Mono no aware, in Lego, heart and stereo
In the Post story on a YouTube star, now getting requests: "It's like you are a kid playing with Legos and someone says, 'Build this house for me.' And you are like, 'Oh, okay, I get it. I'm in construction now.' "
Last week's thing was an attempt of sorts to get back to playing with Legos. To get out of a blockquote slump, literally and figuratively, start with a thought and pour all shapes and colors of loose bricks onto the table to see what you build. What results — a baseball park, a North Pole workshop, the house where you stay at the beach — is going to look ridiculous on the table next to the formal, instructed constructions, but at least you remember how to create. You remind yourself you can.
The thought last week was considering heart as distinct from self. The former's part of the latter, but they're not the same, not when a mind and body (and soul, as one friend added later) are in there too. Each of the self's parts also has to live in the world, and the heart, the most involuntary and reactionary of the bunch, has to work hardest to fit in.
The songs sitting in the back of my mind at the time and through the past couple weeks have been two from odd corners of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which I finally saw, years overdue. Early in the movie, there's Not for the Season (lyrics and concert video) eventually released outside Wilco, and I've been struggling to interpret it: "Summer comes and gravity undoes you / You're happy because of the lovely way the sunshine bends / Hiding from your close friends / Weeding out the weekends." Then chorus: "Candy left over from Halloween / A unified theory of everything / Love left over from lovers leaving / Books, they all know they're not worth reading / It's not for the season."
SongMeanings.net has no great answers on it. Says the most recent song commenter, "This song means to me that Jeff Tweedy is a freakin' genius." But another reader points in a direction, "The words are kind of depressing, but there's a kind of unexplainable hope in there." It's attempting to explain that hope that turns up a good try at a meaning. A Stylus piece says of the song, "The eighteenth century literary critic Motoori Norinaga coined the term mono no aware to describe Japanese literature that emphasized the deep impression of time's passage and combined a serene acceptance of life's transience with an appreciation of 'the gentle pleasures found in our mundane pursuits.' "
You know this blog and you know me — I like and fight with this idea. In an old posting, it was the almost-quiet of Springsteen's County Fair that caught my attention one night, walking in late. The annual arrival of the fair and its traditions — known too well, in good ways — are set against the last line (lyrics and music), home and holding the girl in the yard after the fair, "Oh I wish, I'd never have to let this moment go."
You clearly can't hold on, but you count on the fair and night returning. There are different verisons of Not for the Season out there, studio and live. I think I like the rock one the best, a beat ongoing. Audio is here.
But onto the other I Am Trying to Break Your Heart song that's been on my mind, a rare cover: Be Not So Fearful. Mp3 here, lyrics are here, yes.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:42 PM
you JUST saw that movie?! it makes me question our whole friendship that you waited this long! (did the jay bennett thing make you rent it?)
i havent listened yankee hotel foxtrot in ages. it blows when one of your seminal life soundtracks gets ruined by breakup associations, but i guess that all fits into the stylus reading of that song (and the album as a whole). i have to say that i've gotten less joy out of parsing the meaning of the words than i have from letting the poetry of them wash through – i love the way things like "i am an american aquarium drinker" make no sense but resonate so beautifully as part of a whole. but then of course there are the cruelly direct choruses that cut to the heart things–and in any other hands would sound hackyneyed (I know this isn't what you were wanting me to say, How can I get closer and be further away, From the truth that proves it's beautiful to lie. I've got reservations about so many things…). Oh Jeff Tweedy. I wish I knew how to quit you.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:12 PM
I know! Bizarre, right? A NU friend pushed me to bump it up my Netflix list, and Jay's lawsuit contributed too. Watched it a week or two before the death, so sad. It's been nice to read all of GloNo's coverage of him and understand things better. "21 Reasons Why Jay Bennett Should Be Back In Wilco" is great.
"Wash through" … good verb. Couldn't help but sing the rest of that Reservations line out loud after reading what you'd put down. I wish the new album had more of that sensation. I know I've said this before, but here's hoping it will when played live.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:02 PM
there are parts of their first four or five albums that can still stop me in my tracks regardless of what bar/urban outfitters/starbucks mix they show up on…but the more recent stuff feels a more distant for me, as if the (sometimes) self-indulgent noodling distracts from whatever tweedy is getting at. but you're right, with them, sometimes you need a different context (i.e. live shows) for the music to unfold. unfortunately their new york show sold out in a hot five minutes. bums me out cause they're playing the cyclones stadium in brooklyn – i can't imagine a better setting than a minor league ball park with the lights of coney island blinking in the background.