5pm_weds | forty. [THEME: forward] (Reply)

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Artist: Garbage
Album: (Ǎhk-toong Bay-bi) Covered
Year: 2011
♥: I had this whole post written in my head about this particular song I listened to on the drive home from Vermont weekend before last. It was a Wild Beasts remix of a Lady Gaga song and it was perfect for that forward momentum through mountains at night. Amazing!

And then this album dropped.
I'm not a huge fan of U2, per se, but I really like Achtung Baby, and when I saw all the artists covering the songs -- especially Garbage -- AH! Garbage is one of the very few bands I've loved since elementary school. I spent hours and hours downloading all their b-sides and remixes on dialup, and when they split up, I was devastated. Their recent promises of new music seemed unbelievable until I saw their name on this tracklisting. I downloaded, unzipped, and found myself holding my breath as I hit play.

Hooked from 0:03 -- you had me at trilling synths. Garbage has taken this song, destroyed it, and built it back up to be as raw and beautiful as their best (with a little extra electro to boot -- I couldn't ask for more!). I've fallen asleep to this song for the past three nights because I can't stop listening to it, even with the huge Sennheisers.
Now, I don't care for this song when U2 does it, so I've never listened to the lyrics -- and the second I did, I knew I'd be posting it this week.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about going forward lately, because I kind of feel like I'm standing still. It seems like all my friends are packing up and shipping off across oceans and into new positions, and I'm not the same person, but I'm doing basically the same things, and I keep thinking that I don't want to wake up at 50 and bemoan my wasted youth.

But forward, that's a tricky concept, isn't it? Directions are relative. My forward might be someone else's backward. But then again -- someone else's forward might well be my still. The problem is that these directions have normative connotations. Our age bracket [at least, those who care enough to think about it] tends to see forward as either "finding" or "making" yourself (or "reproducing" yourself, but that's a non-issue for me, so). You go on epic journeys, or you start on an epic career path. Either way, there's a sense of movement, and that's where the culturally-defined forward comes from. But you know what --------- "to go forward" is NOT defined as "to progress in a way that makes sense to everyone else." MAYBE, for me, going forward doesn't mean going in a fucking normatively-defined straight line.

I love this song because the concept of forward created is one of complete uncertainty. Yeah, it's technically about a breakup, but who cares:
"Who's gonna ride your wild horses / who's gonna drown in your blue sea"
and
"You're dangerous / you don't know what you want"

Who and what I am/I want are constantly changing with every step "forward." Of course I don't know what I want. Of course I don't know if I'm going to be riding wild horses or drowning in blue seas. Isn't that the whole point? It can be a big black hole of horror or it can be exhilarating. It's perspective -- but most importantly, it's my perspective that defines it. No one else's. As long as I am calling the shots, forward is any direction I make it.

"Don't turn around and don't look back
Come on now love, don't you look back."