and the songs that saved your life

So, in happier times (lo those long three weeks ago), I would find myself speeding down the center of 270, blasting Bowie's Heroes, by which I mean the album, listening on a single side to what was side one, then skipping on to the Secret Life of Arabia.

The short, cryptic quip. It will get better in time. You know that. Well, time wounds all heels, dunnit?

I rented The Deer Hunter, in which the gnomic Bobby D holds up a bullet and declares, "You see this? This is this. This ain't somethin else. This is this." And I understand the point, but the link between the words and the sense isn't quite clear to me. As Fredo says in the movie, nobody understands what you're talking about.

But I needed the exact The Deer Hunter quote before I could write that paragraph. And I had to listen to something. And I couldn't keep listening to Will Oldham's Arise Therefore. Yes, The Weaker Soldier's the right note, but you can only listen to the same song so many times before you become Orobouros Autofellator.

That's what happens when you add a pack of cigarettes to your daily habit. And the endless cups of coffee, no matter how elaborate their serving mechanism (I am speaking to you, Particularly Annoying Asian Coffee Device) are no better than crank, although it's easier to go off the caffeine than it is the smokes.

We must press on, though, in America, the land of hope. From Washington to Wyoming to Maine to Georgia to Kirkwood to the Loop. And that ten minute track on the new Wilco album inspired me to throw Neu (Isi/Seeland/"Your honey's run off to Norway" etc etc) 75 back in regular rotation.

Listening to an old mixtape cdr at work I heard Of Montreal's Coquelicot again through headphones this afternoon. Not having heard in some time several of the songs I'd selected I noticed new elements to the arrangements, some vocal harmonies I didn't remember.

And as one Neu song played an hour ago in an album's endless mix, I heard a new melody, something sweet and disconnected, played with the song but not really in the song. Krautrock, Bowie's inspiration for Heroes, features a lot of this sort of trick. But I heard only the embedded midi file on the fansite for The Deer Hunter.

Shithead zen, shithead. This is this and it's nothing else.