Lalah Hathaway has released a new video for her neo-soul song “Mirror.” The video burns slowly as the song does also. Its lyrics are straight to the point and ask us, with incredible clarity, to love the image that we see in the mirror.
There is something remarkably proverbial about Lalah Hathaway’s singing, again, and again, poignantly each time, to “stop hiding yourself” in “Mirror.” It reminds of advice given in the form of sayings that can be heard in homes being told by a person to someone in need of help. Are proverbs still a thing in this American culture of advanced capitalism?
Hasn’t public education and public libraries and the necessity to educate one’s self “by the book” in order to get a job replaced proverbs with texts by known writers, revered for their knowledge? One would think so. While listening to Hathaway’s neo-soul song, rooted in the infamous soul aesthetic that came about at a much different stage of American capitalism, the listener is transported out of the world in which he or she lives and into one where proverbial knowledge seems to be what matters. It’s beautiful and reveals the possibilities of music.
Hathaway’s song might just be opening a door to temporarily feeling an alternative to mass culture not only through the song’s message and the song’s non-pop rhythm, but also through the fact that the message feels powerfully proverbial.
Author: Adolf Alzuphar
