On Wednesday,
I was a little horrified to discover that my lucky socks, the pair with the orange stripes, have apparently run out of luck. So it is time for me to find a new lucky charm.
Here is something I wrote to a friend about the wonderful new Wolf Parade single. It’s an exerpt from an e-mail, and it was unusually considered, even for me.
I go through these mini themes in my life, where I notice that the same general concept playing out in several different ways. For example, there’s this certain tree blossoming outside my apartment, and in many other Brooklyn neighborhoods. Its new flowers emit a smell that seems to dodge around concepts like recognizability, unpleasantness, disgustingness, and it just goes directly to work activating my gag reflex. I had no idea that I could smell something that would make me gag without the smell being recognized, unpleasant and disgusting…until I approached my house on Friday, began gagging and worked backwards to determine the culprit.
In the same fashion, but in a FAR more pleasant manner (like, the opposite of gag reflex!), the new Wolf Parade track comes after me directly without appealing much to my tastes for rhythm, melody, musicianship, lyrics (though they began to get me in the best way about 5 listens in - WP continues to operate within the top 1% of current lyricists, in my opinion) and tambre, just going for my admittedly abstract sense of “Oh God, Yeah.” This is a feeling of extreme comfort, crossed with devastating agony - the sour sadness of briefly finding perfection and realizing that there’s no better feeling you can have. On a much more objective note, I believe that this can be a very important piece of a spectacular new album, and that 8 more of these can add up to an obliterating whole.
***
I think a person has the right to feel optimistic and hopeful. A person without even this much might not deserve an apology, but he does deserve some of your patience. At least that.
