sixty. [THEME: butterfly]

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

She's Dope
Artist: Down With Webster
Album: Time to Win Vol. II
Year: 2011
♥: I don't think you'll like this song. Like I really don't. But I'm sitting here after our night, with the Osheaga lineup, the wine, V -- and all the butterfly songs I'd had in mind are suddenly a joke and here's the thing: the Butterfly, in my personal ideology, is the most important symbol. I don't have any friggin idea why I thought it was a good idea for a theme because the 'BUTTERFLY' is EVERYTHING to me. It means so much that I'll just never be able to express. But what butterflies are to me, more than anything -- more even, than change, than metamorphosis, which was the post I'd started writing -- is honesty. And whether you hate this song or can tolerate it, I almost don't care, because if I can't articulate what this theme really means -- at least I can be honest about the song I connect to it.

Down With Webster is silly Canadian MuchMusic fare. I could post These Kids Wear Crowns and it'd be similar: ridiculous pop. It's fun for teenyboppers. It's all bouncy verses and predictable hooks. It's the kind of thing easily mocked, but [V and] I genuinely adore it, and I also genuinely feel it. (There's something about [some] "objectively" ridiculous pop that just kills me, when it's related in the right ways.)

So instead of going back to Spring '08, let's go back to June '11.
Last spring was...weird. I felt a lot of weird things. But for most of June, I felt whole. Absolutely and completely. And the one song that REALLY made me feel that way was this one. When V and I heard it on the MM countdown, I instantly knew I'd never be able to watch the video because the song was going to hit hard. I drank Tanqueray all summer (fuck I love that line -- "I don't drink babe / But you're Tanqueray"). I danced around Claremont (oh, Claremont.) to it, and it meant everything because it related...in my own way...to the most potent referent of the 'butterfly' symbol.

Because butterfly refers, in my personal symbolism, to that thing that matters most, that thing that's been around for eight years, off and on. And 2011 was dead to the butterflies: except for June.
Except for this song!


So instead of trying ---- imPOSSIBLY ----- to explain all my "butterfly" connotations ------------
I will post something that brought me back to them.
And even without my butterflies, right now in March 2012,
(listening to this song, knowing I'll hear it live,
knowing that it's entirely possible I'll feel those butterflies again (they cycle, you see),
or that hey --- butterflies fucking grow out of caterpillars, butterflies change, and maybe it's time to change the connotations...)

there's still something pretty fucking amazing about life.
And that is, really,
butterflies.

sixty (theme: butterfly)

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

We Float
PJ Harvey
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
2000

"Butterfly" makes me think of the Palmengarten in Frankfurt.  It was October or November 2006 and my friend Andrea and I were on the German leg of our European trip.  We went to the Palmengarten because we had seen signs posted around the city advertising the "Flugshow" or "flight show"...the one time a year when the butterflies are set free in one of the garden's greenhouses.  Up until a few days ago, I thought that "flug" was German for butterfly (when, in actuality, it is "schmetterling").  In the days that followed our visit to the Palmengarten, Andrea and I giggled every time we (inaccurately) referred to all of the colourful "flugs" we had seen fluttering around.  

The temperature in the greenhouse was stifling but, despite the heat, we found ourselves lingering there.  There was something so captivating about seeing dozens upon dozens of butterflies hovering in the air, flapping their wings wildly, coming in for a landing on the vibrant bloom of an exotic-looking flower.  I associate butterflies with free (even though they were technically trapped in a greenhouse), light, gliding and floating.

Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea is probably on my list of all-time favourite albums.  Around 2000, I knew who PJ Harvey was because I had read about her in Rolling Stone and her CDs regularly turned up in used record shops, but I had never really listened to any of her music (save for "The Wind" on the Brokedown Palace soundtrack).  This was the first album of hers that I bought and loved.  A few of the songs on the album would be a good example of hate to love, in the sense that I initially found some of the songs abrasive and difficult ("The Whores Hustle and the Husters Whore" is a good example).  But there is this underlying beauty to the entire album--the duet with Thom Yorke on "This Mess We're In" kind of kills me.  I should stop mentioning specific song titles because I just may want to repost some PJ in the future, haha.

This song...it's been a long-time love thing.  I love the quiet build up to that short, beautiful chorus...twelve years later and the words "we float" still send a prickly chill through my entire body (right to my hair follicles).  I like that the verses are almost spoken-word, it makes that chorus all the more powerful.  I love the piano and the way the notes sometimes sound clumsy or off-beat.  So, maybe I've gone with a kind of literal interpretation, but when I saw the picture of the butterfly you posted last week, this song immediately came to mind.  Or, more specifically, these words came to mind:

But one day we'll float
Take life as it comes...

This song is one of the reasons I have music tattooed on my body.  I'm so excited to share it with you.