5pm_weds | eighty-five (Reply)

Your Dirty Answer
Kristin Hersh
Sunny Border Blue
2001

I think I am out of practice with a) writing about music and my thoughts and/or feelings in relation to it and b) writing in general.

That, and I've been listening to music differently, it seems. Everything feels rushed. The times I do listen to music have become limited to a) the three or so songs I manage to hear during my crazed, sweaty, breathless walk to work in the morning or my just-want-to-get-home-this-very-instant walk at the end of the day and b) the music I hear over the sound of running water and bubbling, frying, or sizzling cooking food as I wash dishes and make dinner.

This arrangement is just not doing it for me.

It results in a kind of disconnect. A distance. An inability to express myself; to believe that there is art that exists that can make things like a mundane work day seem utterly unimportant.

All of that preamble and the only thing I can think to say is that I really love this song and have been itching to post it for a long time. Now seems right. I heard it recently during a purposefully languid walk from the elementary to the high school on a Friday afternoon. Kristin Hersh does so many things lyrically that I can only hope to aspire to in my own writing. Lines like "my fantasies are unloved histories" and "you're so rude/peeling mangoes on a fold-out couch" come to mind.

The combination of anger and defeat in both the words and tone of the song is stirring. Something like "I'm scooped out" followed by those rolling drums or the repeated warble of "what's your dirty answer" make my fingers curl into purposeful fists. The turn the song takes at around 3:20 is quietly explosive. Hersh's gravelly voice growls and the words tumble out in a slurred rush. Before everything falls apart she spits out "I am wiped/I'm so tired" and, despite this admission, sounds so powerful. I love that this part of the song is "carried" by those beautifully eerie "carry me(s)" that float in the background.