fifty-six. [THEME: q & a -- question]

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

What Else Do I Need?
VAST
Music for People
2000

♥: VAST was one of the first rock bands I fell in love with. In high school, I devoured the Everworld series (K. A. Applegate's post-Animorphs effort), and Scholastic released a promo soundtrack CD for it which featured "Touched." That's still one of my favourite songs, and now that I think about it, I think it's one of the big reasons I so love east-meets-west hard rock. This was when I stopped listening to Mix96 and 92.9 (my mom's influence, sigh), and started listening to something that spoke to me on a much more fundamental level -- something harder. I was growing up. So VAST is formative, and that's why I was so excited to find this song: it's so perfect to look at a band that answered a question I didn't even know I had...as a question (and, in fact, as the very question it answered -- what else did I need? Then -- it was music.).

I searched "what" in iTunes and this popped up. Admittedly: I had never really listened to it before this week. Music for People is one of those Beautiful Midnight-like albums where I get stuck on a few songs -- but I hit play and listened to the lyrics and this was the song I was posting, no question. Coincidentally or not -- the question I've been turning in my head for a year or more, something I think both of us have been asking ourselves for a long time, consciously or no: "What else do I need?"

The chorus seems to treat this as a rhetorical question: "I could stay right here / and never ever leave / what else do I need?" -- and I'd almost buy it except that Jon Crosby sounds so broken, and the rest of the lyrics are so angry. It's like he's trying to convince himself that the life he's living is sufficient, forced into a system he can't stand, but the moments he has away from it are worth it, enough -- but they aren't, not really. There's something missing, and you hear it in his fucking voice. It's such a desperate question: what else do I need?

And then, the worry: even if you have everything -- it won't be enough.

I waver back and forth on how I feel about this question, when I ask it to myself. Sometimes it is a black hole, horrifying, because I can't fathom exactly what I need (to do, to change, to become). But sometimes it is liberating, endless constellations. What else do I need? There is so much to life, so much to experience, so much I won't be aware of until the moment I experience it ---- so much more -- and that's when the chorus suddenly makes sense.

"What else do I need?" is still honest -- and you might be in the throes of something ideal. You could stay right there, never leave, but what else is there? I don't want "enough", I don't want "sufficient" or "adequate" or "static." That desire to strive, to never be complacent...that is the real beauty of this question. Not "what"...but "what else."

And, like when I listened to VAST for the first time: this song is about being separate, finding a new path, growing up. Of course -----
it'd be delusional to think you'd ever stop asking the question.

fifty-six (theme: q & a; answer)

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

(A) Coffee Stain
Sarah Harmer
You Were Here
2000

I debated posting this song because I wasn't sure if it was THE Sarah Harmer song that I wanted to share with you.  BUT, your three David Bowie posts reminded me that there aren't really any strict limitations to the songs we post...and that I'm not breaking any rules if I repeat an artist (like you said, if this is a for-life thing, the chances that artists will be repeated increases exponentially).

This was a really cool theme...cool in that I could have taken it in a million different directions.  I got kind of stuck on the fact that the "answer" could really be...anything.  I wanted to do more than pick something at random and, after a lot of internal debate, finally settled on "Coffee Stain".

This song is beautifully heartbreaking.  I love the simplicity of the arrangement and the way Sarah Harmer's voice is really clear and spotlighted here (there I go with my nasal voices again, haha).  The story is simple: the speaker realizes (or finally acknowledges) that her partner is seeing someone else.  I love the image of this woman in a dark kitchen, nursing a lukewarm mug of coffee while sitting at the crumb-covered table, waiting.  She is looking at a picture of her lover and finally admitting to herself that she doesn't really know him/her anymore.  She accepts that all of these little clues are in fact the answers she has been ignoring all along: "I knew by the time on the stove/That you were no longer mine alone." 

I like the ambiguity of the lyrics.  The speaker doesn't come across as utterly devastated that she has come to the realization that that moment most likely marks the end of her relationship.  She says, "Oh I love you, and I guess I still do"...I love that guess; that twinge of uncertainty or ambivalence. This is echoed again in "I guess we're all just out on loan/And everybody is only their own" (lovely) and  "Maybe I'm a fatalist/To let it all go at this/Like some balloon I'll probably miss/Lost in the treetop." 

The description of the picture, with the "coffee stain around your eye" kind of kills me.  I love imagery like that...the kind that permanently prints itself on your brain.  When I see a coffee ring on the kitchen counter or on a place mat at a restaurant, I always think of this song, that voice, that sad cello and quiet guitar.