One of my co-workers gave me this album the week it came out and I listened to it almost non-stop. There are definitely some songs that are stronger than others, but it is a very raw, emotional album. I have a lot of respect for John Darniell's ability to actually have released these songs to the public. But then again, I'm writing about my life on the internet, so I guess I can relate to that level of wanting to share my life, my thoughts, my pain. I don't know why he does it, though I have some sense of why I do. It's like writing to a new person, sending a message in a bottle, or tying a note to a balloon and setting it into the air. The idea of reaching out to the humanity in another person, a complete stranger, and finding some sort of way to connect with them.
"I will find a crowd, and blend in for a minute, and I will try to find a little comfort in it, and I will get lonely and gasp for air, and send your name up from my lips like a signal flare"
About five years ago Ani DiFranco released a concert DVD called "Render". I bought it very shortly after it was released, being the loyal and rabid ani fan that I was at the time. That DVD marked the beginning of my pragmatism regarding ani. There is a moment in which ani scolds the audience for singing along with one of her songs, saying "you don't know this guy. you don't want to know this".
"Get Lonely" is voyeuristic, it feels like I'm reading someone's diary. When I saw the Mountain Goats perform songs from the album I almost wanted to hide my face. Imagine two people making out in front of an open window, they know they're doing it, and they know the window is open, and to some degree they know people will watch them, but still, you don't want them to look up and see you watching. But the analogy fails because the Mountain Goats charged admission.
No one at the Mountain Goats show scolded the audience for singing along, for finding their own meaning in someone else's description of their very personal experience. To me, that is one of the things that makes art so spectacular. I can create something that has specific and powerful meaning to me, and someone I don't even know can look at it and find their own meaning. And perhaps their meaning is similar to mine, and perhaps it is completely different, but the fact that they are able to create their own understanding of it amazes me. To have the audacity to believe that I could create something and then control it after setting it free from my brain... well, that is fallacy.
Copyright issues aside, and that is a discussion for a different time and probably a different forum... control is an illusion.
