Czwartek 2 Mar 2006, 18:23
One of the reasons I love The Go! Team so terribly much is because a lot of their songs give me very specific images in my mind, despite the fact that there are no real 'lyrics' to speak of. Somehow I hear some of these songs and I just know, deep down, what the accompanying images would be for me.
Consider the case of Everyone's a V.I.P. to Someone, which is at this moment the saddest-happy song I have heard in a long time. It chokes me up to listen to it, because it is so upbeat, but so sad; it is exactly the kind of song that plays during the part of someone's funeral when they've dug out all the old video clips and still frames of the deceased while he or she was still alive, and there's this vibrant, happy person with friends and family and pets and you just can't connect it to the person that's lying in the coffin, who will never get up again.
But the upbeat second half of the song makes me think of that person, beyond death, in another place entirely, walking toward the house they grew up in, which is exactly the way they remember it, or even better. The sun is setting, their favorite pet (if any) is at their side, and all of their possessions are in a duffle bag they're carrying. They're here to stay.
I listened to this song over and over and thought of all this, and then as I wrote it down here I put on the Oxford Camerata singing choral songs from the Missa Papae Marcelli, and then I burst into tears, realizing that this was exactly the music I listened to the day my cousin shot himself last July. The sadness of it suckerpunched me then and, in a roundabout way, just did again.
I tried writing a couple different endings to this post as I composed myself, and now that I'm pretty much okay again I can't settle on a good one. I will say that writing this and thinking about it has done some good in the way of closure, because I struggled with exactly the kind of disconnect I described above, while watching the photo-montage at his funeral. I can now take somewhat more consolation from the idea that Jeremy's in not just a 'better' place but his favorite place, and though I have nothing to back that up it's reassuring and I want to stick to it. I also wanted to direct a vague, pre-emptive threat to any who would laugh at me for admitting to shedding tears for a loss, his being 'extended family' notwithstanding. I wanted to say something mean but I can't, partly because I don't have it in me and partly because circumstances and the universe itself can be a good deal more vindictive than anything I can come up with.
Anyway, thanks, Go! Team.