So Much in Common
Coloma
Dovetail2005
♥: So: it's Sunday night; I've just cracked a bottle of wine and put on an April 2010 playlist, and what the hell pops up but this song. I love when you
completely forget about a song until you put on one of those old mix CDs and then -- jaw drops! eyes pop! how the heck did I forget about you, Coloma?! This is the perfect song for transitions (such as one from student to employee, which I was experiencing back when I first fell in love with it), not because it sounds like a transition, but because it sounds grounded and centered -- like it knows exactly where it's going, despite it being hilariously contradictory.
Okay: so this is a song about a relationship and the lyrics slay me every time. You can look at this two ways: as a meditation on 1) how not having anything in common with your significant other is essentially irrelevant and ~love~ prevails, or on 2) how ~love~ completely blinds you to reality and what's actually going on in the midst of all this ridiculous.
I waver back and forth on my interpretation. As my perennially-single self I die-laugh at many of the dichotomies they set up: "My work of art / Your ton of bricks" is my favourite, but oh they go on -- other gems:
"Your true love / is my centerfold"
"My testimony / is the tale you told"
"My black hole / Your wishing well"
The continual "We have so much in common!" sounds like a desperate rationalization: NO, REALLY THOUGH, WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON! bahahahaha, how perfectly apt; how perfectly descriptive of so many bullshit romances.
BUT: while I'm generally turned off by real life romantic relationships, the concept thereof fascinates me, literarily speaking -- especially when it's so raw and messy and broken that it would never make sense in reality. After, that's the power of fiction, right -- to go nowhere reality really can, and to go
hard. So I'm always amenable to a well-written love song, especially when it fucks with the concept.
So I'm laughing at all the contradictions, ha ha ha,
and then the layers of music come to their peak, and Rob Taylor's voice becomes heartwrenchingly honest, and I stop laughing and buy into all of it:
"
My overdose / your antidote."
There's something about that line that just negates all the giggling, even that which comes after (another favourite line: "Oh what the hell / let's go to bed") ----- my heart skips and I remember everything that music can do, all the fiction it can make unbearably real, in all the most amazing ways. Plus, perfect music aside, I love it for its poetic merit: it says so much, not only about romantica but about things mismatched in general. AND I love the drug connotations, and the descent/cure theme, and how there's something more to that mismatching, that sometimes mismatching
works, and and and.
This song explodes with springtime for me -- all contradictory and confusing, but with a strangely certain throughthread, a direction. Even if love is a joke,
he's in it. And his voice: frickin' flowers-in-the-rain gorgeous.
(just an aside -- I also love the line "Your sleeping bag / My overcoat". guh. I buy into that line, too. I think this song just wins a lyrical trophy for saying so much in so few words.)
P.S. I tried to give you Harmonica payback by uploading the song to FileSonic (LOLOLOLOLOLOL HAHA I AM SO FUNNY. HA HA HA.), but motherfucking site kept DELETING THE FILE. LIKE I TRIED FOUR TIMES. WHAT THE FUCK, FILESONIC, I DON'T THINK IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ME TO HATE YOU MORE. sdhgkjsdghjskncjkxnsdkg
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