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Regret
St. Vincent
St. Vincent
2014

I just finished reading Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and have that choked up, bereft feeling that comes with reaching the end of a really good book.  The Goldfinch--and I know you've experienced this too--had so much heft.  The thing was an three pound beast; my shoulders sagged under the weight of it when I crammed it into my backpack; my wrists and forearms would get pins and needles from holding it up on my lap.  That and it was a kind of mental weight.  Something I carried around with me at the back of my mind the entire time I read it.

This, in a roundabout way (as with so many of my posts, and discussions of music; music cannot always stand on its own--it is so tied up with other thoughts and feelings and moments and memories) brings me to St. Vincent.  For some reason, she has always been relegated to the periphery (in that I listen to her music, but never really connect to it) until now.  It was in listening to her newest album that something finally clicked (and the thing was, I had so wanted it to click before...that, on downloading this album, I had kind of given up? that I presumed another cursory listen, a brief connection to a few songs, before, finally, deletion from my iPod).  Sometimes with music (as with so many things) everything has to align.

"And isn't that the point of things--beautiful things--that they connect you to some larger beauty?"

This music (and the words above--a quotation from the last few pages of The Goldfinch) fills me up.  Makes me feel something beyond myself.  I listened to album on repeat while doing my laundry and reading (I had, either sensibly or stupidly, decided to lug the beast along with four over-stuffed bags of laundry to the laundromat) and, by Sunday night, listened with headphones clamped on, sound turned way up (too high, probably...but it was one of those moments where the sound was just so beautiful that I couldn't seem to help it) and my limbs loose with wine. 

After almost posting another song off of the album, I came back to "Regret"...I couldn't help but appreciate the fact that regret is such a pervasive theme in Tartt's novel.  "Regret the words I've bitten/More than, the ones I ever said"...as someone who has such a hard time getting words out...negotiating that chasm between a thought and voice...how could this line not instantly pierce me--like an arrow through the heart.  "Regret" is the song that pulled me in (right from that jittery guitar line at the beginning); the one that made me (gushingly) love St. Vincent.