with love and squalor
Taken from bandersnatch_02, a chap whose little girl Esme is presumably named after one of the 7.5 best short stories (i.e., _Nine Stories_) I've ever read...
(It was originally five songs but what can I say, I whore my tears around...)
"What are six songs that make you cry (or, if you're a strong, silent type, get a lump in your throat)? Please list the tracks and artists, as well as any other pertinent information such as memories attached to the songs or the exact point in the song at which the tears start flowin' (or the lump starts...er...lumpin'?)"
1) ELLIOTT SMITH, "THE BIGGEST LIE": Does your favourite song on your most beloved record equal your favourite song? It just might. "The Biggest Lie" certainly has to be one of the best last songs on an album ever. It's just devastating--so simple and brief and pure and dark and sad, just acoustic guitar and Elliott's raggedly earnest voice, but the melody fucking kills me. I can't really intellectualize this one, so I won't even try.
Lump-inducing line(s): 1. "You spent everything you had/ You wanted everything to stop that bad" 2. "Oh we're so very precious, you and I/ And everything that you do makes me want to die"
Time I got verklempt: Several times at concerts, but notably a solo acoustic show at the tiny Maxwell's in Hoboken in '98.
Honourable mention: "Pitseleh", not only because it's a gorgeous song that showcases Smith's low-key virtuosity on the guitar and such lyrics as "I was bad news for you, just because"; but because not five minutes before I learned of his death I was randomly thinking of that song and how brilliant it was.
2) TOM WAITS, "MARTHA": Tom Waits has always worn many hats (literally and figuratively), and he wears 'em well, but all the way back in 1973, it was hard to predict how his straight-voiced, if lightly bourbon-glazed, piano balladeer would birth the "zoo-ba-da-ba-zoo-ba-da-ba" Bukowskiesque character or the guttural carny of later years. "Martha" is an epic--a painfully loaded song about reuniting with a lost love. To imagine forty years passing, being married to other people, while you reflect on your mistakes and hold onto memories of being "young and foolish" with each other....Jesus.
Lump-inducing line(s): The last line, actually: "And I remember quiet evenings, trembling close to you"
Time I got verklempt: Sitting by myself a few hours ago, which inspired me to write this entry.
3) IRON & WINE, "PASSING AFTERNOON": Closing one of my most essential albums, _Our Endless Numbered Days_ (the title is taken from this song), "Passing Afternoon" is a beautifully crafted portrait of regret and memory within a stifling marriage. Told in the voice of the lover she abandons for security and motherhood and "the hymns her mother sings", although it could just as easily be the husband who promised her a happy life in the ardent flush of youth and slowly withdrew over the years. Each verse represents a season in a lifetime, starting with summer, and growing more detached and resigned as time passes.
Lump-inducing line(s): 1. "But my hands remember hers, rollin' 'round the shaded ferns/ Naked arms, her secrets still, like songs I never learned" 2. "But she'll mend his tattered clothes and they'll kiss as if they know/ a baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone"
Time I got verklempt: Must have been on at least one of my characteristically long, ponderous walks in the spring of 2004, when I played the album (and this song in particular) constantly. I was thinking a lot about what I was going to do about my love life back then.
4) MITCH & MICKEY, "A KISS AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW" (from _A Mighty Wind_) : This song is merely achingly pretty out of context (and I know 'cuz I bought it off iTunes hoping to relive the tragic, er, magic), with lovely harmonies and autoharp strummin', but performed by the shellshocked Mitch and brittle Mickey--wonderfully played by Eugene Levy and Catherine O' Hara--with the "ocean of tears" that is the history between them, it's surprisingly and deeply poignant. My heart palpitates with theirs in that second-long moment of truth before their kiss.
Lump-inducing line: "Your kiss"...pause, as their faces awkwardly meet for the first kiss in over 20 years, pause..."there's a kiss at the end of the rainbow/ more precious than a pot of gold"
Time I got verklempt: Every time they sing it together, including the Oscars performance. And every time I try to sing it myself, my voice cracks and I can't go on.
5) THE MAGNETIC FIELDS: "ASLEEP AND DREAMING". Wistful and evocative, featuring Stephin Merritt as his vocally mournful best, a tinkly piano and Lemony Snicket on accordion. I will always associate this song with the Griffin.
Lump-inducing line: "You may not be beautiful but it's not for me to judge/ I don't know if you're beautiful because I love you too much"
Time I got verklempt: a free Magnetic Fields show at Battery City's Castle Clinton, summer 2000. The Griffin and I sat on a park bench and listened to the show from outside the venue since we couldn't get in.
6. NICO, "THESE DAYS": The fact that it appeared in a Kmart commercial will never negate how much this song about retreating from the world moves me. The guitar is unforgettable, the strings a perfect touch, the lyrics all-too-relatable, and Nico as the weary fuckup chanteuse....sigh. Elliott Smith did a superbly fitting cover of "These Days", which further reinforced my love of the song.
Lump-inducing line(s): 1. "I had a lover/ I don't think I'll risk another these days" 2. "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I have not forgotten them"
Time I got verklempt: As I wrote in a previous meme, this song perfectly scores one of my most personally stirring on-screen sex scenes (which like most of my faves doesn't involve actual sex, or in this case even physical touching)--the first slo-mo shot of Margot Tenenbaum getting off the bus and gliding her laconic, raccoon-eyed figure toward her lovelorn and tormented brother Richie in _The Royal Tenenbaums_.
Just barely missed the cut:
REM, "You Are the Everything". It remains one of the first and last times I can remember crying from happiness...in bed at about 5AM with my new boyfriend back in January '92. We'd been together for about two or three weeks and I truly couldn't believe things had worked out so well. The song had significance for us before our coupling, and that just did me in.
Gonzo's "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" from _The Muppet Movie_: (you've seen it, right? Well, then of course you understand. If you haven't, for shame! The movie's a fuckin' classic! Get thee to a Muppetry!)
"Pennies from Heaven" (extremely sad in context; a song of hope during the bleak days of the Depression)
"I'll be Home for Christmas" (yes, I'm a dork, but that "if only in my dreams" line gets me every goddamn time!)
(It was originally five songs but what can I say, I whore my tears around...)
"What are six songs that make you cry (or, if you're a strong, silent type, get a lump in your throat)? Please list the tracks and artists, as well as any other pertinent information such as memories attached to the songs or the exact point in the song at which the tears start flowin' (or the lump starts...er...lumpin'?)"
1) ELLIOTT SMITH, "THE BIGGEST LIE": Does your favourite song on your most beloved record equal your favourite song? It just might. "The Biggest Lie" certainly has to be one of the best last songs on an album ever. It's just devastating--so simple and brief and pure and dark and sad, just acoustic guitar and Elliott's raggedly earnest voice, but the melody fucking kills me. I can't really intellectualize this one, so I won't even try.
Lump-inducing line(s): 1. "You spent everything you had/ You wanted everything to stop that bad" 2. "Oh we're so very precious, you and I/ And everything that you do makes me want to die"
Time I got verklempt: Several times at concerts, but notably a solo acoustic show at the tiny Maxwell's in Hoboken in '98.
Honourable mention: "Pitseleh", not only because it's a gorgeous song that showcases Smith's low-key virtuosity on the guitar and such lyrics as "I was bad news for you, just because"; but because not five minutes before I learned of his death I was randomly thinking of that song and how brilliant it was.
2) TOM WAITS, "MARTHA": Tom Waits has always worn many hats (literally and figuratively), and he wears 'em well, but all the way back in 1973, it was hard to predict how his straight-voiced, if lightly bourbon-glazed, piano balladeer would birth the "zoo-ba-da-ba-zoo-ba-da-ba" Bukowskiesque character or the guttural carny of later years. "Martha" is an epic--a painfully loaded song about reuniting with a lost love. To imagine forty years passing, being married to other people, while you reflect on your mistakes and hold onto memories of being "young and foolish" with each other....Jesus.
Lump-inducing line(s): The last line, actually: "And I remember quiet evenings, trembling close to you"
Time I got verklempt: Sitting by myself a few hours ago, which inspired me to write this entry.
3) IRON & WINE, "PASSING AFTERNOON": Closing one of my most essential albums, _Our Endless Numbered Days_ (the title is taken from this song), "Passing Afternoon" is a beautifully crafted portrait of regret and memory within a stifling marriage. Told in the voice of the lover she abandons for security and motherhood and "the hymns her mother sings", although it could just as easily be the husband who promised her a happy life in the ardent flush of youth and slowly withdrew over the years. Each verse represents a season in a lifetime, starting with summer, and growing more detached and resigned as time passes.
Lump-inducing line(s): 1. "But my hands remember hers, rollin' 'round the shaded ferns/ Naked arms, her secrets still, like songs I never learned" 2. "But she'll mend his tattered clothes and they'll kiss as if they know/ a baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone"
Time I got verklempt: Must have been on at least one of my characteristically long, ponderous walks in the spring of 2004, when I played the album (and this song in particular) constantly. I was thinking a lot about what I was going to do about my love life back then.
4) MITCH & MICKEY, "A KISS AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW" (from _A Mighty Wind_) : This song is merely achingly pretty out of context (and I know 'cuz I bought it off iTunes hoping to relive the tragic, er, magic), with lovely harmonies and autoharp strummin', but performed by the shellshocked Mitch and brittle Mickey--wonderfully played by Eugene Levy and Catherine O' Hara--with the "ocean of tears" that is the history between them, it's surprisingly and deeply poignant. My heart palpitates with theirs in that second-long moment of truth before their kiss.
Lump-inducing line: "Your kiss"...pause, as their faces awkwardly meet for the first kiss in over 20 years, pause..."there's a kiss at the end of the rainbow/ more precious than a pot of gold"
Time I got verklempt: Every time they sing it together, including the Oscars performance. And every time I try to sing it myself, my voice cracks and I can't go on.
5) THE MAGNETIC FIELDS: "ASLEEP AND DREAMING". Wistful and evocative, featuring Stephin Merritt as his vocally mournful best, a tinkly piano and Lemony Snicket on accordion. I will always associate this song with the Griffin.
Lump-inducing line: "You may not be beautiful but it's not for me to judge/ I don't know if you're beautiful because I love you too much"
Time I got verklempt: a free Magnetic Fields show at Battery City's Castle Clinton, summer 2000. The Griffin and I sat on a park bench and listened to the show from outside the venue since we couldn't get in.
6. NICO, "THESE DAYS": The fact that it appeared in a Kmart commercial will never negate how much this song about retreating from the world moves me. The guitar is unforgettable, the strings a perfect touch, the lyrics all-too-relatable, and Nico as the weary fuckup chanteuse....sigh. Elliott Smith did a superbly fitting cover of "These Days", which further reinforced my love of the song.
Lump-inducing line(s): 1. "I had a lover/ I don't think I'll risk another these days" 2. "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I have not forgotten them"
Time I got verklempt: As I wrote in a previous meme, this song perfectly scores one of my most personally stirring on-screen sex scenes (which like most of my faves doesn't involve actual sex, or in this case even physical touching)--the first slo-mo shot of Margot Tenenbaum getting off the bus and gliding her laconic, raccoon-eyed figure toward her lovelorn and tormented brother Richie in _The Royal Tenenbaums_.
Just barely missed the cut:
REM, "You Are the Everything". It remains one of the first and last times I can remember crying from happiness...in bed at about 5AM with my new boyfriend back in January '92. We'd been together for about two or three weeks and I truly couldn't believe things had worked out so well. The song had significance for us before our coupling, and that just did me in.
Gonzo's "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" from _The Muppet Movie_: (you've seen it, right? Well, then of course you understand. If you haven't, for shame! The movie's a fuckin' classic! Get thee to a Muppetry!)
"Pennies from Heaven" (extremely sad in context; a song of hope during the bleak days of the Depression)
"I'll be Home for Christmas" (yes, I'm a dork, but that "if only in my dreams" line gets me every goddamn time!)