It is, unfortunately, not that funny anymore. I mean, you go about your day-to-day 'to do' business, through the 'motions', just keeping it going and all that, trying to find a winning smile or well-timed grin and pretending to be 'ok'. You answer their intrusive but well-meant questions politely, paying attention, for the most part, to steering that wafer-thin line between diplomacy, revelation, rudeness and tears. 'I'm fine, really. I'm fine'. But then you hear a song, on daytime radio of all places, that takes you right back to that dark, muddled place, and suddenly it's not at all 'ok'. It's anything but 'ok'. This is one of those songs. I just can't shake it or escape it. It's captured in one simple line, Mark managing to convey the sum of all possibilities and hopelessness in a deep, somewhat resigned-to-the-fuck-of-it-all heavy breath... 'You never know what day could pick you baby / Out of the air, out of nowhere'. And in truth, though I know it's ultimately pointless, damaging and self-destructive, I don't really want to escape this song. Not right now. I'm hanging on to the precious memories that were once almost shared, if nothing else. At least those moments are intact and can still render an unforced smile without struggle or pretense.
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Mark Kozelek - 'Duk Koo Kim' (10" version) (10.33)
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This is all just a Sad Reminder, of course. You should really watch this, just to see and hear the beauty that is exposed (it's a full set from Mark at this year's Sommerfesten, which is held in Norway at the end of July, as I'm sure you know). Simply stunning. Oh, Mark hangs out, getting happy and playing practical jokes over here. No really, he does.
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times do change and in the intervening period where you *don't* listen to that song, walk that route, see that memory, visit that place, time sorts of heals, loosens its grip on whatever hold you had over it.
ReplyDeletebut sometimes, just sometimes, you want to keep a hand on these things, to remember what it was like then, to... well, sometimes, we do just punish ourselves as well. i hope your looking back can be done with a hand on the future, too.
(sorry, this appears to be a bit too in-depth for a lunch time)
i am so glad you are back writing again... it is not so lonesome anymore.
ReplyDeleteRight now, K, a tuna sandwich is too in-depth for me. At any time of the day. :) And that song keeps popping up on random shuffle. It is telling me something. Or I am telling it something.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that J. So, did you go see Allo Darlin' and Math and Physics Club play the other week? You'd bloody better have!!