dunno why davey wondered, this morning, why this was the "mg's 'hit,'" because, well, it's so obvious, what with the fist-pumping vocal (earns darnielle "reedy"), site-specificity and situation obscurity--is a murder about to take place? has it already?--the simple hammer of love (in the face! worse!): "the most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you--and that you're standing in the doorway," and on and on and on.
well, wait.
well, because what could be simpler?
got a call in the middle of the night from EK's unnamed co-star (i am the predictable animal!), and i realized why i like this one above all: we're just going to hurt each other, but it's going to feel so rich and singular.
Showing posts with label "love". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "love". Show all posts
Monday, July 9, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
DOUBLE FEATURE: "international small arms traffic blues," from tallahassee / "golden boy," from ghana
today: like picking my teeth with a sword!
i got a call from someone who i didn't think who would call. someone made me think of this song, which is just, you know, a standard folk-blues with lots of overwrought metaphors about how unbearably dangerous and explosive their love is. weird thing was, though, we had a normal conversation. time passes, i guess, but the myth kinda hung in my mind. a photograph of a bomb. is this how these conversations go? i'm not sure. you tell me you're thinking about buying a house, i tell you i exercise more, you tell me you're going to a drawing class tomorrow, we shoehorn in a hushed 'i miss you,' i tell you dad's cat died, you tell me your mom falls down the stairs every day, we careen into something shadowed, something neither of us really want to put our hands on. both of us have learned something, and i can finally return to the line, in my mind, 'the way i feel about you baby can't explain it, you got the best of my love,' because darnielle says it in the past tense. it dawns on me that "ISATB" is a quiet song. one of the quietest. in the future, i will tell my grandkids, "i once knew a girl who wore yellow and had an extra muscle in her leg," and they'll bring me some more mashed carrots. nobody will get dashed against the rocks.
AND THEN, OF COURSE, THERE'S INJUSTICE
OR JUSTICE WAITING TO HAPPEN
OR RISING ABOVE
'
a mountain goats song for every season. i need a banner to fall under. i need a lot of phantom power. "golden boy" is...well, i have a lot of deep theories about how the song is a cynical portrait of consumerism and how we have replaced it with true spiritual enlightenment in our everyday lives, but hell, i'm wearing mesh shorts and drinking tea and writing and staring at birds. fuck all that, seriously, for a minute. "golden boy" is a song we can live under. one man, a monolith. darnielle never plays it live, i don't think, because he doesn't want to blow the whistle for the rapture too early. that's just a hunch though. so we can enjoy it here, on earth, as some sort of sign of strength. a hilarious sign of strength. a hilarious, strong song; a testament that human love has the capacity to RAIN LIKE ROCKS for something as simple as a peanut, that a guy would do more than one take of it just to channel the spirit. screw feelings, i'm going swimming.
i got a call from someone who i didn't think who would call. someone made me think of this song, which is just, you know, a standard folk-blues with lots of overwrought metaphors about how unbearably dangerous and explosive their love is. weird thing was, though, we had a normal conversation. time passes, i guess, but the myth kinda hung in my mind. a photograph of a bomb. is this how these conversations go? i'm not sure. you tell me you're thinking about buying a house, i tell you i exercise more, you tell me you're going to a drawing class tomorrow, we shoehorn in a hushed 'i miss you,' i tell you dad's cat died, you tell me your mom falls down the stairs every day, we careen into something shadowed, something neither of us really want to put our hands on. both of us have learned something, and i can finally return to the line, in my mind, 'the way i feel about you baby can't explain it, you got the best of my love,' because darnielle says it in the past tense. it dawns on me that "ISATB" is a quiet song. one of the quietest. in the future, i will tell my grandkids, "i once knew a girl who wore yellow and had an extra muscle in her leg," and they'll bring me some more mashed carrots. nobody will get dashed against the rocks.
AND THEN, OF COURSE, THERE'S INJUSTICE
OR JUSTICE WAITING TO HAPPEN
OR RISING ABOVE
'
a mountain goats song for every season. i need a banner to fall under. i need a lot of phantom power. "golden boy" is...well, i have a lot of deep theories about how the song is a cynical portrait of consumerism and how we have replaced it with true spiritual enlightenment in our everyday lives, but hell, i'm wearing mesh shorts and drinking tea and writing and staring at birds. fuck all that, seriously, for a minute. "golden boy" is a song we can live under. one man, a monolith. darnielle never plays it live, i don't think, because he doesn't want to blow the whistle for the rapture too early. that's just a hunch though. so we can enjoy it here, on earth, as some sort of sign of strength. a hilarious sign of strength. a hilarious, strong song; a testament that human love has the capacity to RAIN LIKE ROCKS for something as simple as a peanut, that a guy would do more than one take of it just to channel the spirit. screw feelings, i'm going swimming.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
"tallahassee," from tallahassee
(warm-up listen yields a scary, possibly personal-record-breaking 74 seconds of goosebumps)
"tallahassee" comes at the beginning of the album of the same name. whenever i hear a song from that album, i almost immediately have an itch to hear the whole thing, start to finish. it's not neuroses; these are just how stories work. at the onset, peace. no broken bottles! no marital trauma! no personal obliteration! can't hardly believe.
but then you come to know it as an album; you put on "tallahassee" and know the trouble ahead; it's poignant, almost, to hear how green and naive and unsuspecting the narrator sounds. i want to shake him. things are going to be ugly like on COPS, and you are going to come to know life as a totally different routine.
then, what with my nostalgia queasiness over the last couple days, i drift into replaying my own stories. the first song is cool! really. good beat. things get hairy after that. not bad, just hairy. but when i see the first few shots, i can't help but use history as a wax or a salve. nostalgia is a thing for the weak, but i sorta love weakness. doesn't everyone?
anyway, this pavlovian narrative thing is one of the reasons why tallahassee is sorta "the one" for me. even if i feel like i don't love every single song on it, i love feeling like i'm in a well-worn place with a beginning, middle, and end. and, the better i know it, the more i love anticipating those feelings i'm going to have--and the more i come to appreciate the feelings i don't expect.
"tallahassee" comes at the beginning of the album of the same name. whenever i hear a song from that album, i almost immediately have an itch to hear the whole thing, start to finish. it's not neuroses; these are just how stories work. at the onset, peace. no broken bottles! no marital trauma! no personal obliteration! can't hardly believe.
but then you come to know it as an album; you put on "tallahassee" and know the trouble ahead; it's poignant, almost, to hear how green and naive and unsuspecting the narrator sounds. i want to shake him. things are going to be ugly like on COPS, and you are going to come to know life as a totally different routine.
then, what with my nostalgia queasiness over the last couple days, i drift into replaying my own stories. the first song is cool! really. good beat. things get hairy after that. not bad, just hairy. but when i see the first few shots, i can't help but use history as a wax or a salve. nostalgia is a thing for the weak, but i sorta love weakness. doesn't everyone?
anyway, this pavlovian narrative thing is one of the reasons why tallahassee is sorta "the one" for me. even if i feel like i don't love every single song on it, i love feeling like i'm in a well-worn place with a beginning, middle, and end. and, the better i know it, the more i love anticipating those feelings i'm going to have--and the more i come to appreciate the feelings i don't expect.
Monday, June 11, 2007
"standard bitter love song #11," from the hound chronicles
james called yesterday morning, and what would've ordinarily been a minute-long exchange about whether or not i was going to come get a cup of tea from him turned into a long conversation about meanness, specifically, why we are mean to people, what does meanness achieve, etc.
the thing i like most about early mountain goats is how abstract the voice is. a lot of people get hung up about what they perceive as the confessional and specific in his music, when really, it couldn't be farther from the truth: in early mountain goats songs, everything is standardized, transferable, universal--it's microcosmic: "well i see you left me a photograph of a leopard tearing an antelope in half / what have you done, what have you done, what have you done with our love?" he throws in two more blues-standard verses, but he could've had a 45-second imagist heartbreak; i usually cut it off after the first verse, because asking me to handle more is asking a lot.
the thing i like most about early mountain goats is how abstract the voice is. a lot of people get hung up about what they perceive as the confessional and specific in his music, when really, it couldn't be farther from the truth: in early mountain goats songs, everything is standardized, transferable, universal--it's microcosmic: "well i see you left me a photograph of a leopard tearing an antelope in half / what have you done, what have you done, what have you done with our love?" he throws in two more blues-standard verses, but he could've had a 45-second imagist heartbreak; i usually cut it off after the first verse, because asking me to handle more is asking a lot.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
"quetzalcoatl comes through," from protein source for the future... now!
i think i speak for humanity at large when i say that for all gods in the god pantheon, quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent of aztec mythology, is the fiercest. i stand in awe of quetzalcoatl. because there's something inscrutable and romantic about him. i remember being in mexico staring bug-eyed at huge stone bowls made for bloodletting, bone tools for piercing enemy hearts. like the mountain goats, it was all horrific and over the top, but there was a logic i couldn't parse. or a non-logic you follow. a conviction? the sound of nahuatl helps. i spent a week whispering the gods' names in nahuatl to my then-girlfriend, who liked me because i was a creep, i think.
Friday, June 1, 2007
"snow crush killing song," from sweden
"things" do not come between people, per se. what comes between people is space, and what ghosts the space is what you watch for. but it's a weary watch because you can't see ghosts (this is not ghost dad or casper, this is much less marketable or hi-five-y than that).
it's why "snow crush killing song" is practically narcotized; it's why "i know you're changing, god damn you for that," is delivered with the downcast eyes of a resignation. and where's the horror? some day that ghost will make itself manifest. and you kick quietly, because it's in your nature to kick when circumstance and time wrests something good from you, but you're sorta kicking against warm air, and the kicks get slower, and eventually, you just rest on this premonition, and eventually it comes true, and you'd been plopped on your ass quivering for the day.
it's why "snow crush killing song" is practically narcotized; it's why "i know you're changing, god damn you for that," is delivered with the downcast eyes of a resignation. and where's the horror? some day that ghost will make itself manifest. and you kick quietly, because it's in your nature to kick when circumstance and time wrests something good from you, but you're sorta kicking against warm air, and the kicks get slower, and eventually, you just rest on this premonition, and eventually it comes true, and you'd been plopped on your ass quivering for the day.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
"new star song," from beautiful rat sunset
when loved ones leave, the first thing i think about is their new weather. does it feel heavier where you are? how do you move through that air? tell me, because, you know, these lightning storms suck and i would like a distraction from myself.
a friend was once at a lecture given by a photographer who took these massive shots of the sky, can't remember his name. anyway, the photographer was talking about how he loved seeing the different sky in all these different places.
a kid raised his hand.
"yes?"
"but it's the same sky everywhere."
a friend was once at a lecture given by a photographer who took these massive shots of the sky, can't remember his name. anyway, the photographer was talking about how he loved seeing the different sky in all these different places.
a kid raised his hand.
"yes?"
"but it's the same sky everywhere."
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
"alpha desperation march," from bitter melon farm
i can't think of a better way to commemorate my 17th post--the glow of first love dulling into domesticity, etc.--with a boring mountain goats song.
not boring, exactly. but one of the great things about the mountain goats catalog is that it feels like there's a near-infinite reservoir of songs that are almost really good, songs that he wrote later and wrote better. or songs he'd already written. i guess bands do this all the time.
so we have all the signposts here: slightly--very slightly--funky folk guitar, simple melody, guy singing about lending someone $8000 while drinking and now wanting it back. a minute before the end he just starts fake laughing because he doesn't know what the hell else to do. then there's a sample from a movie about native americans. why? i am not sure.
but there's something great and workmanlike about these "failures"; like, he almost better displays his fetishes in weaker moments. domestic dispute, losers. besides "$8000 is a lot of money and i could use it," this song is pretty forgettable. and still, in this context, in the context of the whole MG catalog, it's essential.
not boring, exactly. but one of the great things about the mountain goats catalog is that it feels like there's a near-infinite reservoir of songs that are almost really good, songs that he wrote later and wrote better. or songs he'd already written. i guess bands do this all the time.
so we have all the signposts here: slightly--very slightly--funky folk guitar, simple melody, guy singing about lending someone $8000 while drinking and now wanting it back. a minute before the end he just starts fake laughing because he doesn't know what the hell else to do. then there's a sample from a movie about native americans. why? i am not sure.
but there's something great and workmanlike about these "failures"; like, he almost better displays his fetishes in weaker moments. domestic dispute, losers. besides "$8000 is a lot of money and i could use it," this song is pretty forgettable. and still, in this context, in the context of the whole MG catalog, it's essential.
Friday, May 25, 2007
"cold milk bottle," from sweden
the thing i realized about "cold milk bottle" is that it's not just another spurned lover song (though it might be). but i really have no idea who the narrator is bracing for when he yelps "another goddamn message from you." it could be a friend or a parent or i don't even know what.
but it's another danielle song where someone sounds EMPOWERED in the face of something terrible, which i always find funny and touching and, this morning, confrontational: for the first time, i'm hearing this song as directed at me (usually, i give myself the privilege of role-playing the oppressed narrator). maybe the jazz standard line he nicks--"you're mean to me, why must you be mean to me? you shouldn't forget, you see, what you mean to me"--is landing a little too close to home. saving grace is that he makes it into a sweet vocal hook, which--here he goes cuddling up to pain again--makes it all pink and touchable. freed again!
but it's another danielle song where someone sounds EMPOWERED in the face of something terrible, which i always find funny and touching and, this morning, confrontational: for the first time, i'm hearing this song as directed at me (usually, i give myself the privilege of role-playing the oppressed narrator). maybe the jazz standard line he nicks--"you're mean to me, why must you be mean to me? you shouldn't forget, you see, what you mean to me"--is landing a little too close to home. saving grace is that he makes it into a sweet vocal hook, which--here he goes cuddling up to pain again--makes it all pink and touchable. freed again!
Thursday, May 24, 2007
"poltergeist," unreleased
you can listen to "poltergeist" here.
it never surprises me that "poltergeist" didn't make it on an album. for all of darneille's songs about passionately unhappy couples, a song where the bad feeling is triangulated by a child--on the sunset tree, the kid becomes the narrator--leaves pretty much no room for melodrama. we need melodrama to stay afloat.
but what draws me, occasionally, terribly, to "poltergeist" is a fear of having children that i probably share with heap-millions of kids my age. my friend kate recently had a baby, and i was astonished to see how sublimely happy she was with it and with its father; how well adjusted she seemed as an actual mother. i'd grown up with divorced parents; my girlfriends had pregnancy scares that really honest-to-god scared me; i used to watch eraserhead like it was medicine for the condition of the world (nothing is more scared of having children than eraserhead).
so i remember hearing "poltergeist" for the first time and being reminded of the fear that i could come to hate the thing that bore what i might love: "i can't stand it when he smiles up at you just because you're his mother / i can't stand the bitter thing that i've become"; the realization that all problems as a couple are immeasurably complicated by the tiny animal that slides between them, blinking, unable to fend for itself.
addendum, 5/24:
i don't usually post addenda quite this soon, but "poltergeist" is the first time in a couple weeks that a song i've picked to write on when i wake up has just dogged me throughout the day. and it's not that it hasn't happened before this blog, but one of the points of this project was to get some ABJECTION into my MG listening; to feel like i could write something on a song to avoid thinking about it for a while.
and what's getting me is this idea of the baby. all of darnielle's "love" songs hinge on the possibility of laughing at them on one listen and crying on another ("standard bitter love song #8," with its batshit, overstated mythical imagery, is a pretty prime example). i can't seem to find anything funny in "poltergeist," and as far as i know, it's the only song other than all hail west texas's "pink and blue" that has a baby in it. babies are clean and faultless things--what could they possibly do in a mountain goats song?
it never surprises me that "poltergeist" didn't make it on an album. for all of darneille's songs about passionately unhappy couples, a song where the bad feeling is triangulated by a child--on the sunset tree, the kid becomes the narrator--leaves pretty much no room for melodrama. we need melodrama to stay afloat.
but what draws me, occasionally, terribly, to "poltergeist" is a fear of having children that i probably share with heap-millions of kids my age. my friend kate recently had a baby, and i was astonished to see how sublimely happy she was with it and with its father; how well adjusted she seemed as an actual mother. i'd grown up with divorced parents; my girlfriends had pregnancy scares that really honest-to-god scared me; i used to watch eraserhead like it was medicine for the condition of the world (nothing is more scared of having children than eraserhead).
so i remember hearing "poltergeist" for the first time and being reminded of the fear that i could come to hate the thing that bore what i might love: "i can't stand it when he smiles up at you just because you're his mother / i can't stand the bitter thing that i've become"; the realization that all problems as a couple are immeasurably complicated by the tiny animal that slides between them, blinking, unable to fend for itself.
addendum, 5/24:
i don't usually post addenda quite this soon, but "poltergeist" is the first time in a couple weeks that a song i've picked to write on when i wake up has just dogged me throughout the day. and it's not that it hasn't happened before this blog, but one of the points of this project was to get some ABJECTION into my MG listening; to feel like i could write something on a song to avoid thinking about it for a while.
and what's getting me is this idea of the baby. all of darnielle's "love" songs hinge on the possibility of laughing at them on one listen and crying on another ("standard bitter love song #8," with its batshit, overstated mythical imagery, is a pretty prime example). i can't seem to find anything funny in "poltergeist," and as far as i know, it's the only song other than all hail west texas's "pink and blue" that has a baby in it. babies are clean and faultless things--what could they possibly do in a mountain goats song?
Monday, May 21, 2007
"orange ball of love," from zopilote machine
the narrator in "orange ball of love" has done something, and the something is bad and even illegal, and it is a something that he will absolutely not get away with. someone is with him and that someone is preparing to turn them in. and even in the midst of that--knowing that his freedom is about to be compromised, even destroyed--he manages butterflies in his stomach. a crush-on-the-captor situation. i wish i could say it's willful ignorance. it's not. it's something dumber, huger, and more beautiful: knowing that, in desperate situations, taking what you can get is less a choice and more a delirious submission. tyranny of the moment! i always imagined the prisoner to love his last meal the best.
Friday, May 18, 2007
"waving at you," from nothing for juice
so a guy walks into a store and says, i will buy the one i love a gift on this, her birthday. only the girl's not in his life anymore; moreover, they're going through a sloppy divorce (only darnielle could start a song with the line "listen, you can tell your lawyer he can go to hell" and still keep it a lullaby). bad joke. non-joke?
the question is: are emotions habitual?
i guess my answer is yes, a year and change after likely driving someone to disappear from my life, who i actually sent a birthday gift to last year, but plan to--i keep planning, i swear, we're finally in developmental stages--to let the habit die hard, die kicking. darnielle beats it out of his guitar facing the shop window forgetting that passerby can see him in the reflection. lawyer line aside--and it's such an obvious bid at security anyhow; the going to hell tell-off--"waving at you" is probably the most irrefutably tender song he's ever written.
happy birthday to you, c.b., in nigeria or seoul or utah or washington, i'm not sure, you only stay mappable in my mind.
the question is: are emotions habitual?
i guess my answer is yes, a year and change after likely driving someone to disappear from my life, who i actually sent a birthday gift to last year, but plan to--i keep planning, i swear, we're finally in developmental stages--to let the habit die hard, die kicking. darnielle beats it out of his guitar facing the shop window forgetting that passerby can see him in the reflection. lawyer line aside--and it's such an obvious bid at security anyhow; the going to hell tell-off--"waving at you" is probably the most irrefutably tender song he's ever written.
happy birthday to you, c.b., in nigeria or seoul or utah or washington, i'm not sure, you only stay mappable in my mind.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
DOUBLE FEATURE: "the window song," from protein source for the future... now! AND "going to ultrecht," from nine black poppies
some of darnielle's best songs are about moments of horror without revelation: "nine black poppies," "the young thousands"--songs that lurk behind corners, panting, pulsing; their climaxes are only to tell you that SOMETHING IS COMING, not that it's here. easier to stay on the edge of the seat that way.
oddly, when the revelations come, there's almost always no tension at all. "the window song" and "going to ultrecht" are about waking up and seeing a face you hadn't seen in a while. in the former, they're at your window; in the latter, in a completely different country. in both cases, you crumble. i had a recurring dream that i would be writing at a desk, i would turn around, and that a she--usually one particular she--would be standing in the doorway. this dream came true on several occasions.
the dream was--like in these songs--almost always better than the reality: in "the window song," the trembling comes hard and fast: "i know you, you're the one i spent three seasons trying to pretend that i never knew," trying to, i dunno, make the line come true again by saying it over and over (i too have tried to beat people out of my own brain in mantric style, it made me feel dumb).
in "ultrecht" it's pure astonishment. i've been given to the idea of PEOPLE AS PLACES lately, what with all my notions about moving and how and why. if there's an inkling to terror in "ultrecht" it's a kind of metaphysical plate tectonics. worlds colliding, and what to do? "i saw you sleeping over there, and i couldn't believe it, i couldn't believe it, not if i saw it with my own eyes," which is basically all he's cursed to see it with. and in the morning, hardly a sugar or protein replaced in his body--what cruelty! so, of course, he did what i did: he stands there, spinning, hoping it's not happening, knowing it is, knowing that it's going to make a much better song than an experience (because songs don't often make you puke). in both cases, he vamps at the end, standing in uncertainty, strum after strum, dumb as wood.
working thesis: darnielle as master of light-headed emotional terror.
this post is dedicated to tomorrow, which, in terms of memory, will suck much harder than today, believe you me.
oddly, when the revelations come, there's almost always no tension at all. "the window song" and "going to ultrecht" are about waking up and seeing a face you hadn't seen in a while. in the former, they're at your window; in the latter, in a completely different country. in both cases, you crumble. i had a recurring dream that i would be writing at a desk, i would turn around, and that a she--usually one particular she--would be standing in the doorway. this dream came true on several occasions.
the dream was--like in these songs--almost always better than the reality: in "the window song," the trembling comes hard and fast: "i know you, you're the one i spent three seasons trying to pretend that i never knew," trying to, i dunno, make the line come true again by saying it over and over (i too have tried to beat people out of my own brain in mantric style, it made me feel dumb).
in "ultrecht" it's pure astonishment. i've been given to the idea of PEOPLE AS PLACES lately, what with all my notions about moving and how and why. if there's an inkling to terror in "ultrecht" it's a kind of metaphysical plate tectonics. worlds colliding, and what to do? "i saw you sleeping over there, and i couldn't believe it, i couldn't believe it, not if i saw it with my own eyes," which is basically all he's cursed to see it with. and in the morning, hardly a sugar or protein replaced in his body--what cruelty! so, of course, he did what i did: he stands there, spinning, hoping it's not happening, knowing it is, knowing that it's going to make a much better song than an experience (because songs don't often make you puke). in both cases, he vamps at the end, standing in uncertainty, strum after strum, dumb as wood.
working thesis: darnielle as master of light-headed emotional terror.
this post is dedicated to tomorrow, which, in terms of memory, will suck much harder than today, believe you me.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
"ontario," from full force galesburg
imagine yourself standing in a square with four sides:
"MY FAVORITE RECORDS"
"MY FAVORITE BOOKS"
"THE PEOPLE I LOVE"
"THE PEOPLE I ALMOST LOVE"
it's rare that you get characters in darnielle's songs who actually sound content; in "ontario," for once, the scenario is frank, simple. but contentment is an ambivalent thing, and the narrator's ultimately a depressive by trade: " i thought i knew what my weaknesses were anyway, and then the orange tree blossomed last saturday--there was nothing in it but pain for me."
looking out on my room, my favorite records, my favorite books, etc., i'm struck with a terrible feeling this morning--terrible! wonderful!--that this is basically as good as it gets. to want anything more is greedy, to buck the fact that orange trees and their ilk--in my case, my big black-flowered fuschia, hanging over my bed, sagging with bulbs--are pretty much always going to make me crumble for obtuse poetic reasons is, well, a spit in the face of something much larger, much more inert, and much wiser than me.
"ontario" is 2:30 long; i bent the rules this morning, and i apologize for that.
"MY FAVORITE RECORDS"
"MY FAVORITE BOOKS"
"THE PEOPLE I LOVE"
"THE PEOPLE I ALMOST LOVE"
it's rare that you get characters in darnielle's songs who actually sound content; in "ontario," for once, the scenario is frank, simple. but contentment is an ambivalent thing, and the narrator's ultimately a depressive by trade: " i thought i knew what my weaknesses were anyway, and then the orange tree blossomed last saturday--there was nothing in it but pain for me."
looking out on my room, my favorite records, my favorite books, etc., i'm struck with a terrible feeling this morning--terrible! wonderful!--that this is basically as good as it gets. to want anything more is greedy, to buck the fact that orange trees and their ilk--in my case, my big black-flowered fuschia, hanging over my bed, sagging with bulbs--are pretty much always going to make me crumble for obtuse poetic reasons is, well, a spit in the face of something much larger, much more inert, and much wiser than me.
"ontario" is 2:30 long; i bent the rules this morning, and i apologize for that.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
"jenny," from all hail west texas
whenever i've felt the absurd need to explain exactly what love was to someone, i always arrive at a variant of, "for some portion of time, you and i are the only people who exist in the world."
"jenny" is about being in love with, and on, a motorcycle. my bad breakup coincided with shick fixing his bmw bike, and i remember that the rides were the first thing i could call a cure: "we were the one thing in the galaxy god didn't have his eyes on." if you've ever been on a motorcycle, you'll know what i mean. and if you haven't, you should go; nothing will make you feel dumber and more invincible and more carelessly homoerotic.
addendum, 5/30:
of course this song is not about a motorcycle. i was a bad liar three weeks ago and i'm a bad liar now. i've only had the feeling in "jenny" a few times. after thinking about all the melodrama and anguish and ambiguity in his music, i sorta only realize now how uncomplicated, how good, how rare that feeling is.
"jenny" is about being in love with, and on, a motorcycle. my bad breakup coincided with shick fixing his bmw bike, and i remember that the rides were the first thing i could call a cure: "we were the one thing in the galaxy god didn't have his eyes on." if you've ever been on a motorcycle, you'll know what i mean. and if you haven't, you should go; nothing will make you feel dumber and more invincible and more carelessly homoerotic.
addendum, 5/30:
of course this song is not about a motorcycle. i was a bad liar three weeks ago and i'm a bad liar now. i've only had the feeling in "jenny" a few times. after thinking about all the melodrama and anguish and ambiguity in his music, i sorta only realize now how uncomplicated, how good, how rare that feeling is.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
"standard bitter love song #8," from ghana
i grew up scorpio and remain one; my astrology points me in some awesome directions:
creative, passionate, etc.
and not-so-awesome ones:
jealous, obsessive.
and i too believed in the hammers of justice, the white-hot blood of validation pouring from the ears of the nonbelievers, only to find that, like the narrator, i was, in the eye of everyone but my conspicuously absent god, Anonymous Dude standing on a street corner, or at the pizza place, watching a girl i liked walk away with someone else, my mind's eye searing with hilarious thoughts of the acrobatic sex they will certainly enjoy while i suffer another cold midnight of steely dan. of course, i'm the better for it--"i went mining for gold, i struck pure, fresh zinc"; each word punching out, deliberate--in mountain goats songs, Anonymous Dude always gets validation, because acrobatic sex is for mere mortals.
addendum, 5/10: listening again today, i forgot how funny it is. but that’s one of the greatest thing about his songs—the melodrama becomes a take it or leave it situation. some days you have a laugh at the hyperbolic teenage imagery, other days it seems like someone! is talking! right to you! with all the gravity and hellfire your romantic concerns deserve! finally!
creative, passionate, etc.
and not-so-awesome ones:
jealous, obsessive.
and i too believed in the hammers of justice, the white-hot blood of validation pouring from the ears of the nonbelievers, only to find that, like the narrator, i was, in the eye of everyone but my conspicuously absent god, Anonymous Dude standing on a street corner, or at the pizza place, watching a girl i liked walk away with someone else, my mind's eye searing with hilarious thoughts of the acrobatic sex they will certainly enjoy while i suffer another cold midnight of steely dan. of course, i'm the better for it--"i went mining for gold, i struck pure, fresh zinc"; each word punching out, deliberate--in mountain goats songs, Anonymous Dude always gets validation, because acrobatic sex is for mere mortals.
addendum, 5/10: listening again today, i forgot how funny it is. but that’s one of the greatest thing about his songs—the melodrama becomes a take it or leave it situation. some days you have a laugh at the hyperbolic teenage imagery, other days it seems like someone! is talking! right to you! with all the gravity and hellfire your romantic concerns deserve! finally!
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
"home again garden grove," from we shall all be healed
it occurs to me, in a conversation with lex about my potential move to new orleans, while "home again garden grove" is playing, that there are good reasons to find john darnielle's songs a centering force: sometimes, everyone around you is an absolute fuck-up, but at least it's a contained universe (college, for me); the solipsism and narrow worldview in his songs--even if that world is always on the verge of collapse--is a source of comfort. so shouting "shoving our heads, right into the guts of the stove, home again garden grove" is a way of acknowledging that crucial narrowing, even if it means relishing in the way things fall apart, even if it means accepting that you're tying yourself to something sinking--as long as you can see all the way around the hull, there's peace.
addendum, 5/10: i had a friend who drank too much—to prove that this isn’t the start of a thinly veiled therapy/aa plea, i confess that we all drank too much that year. but this one friend in particular got into a bad habit of falling down the stairs in our house. that the thud of elbow on wood on head on wood on legs on ribs, all the way to the floor, became a source of comfort during a difficult year is the paradoxical grind at work in “home again garden grove.”
addendum, 5/10: i had a friend who drank too much—to prove that this isn’t the start of a thinly veiled therapy/aa plea, i confess that we all drank too much that year. but this one friend in particular got into a bad habit of falling down the stairs in our house. that the thud of elbow on wood on head on wood on legs on ribs, all the way to the floor, became a source of comfort during a difficult year is the paradoxical grind at work in “home again garden grove.”
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