“This is what I don’t want people to see”: Clearing the dust

Thoughts leading up into this post:

So that was the introduction; that was easy.  But now this is my fanboy blog, it’s time to talk about music, and this will be my first post.  I will have it be about a song near and dear, one whose brilliance bowls me over and leaves me stammering.  It will be unclear and messy, but let’s have at it.  How about The National’s “Fake Empire”? [lyrics] As the election nears and our economy is crumbling, this song about hazy-eyed wandering in a dream state (a dream nation-state?) seems more appropriate than ever.  The song’s double meanings abound; it could be just as easily interpreted as a starry-eyed date in a blossoming romance. Hell, I can even copy and paste what I’ve already put up on songmeanings.net (see link). Yes, I’ll write about that.

Wait, no, I won’t write about that.  The meanings are too entangled with themes from the rest of the album, and frankly, I don’t have the time right now for this sort of discursus through the enormity of the text that is Boxer.  (What do I expect?  A 20-page literary deconstruction?)  Let’s start off with something simpler, more poignant.

Xiu Xiu, “Yellow Raspberry” [lyrics]  The ZORP of abjection, the beautiful transcendence of ugliness, the shame of Jamie Stewart.  Oh wait, aren’t I reading Kristeva later in the semester?  Maybe I should wait on this one; I’m not up to speed on my source material.  But this could be an initial crack into the text, the music… well do I have anything to say beyond the lyrics, beyond my love for Xiu Xiu?  Don’t you want to say something interesting?  We’ll go back to this at another time, yes, yes, okay.

Evangelista, “Hello, Voyager!” [lyrics] The manifesto of what I’ve deemed to be the “emotional pornographers” of the last few years queer indie rock, the Xiu Xius and Freddy Rupperts and Dead Sciences.  “Tell the truth and be free… this is what I don’t want people to see… But I can see you… You’re dirty too.”  A call to arms, to splay open the wounds of shame and free oneself.  But this song is over 12 minutes long — what about the music?  It’s uh — well there are a lot of instruments, most of which I can’t readily identify.  The structure is piecemeal, impovisatory, the scattered shards of Carla Bozulich’s Roman architecture; sounds rise and fall.  I can’t do this justice; there’s only one word left on my parched lips to say about this song, and that word is LOVE.  You can’t say it with me because I’m not ready to explain why the word is love.

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Yes, those were the thoughts leading up to this post.  And then, paralysis (analysis paralysis — oh god).  The process begins not with writing about music, but writing about writing, which I’ve always found far and beyond easier.  I’m stuck “up high and ugly, up high and weird” on the meta level, afraid to come down and expose myself by talking about music (“beating off to the escort pages”).  “Let me be free, let me be free, let me be free” — I can only aspire to reach Stewart’s and Bozulich’s level of openness. It’s easy enough to talk about myself, my homosexual inclinations, my dirtiness; this is what I’m doing here.  But Stewart and Bozulich go further, they make music, they perform.  The struggle with performance anxiety in talking about the music I love is why I’ve created this blog, so that I can work through the struggle and live comfortably with my imperfections.  I hope that by clearing the dust here and making bare where I get stuck, I can start to learn to live with the constraints that I’m so painfully aware of here.  “This is my porn collection.”  I feel the need to prove that this music is worthy, is I’m supposed to love, despite my inclinations.  I need to expose the imperfection.  Can I say it here?  The word is love…

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