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Near Death Experience Experience
Andrew Bird
Break It Yourself
2012

I found that I could have gone in one of two directions this week.  The song I chose to post could either have been rage-fueled or kind of lighter and relatively uplifting.  I put aside the Hole (for now) and decided to go with this song off of Andrew Bird's new album.

The only good things about being stuck in that room in the high school basement were that a) I had just put a bunch of new music on my iPod; b) I was allowed to listen to it, loud, with my headphones comfortably hugging my head.  Putting on my headphones was like putting on a coat of armour...they were a much-needed protective barrier between myself and my surroundings. 

Sure, Hole more adequately drowned out the incessant beep, beep, beep of the computer server, but this song is what made my knees buckle (and not JUST because of the heat).  It sounds all dramatic-like, but hearing this song was like discovering beauty in this really grim place (I know there are worse conditions, but that room + that task + my brain = a pretty pessimistic outlook).  This song was like a flash of light.  I had to stop what I was doing to focus on all of the sounds layered one on top of the other (the hypnotizing strum of the guitar, the quiet ticking of a stopwatch, the shuffle across drum-skins, the plinking xylophone...).  I like the hints of Nick Cave and Beirut here (there's a similar kind of jumbled, gypsy quality to this song)--and, like the music of both those artists, I associate this song with warmth and growth...a lovely combination of both melancholy and optimism.

The chorus was the little shoulder-shake I needed when I was making myself increasingly miserable: "And we'll dance like cancer survivors/Like we're grateful simply to be alive."  This song was what I needed in that moment and, for that reason, I need to remember it.