logic” immediately came to my mind. I was particularly reminded of the last part of the poem, the sectioned entitled “6”, that seems to instead focus on the number 7.
Listening to the song’s lyrics, I was able to pick up the final phrase in the song’s chorus: “One day all seven will die”. These lyrics struck me since it seems to exist in contradiction with the final line of Everett’s “Logic”. The conclusion of Everett’s enigmatic poem claims that “All men will die but not seven.” (Everett, 70) Noticing this connection, I wanted to see if I could further relate Prince’s song to Everett’s poem. I was interested in seeing if they truly did contradict each other, or if there was some shared message to be found in both.
So, I researched the lyrics of “7” and found that the lyrics allude to the seven deadly sins: Wrath, greed, sloth, gluttony, envy, pride, and lust. Further interpretation of the song indicates that the seven deadly sins stand in the way of love and that they should be consequently destroyed. Reading these lyrics and interpreting them in this way allowed me to see a connection between both works since Prince seems to be condemning structure, just as Everett does in his work of poetry re:f(gesture).
Prince denounces the seven deadly sins because they are representative of the contrived moral standards imposed upon society. Prince sings that the norms established by the seven deadly sins stand in the way of love and I believe that Everett would agree with him. Everett recognizes, as Prince does, that the imposition of structure upon society and the individuals that comprise it can be damaging and lead to apathy for oneself and for others.
For example, if one were to shy away from pride, as is recommended by the seven deadly sins, one might begin to undersell oneself and might thereby become limited, in terms of career opportunities and feelings of self-worth. While it could be argued that the seven deadly sins are archaic and no longer apply to society, I have, throughout my life, been told, whether explicitly or implicitly, to never be prideful since such a trait is “unbecoming”.
During today’s discussion, my group conceded that we find those who frequently boast about their skills or accomplishments to be somewhat obnoxious. We also found that we are extremely hesitant to “oversell” ourselves and celebrate our talents or successes with others for fear of bragging or of coming off as self-important. But I was left wondering why we feel this way. Why are we so reluctant to give ourselves credit for our progress in life? Why don’t we want to celebrate our achievements with others? Could the answer lie in the structure enforced by the seven deadly sins?
Where Prince critiques the implementation of a forced structure upon society and individuals, Everett rebukes the structured way in which the human mind has been conditioned to think. In the section of “Logic” entitled “1,” Everett writes “We do here what we do in a host of familiar cases” (Everett, 65), insinuating that our way of thinking is strictly ordered to follow some preordained path.
Everett goes on to list the progression the human mind has been conditioned to think through, ending with the question of “whether it can be broken into pieces” (Everett, 65). This line is the most interesting to me, especially when weighed against the section labeled “3” in which the narrator’s memories of the poem’s subject are relayed in constituent parts. Consequently, the poem portrays its subject as a fragmentation and not as a whole individual.
But what is so damaging about breaking a person into components? It could be argued that breaking things like math problems into smaller pieces makes the task of solving them much easier. Therefore, we have a tendency of breaking individuals and groups of people into pieces in order to better understand them. Yet, in doing so, we ultimately distance ourselves from said individuals or groups.
The practice of considering people only in terms of the constituent parts of their identity, or element, to use Everett’s language, can cause many divisions and generate ignorance, as well as hatred. I am sure that many who currently hold feelings of hatred for others would readily abandon such sentiments if they were only able to think of others as whole people, with lives and interests that may not be so dissimilar from their own, instead of imagining others merely as the component that differentiates them.
Therefore, despite the initial contradiction I perceived between Prince and Everett’s works, there is a connection between them: one that admonishes structure for its damaging properties. However, the two still do not agree about the mortality of seven. In his song, Prince claims that “all seven will die”, thereby displaying optimism that humanity will one day outgrow or reject forced structures. On the other hand, Everett maintains that seven will never die and even suggests that structure will exist long after humankind is gone.