Holy fucking shit, Morning View is 23 years old? I was a junior in high school when I bought that CD and found its highs bright and beautiful, and its lows so surprisingly dark that I didn’t spend much time with them – which is weird to realize since I’ve always loved the dark stuff. Maybe that’s because I played Incubus when I wanted to feel more connected to the world, not less.
Morning View was way moodier than Make Yourself; we got a taste of some post-breakup depression, though I hardly recognized it for that at the time. I was hooked by the stuff that made it to the radio – Warning being the darkest of the songs that I could vibe with. Even so, it was with an avoidant wariness of how the lyrics were aimed at personalities like mine. “That won’t be me,” I assured myself.
Ha.
Brandon’s voice exposes the passage of time in this new version of Echo; higher pitched, more nasally than the original. I figured maybe he doesn’t have the same lung capacity that he used to, but then the band does something at the end of this version… Something far more worthy of that line in the chorus: “Could you show me, dear, something I’ve not seen? Something infinitely interesting?”
And they do. It delivers. And Brandon’s lung capacity has in fact not diminished.
Then Pearl Jam released Dark Matter. Eddie Vedder sounds the same, but before we hear him, we recognize Matt Cameron. I guess from having been a fan of Soundgarden since I was 10, I feel I can recognize the man behind the drum kit.
This song slaps. The only two PJ albums I know top to bottom are Ten and Vs. After that, they lost me. I’ll come back for more of this, though.
Oh wait, I was just reviewing their large discography of all the stuff I missed, and I remembered this disturbing animated video by Todd McFarlane.
Okay, so I’m posting fluff after warning about darker, heavier material coming up. You try writing your shame stories. And if you manage to complete that task, try posting them.
I am writing them, at least. I’m hammering them out a little at a time. I wish I could write it all out consistently at the level that I wrote Context, but it’s hard work, and as I mentioned in that post, hard work and I are mere acquaintances.
I’m also writing stories about self-destructive characters in hopes of shining a light on and purging my subconscious of such poisonous inclinations. That’s fucking hard, too.
Wish I had something profound or personal to close this with. I don’t. I do have a kind of date tomorrow for Valentine’s Day: my neighbor, who was also one of my clients when I was a caregiver last year, is going to meet me for Ash Wednesday Mass. Hopefully that’s not weird, and doesn’t invite weird.
Ash Wednesday is the only Mass I care to attend – I’m happy to skip Easter and Christmas, along with the rest of the year. I know that reveals a failure to truly appreciate what Church is about, but I’m wearing a black t-shirt depicting The Devil card from the Tarot. Expect absurd contradictions here.
Lent has always been my favorite part of the Catholic calendar; austerity as a means of spiritual purification is so appealing, as if I could just starve away the parts of me that are impure. That’s not how it works, and I have never felt purified by the experience, so I don’t know why I still find this part of the year so attractive.
In that vein, I’m curious to see what the Franciscan mystics of the Center for Action and Contemplation have in store these coming Fridays.
BLOG OF RHIANNIMATOR 