"the young thousands," from we shall all be healed

i first started talking about horror back here, when the threat was, well, a little less threatening.

i almost loath to write about "the young thousands"--my face is scrunching up! grotesque! that's how much i love it!--but last night i was paralyzed watching schlesinger's the day of the locust, the film adaptation of nathanael west's novel, which i've read about six or seven times since high school, and i realized that, no, there is no escaping writing about "the young thousands," that, either way, "the young thousands" is going to continue to run on a track in my mind for years to come because "the young thousands" is about a feeling that does not resolve.

granted, in locust, we need a resolution, and we get one, but the movie's climax is also its most overly long scene (how long do we need to see william atherton's screaming face? longer yet). this is a drug feeling, or a mental illness--a deep paranoia, the feeling that, though things are bad, they are invariably going to get worse and worse, and you're waiting for the shoe to drop, but the shoe doesn't, it just sorta hangs above you and it might not even be a shoe, you can't even tell.

i don't know exactly what darnielle's talking about, but there are 30 overdubbed versions of him to warn me. in locust, schlesinger didn't want it to be a shock so much as a protracted sickness, the knowledge that this, well, this isn't even really a climactic moment so much as a shift in tone, that if you were hoping for ecstasy and release you can quite well forget about it. like hackett's visions in locust, the young thousands are faceless, ghostly things. they just keep moving and moving and moving and never quite arrive. onus to feel the world's mind-shredding powers is on you, buddy, and though i have pity in abundance, i also have a mite of jealousy--who's to say that agony isn't richer than the pleasantry of release?

"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.

"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?

"jaipur," from the coroner's gambit

in darnielle, even the most down and out get mythologies, growling, over boom-box static, SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT, CHROME TAILPIPE SHINING BRIGHT AS SPUN GOLD. have you ever woken up as a badass? have you ever woken up as a nasty badass thing with a swollen eye and taken a drink and spilled out onto unfriendly streets? have you ever reached that end--the end when all of the sudden, the idea of you as a ragged and pathetic and nasty, badass thing makes you invincible? i recall nights as a mean dude--a close friend once said, "it's not that you're a drunk, it's that when you're a drunk, you're a self-glorifying one."

and that's what's at work in "jaipur": cruising into atlanta, something a little less than india, starting to imagine yourself as a holy being, looking like absolute shit, feeling a storm gathering on the horizon (the horizon being somewhere right behind your eyes with a brain full of angry mush). and it's one of the reasons i always come back to john darnielle: the self-mythologizing voice of the absolute mess.

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.