Well, it's been quite some time since I last wrote. A lot has happened. I'm in a whole new city with all-new bills, all-new streets, and all-new weather. But I'm still the same guy, and I've still got the same job. Maybe I'll have an all-new work ethic when it comes to this blog. Only time will tell I guess.
Anyways, there have been a lot of things on my mind in the time since I last wrote almost three months ago, and I'm going to try to recap some of them on here over the next week or so. I'll do my best. And I do actually have something new to post, too - I'm not just writing to make myself feel better about my "Last Post" date. Here it is...
“I read in the paper, today… it’s been a record year for rainfall.”
I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately. I like the lyrics but I know that I like the song because of the mood the guitar and banjo create. That kind of thing will get me every time. Maybe I just like to feel melancholy, or maybe I just like melancholy music – but Colin Meloy could probably sing about rainbows and dandelions and bunny rabbits and I’d like this song just as much. Or nearly as much.
The beauty of owning music, though, is being able to eventually get over the sounds and take a listen to what the song is really about. This song is, in my mind, about a relationship fading out, and one’s ability to only see the gray mist that comes with the rain, as opposed to the blue sky that came before or the green grass that comes after.
That being said, the opening line is evocative enough to be the only one.
Can you imagine reading that you were living through the year of the most rainfall in history? It’d have to seem fortuitous. It’d have to seem unfortunate but unavoidable. It’d have to seem… like a raincloud was following you around? Ridiculous.
Because that’s the thing… the weather has an undeniable power over our perception of our everyday lives. It has an inexplicable power to change our moods and determine our actions. But it’s still just chance. We can’t predict it and we can’t really change it. The idea of a “record year for rainfall” being significant is about as ludicrous as the idea of having your own personal rain cloud. But it has traction, to be sure.
I think it’s a bit ironic, though, to think about the possibility of a record year for rainfall in times like this. If there has been ever been a year when rainfall should be entirely inconsequential, hasn’t it been this one? People losing jobs at a ridiculous rate, epic bailouts, talk of IOU’s instead of tax returns and mail only five days a week?
I read in the paper, today… it’s been a record year for economic downturn.
Nevertheless, I’d wager that no popular music artist has ever started a song with that line. Why is that? Well, probably because it’s too real.
That’s the beauty of the weather, right? It can be another day of rain – or the harbinger of the end of an empire (or relationship). For some reason, people love to let the things that that can’t be controlled act as their barometers. Maybe it’s a way to defer the reality of the situation that sits in front of us. Or, beyond that, maybe it’s just comforting to assign the realest things in life to forces beyond human control.
Whatever the case, I find it fascinating to observe the ways that this happens in art. I know that I, for one, connect more to “A Record Year for Rainfall” than I would to “A Record Year for Downturn” – even though I read the same exact meaning into both of them. That’s probably why I like the Decemberists so much. I love their story songs, precisely because what they manage to capture so beautifully with their tales of lost love, time at sea, failing on the playing field, and even a crane wife are the exact same emotions that I experience in my mundane, everyday life.
I think I’ve noticed a similar phenomenon in a recent resurgence of X-Files obsession. I love The X-Files. Love it. And as I’ve been watching it again lately, and reading about it online, I’ve come across – repeatedly – references to how the show “captured 90’s paranoia about the government, black vans, and mysterious helicopters.”
See, people don’t want their governments to be incomprehensible because they are overblown, greedy, and prone to stupid decisions in their quests to satisfy everyone; they want their governments to be incomprehensible because they are constantly trying to keep the public in the dark… about aliens, or human experiments, or unthinkable technology.
People don’t want the sign of dismal times to be the unemployment rate; they want it to be an immutable act of God.
I think this happens because of an unconscious understanding that if we buy into the magical worlds that artists are able to create, and see even a small part of ourselves there, then we elevate ourselves to the level of “magical.” Is that a productive behavior? Is it a fear response, a coping mechanism? Or a source of motivation, or self-worth? I don’t know the answers to those questions. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer them. But I do think I’m on solid footing when I say that most people are just looking for some kind of meaning.
So is that real meaning? The kind that comes from words on a page, notes in the ear, or images on a screen? I don’t know. Maybe it unlocks real meaning – or maybe its only fleeting.
But the people will always need something to believe in.
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