"Said she knows she lived through it, to get to this moment"
On realizing unrealized changes and "Graceland Too"
These days I can’t stop thinking about LimeWire, the now-defunct service where you could easily cop Fergie’s “London Bridge” a month after it was out.
I remember the ease, most of all. It was 2006 and I was 11 at the time: obviously I wasn’t thinking about what this act of theft and its surrounding lack of guilt says about the industry or the prevailing order in which this industry is governed. Who’s to say who steals what?
When I was younger, incentives to find new music took shape in charts and colorful music videos. No magazines. The flashier, the better. A few years later, when I was in high school, LimeWire died and vanity came along — music morphed into a crest, a badge to either hide or flash.
Easy to know where I’m going with this and if you have your guesses: you’re probably right. It’s about how I’ve stopped doing all this. Not the whole stealing thing, but just finding a reason to do so. I wouldn’t pin this on, like, Spotify — if anything, the wealth it offers promises more ease.
I guess I just stopped caring.
I used to care more about things, honestly. Or so I think. This whole pandemic thing took with it my ability to detect optimism in…whichever the world works now: how it upends lives, how it chips away at freedom, how it treats its tired nurses. More often than not, civility is now theater to me. In April, something terrible happened to an important person in my life and it blew up any semblance of hope I would’ve been way too shy to express anyway.
Looking for new music would’ve been nice. But I’m stuck. Even certain scents lost their paired memories these days.
“Graceland Too” is a folk song nestled within the album Punisher by the Californian musician Phoebe Bridgers. Its banjo, guitars, three-part harmony — shared with the musicians Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker — shine unwavering.
It’s the one rare gem in a year full of blights.
This whole album is rad, in fact. I used to signpost a certain year by the musicians or bands I was obsessed by. In 2015, it was Sleater-Kinney, the indie rock band. In all of 2016 and some of 2017, it was Radiohead.
I remember listening to “Graceland Too” for the first time right after it came out and feeling moved. I remember feeling like I hadn’t felt this way. I felt like every memory I would have from that day on would be tied to this song, however bad it was gonna be.
What “Graceland Too” didn’t do, however, was fill me with hope.
To be clear: I wish it had.
I mean this year is a lot. Not for everybody; some people can easily escape from it. Even monotony is a privilege to some people. The only constant thing I do for work everyday is tally up COVID-19 deaths. Not the most challenging stuff, sure, but it’s doing a number on me.
Political upheavals never amount to hope, at least where I am. I like what I do for work, but I think my industry neither sows nor reaps hope. I treat authorities with suspicion — I take their words disbelievingly.
But stuff like “Graceland Too” is my private isolation, along with the smiles and hellos from the important people in my life. I found myself singing more, to myself anyway: first this song, then some other songs. I check out the weekly new releases recommendation list everyday. I mean Jesus H. Christ I even took up tennis.
I was hoping writing this thing — or just writing — would be a sign that I could still hold out some hope. Nothing’s come up yet. Give it a little while though I’m sure something will.