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Twee as Fuck You
I can almost remember where I heard this song for the first time. Almost. Wooden chair, fake green leather on the seat, right foot under, yeah let the left one do all the work, living room, in front of a window, but we lived on a hill, so there was privacy. Jam out, parents could be spotted from the upper left hand corner, and they almost never came through the other room to the living room, sneaking up from behind. To do so would've been cruel. But maybe they did so silently.
Welcome to the world of one PC homes, dial-up internet, early 2000s. It's been brought to my attention through the daily waterboarding experience that is checking the Internet that we might all want to have an opinion on the tumblr, "My Husband's Stupid Record Collection." I scrolled it briefly (as one does - when one can figure out how to truly embed subliminal messages in a tumblr post, or Slate article, or Gawker article, or whatever is News Media these days, you'd make a fine killing) and wasn't really moved either way. Yes, she's "adorkable," but not "twee as fuck," a moniker for the pre-shoegaze-y pop folk that the 90s produced like there was an order. Openly dilettante, as is the internet's new dictate.
The arguments around that project are about gender, but they ignore music. I know from experience I wasn't the only girl, as my only friends were girls, digging through what seemed limitless space for music. Chatting up folks on Napster from Belgium (!), exotic Belgium. What else should I try? You'd download a song and the message from the owner wasn't pornographic. I was in conversations at 15 with 20 somethings as quizzical about my sexuality as I was, but they weren't lurid. I don't know what my chat partners thought as they drifted off to sleep about their Napster chat windows, and it doesn't really matter, but if I had a barometer of the time, I'd guess they were a bit dreamier than we expect such chats to be these days.
Such was a life. Wake up in the morning, don't have coffee (ew, dad's coffee is gross), log in because your parents hate talking to people and the connection stretches. What's new? What was recommended? Put IE in gear, put a query into Yahoo or Altavista or even Google, can I find that Morrissey video I wanted to see? Gotta go to morrissey-solo.com, click through various threads, organize by catergories, when we get there, it's...
Dancing, dancing! Arms never above the head, Mom's watching TV and she already knows a different language is happening, don't worry. When it comes to what can happen on the Internet to those kids in the Miami chat rooms, couldn't be more innocent. Might as well be a flower waving in the wind, yeah she's looking at them, outside, play again.
I know I got into the Magnetic Fields via Momus, and the Future Bible Heroes were after that. If record collectors fetishize the flip flip flip of looking for their album, there ought to be a way to gauge the passion of those of us who sat bleary-eyed looking at a 66% download waiting for the next song that flew into our cache to be the one that best explained our lives.
And there wasn't one, and hasn't been, regardless of my band loyalty affiliations, any that quite clamped, like an arcade machine reaching for a stale stuffed toy, what it felt like to be just driving age in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. Its bluntness was an antidote to fantasy that was on offer, and even better. Morrissey strung along tales of fantasies put out like previously stubbed cigarettes; the Future Bible Heroes felt more trailer-trash than that. "And there's nobody to fall in love with/...so I don't."
Prowling around malls waiting for something to percolate was the unconscious desire we had, and we pursued it book by book. Each stop at a Borders was a stop at destiny. Fish out at least 14 dollars from your cargo pants and take your partner home.
When the military calls, it calls loudly. Try to imagine a rationale that positions you in a neutral place. Or play the song when you get home.
I don't believe much changes in life. Sure, things accumulate. Putting on armor, whether it's yoga or wellness, yes they help. Of course they help, no one gives a shit about you at first glance, so why wouldn't armor be called for in a world without rules?
But more than 10 years later, this song is still exactly the core of what I would consider some part of me. I'd never disown this song. It's a photo of a time that makes no sense but remains stubbornly in place.
So let the joyriders raft down the river of popular music. And be the stone that has let the years of a song flow by, accrue, and layer with meaning.
No one pays you to cash out where endless rows of houses fuse. So I don't
I think if you're a certain age, you think the party is just beginning, and if you're another age, the party is just ending.
The forever-quotable Stephin Merritt on "parties."
Don't you just love catchy songs about suicide?
"It's a good thing I don't have any feelings" FUTURE BIBLE HEROES
