From the Hesperides

Listening to Kate Bush because my soul interprets her as Christmas music. The unusual, bursting forth into the everyday. Partaking of our common language, but remixing it to say something deeper, stranger, and unexpected. The feel of a celebratory winter. Eons and immediacy both. Memory, faith, hope, love.

You are well-made.

Sometimes the most beautiful songs I can think of tell sad or imperfect stories.  I think maybe this is because they contain transcendent lines — the belief, or hope, or desperate wish, for something really, truly good — and in that glimmer, a whole map of hope and wonder unfolds, before it’s crushed back under by the black wave, the madness of events as the speaker/writer has come to know them, the unceasing modernist’s awareness of a broken world.  But it’s there.  In that aspiration, or that description of loss.  The song wouldn’t be tragic without something precious to be lost, or never quite grasped.

This is not (when I’m at my best) reflective of my view of the world.  I do think sometimes things work out, and they’re good, really good.  Right here and now.  Really.  For you.  For me.

If I ever want to share a sad song with you, it’s because I love you.  It’s because I think there’s hope at the center.  It’s because I think we could build a bridge out of it.

“I felt I’d only blinked my eyes, but when I opened them my girlfriend and a Mexican neighbor were working on me, doing everything they could to bring me back. The Mexican was saying, ‘There, he’s coming around now.’

“We lived in a tiny, dirty apartment. When I realized how long I’d been out and how close I’d come to leaving it forever, our little home seemed to glitter like cheap jewelry. I was overjoyed not to be dead. Generally the closest I ever came to wondering about the meaning of it all was to consider that I must be the victim of a joke. There was no touching the hem of mystery, no occasion when any of us thought — well, speaking for myself only, I suppose — that our lungs were filled with light, or anything like that.  I had a moment’s glory that night, though.  I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn’t tolerate any other place.”

—Denis Johnson, “Out On Bail”