For the love, comes the burning young/ From the liver, sweating through your tongue

What do I think of the new Bon Iver album? I know you’re curious. It’s a brilliantly floaty, dreamy, melancholy story. Every so often, the tone lifts enough to leave a break for breath amidst all the grief, because despite itself, this album is not desperate. There seems to be hope. Maybe it’s the way Justin Vernon’s voice goes up with the crescendo of the melody and rhythm sometimes, which is reminiscent of church music. I’m thinking particularly of “Towers” when I say this. Not that “Towers” can be called a happy song. It’s just got some hope. I don’t know about anyone else, but when you’ve got a hole in your life, a lovesickness that keeps you up at night, a propensity to (delicately) use substances for some kind of relief, hope is good. My only issue with the album is the last song. It sounds like it was stolen from the GAYNGS record (one of Vernon’s other bands). GAYNGS’ music is a bit too close to cheesy 80’s synth-pop for me. Why end the album this way? It’s already a short listen, and to leave the previous, beautiful wistfulness of the earlier songs is a mistake. When I listen to the album straight through, which I, so far, have done every time, namely in the dark, on one or more of aforementioned substances, a body floating in a small yellow raft through the Pacific, looking up at all the fucking stars and feeling so alone, so lonely, so captivated by this aloneness that it almost seems right, that there can be nothing else at that moment, despite who I might be missing or the subsequent emptiness that enters, which feels like a kind of cleansing at least, when I listen to the album straight through, the last song doesn’t fit, and suddenly I am back in my bed, getting up to change the track back to one and start over.  

Also, just in case anyone is wondering, I watched an old chick flick last night, called Under the Tuscan Sun. This is not a good movie, but I enjoyed it, like I am apt to. Somewhere in the middle, the main character reminded me of something true, something I have been overlooking, despite how true it is. Heartbreak doesn’t kill us (even though maybe it should, to avoid the agony that comes after). Not only am I not dead, but I am living in a new city, making new friends, still growing, still learning, still keeping it together, sometimes letting the wildness (that’s thank fucking god still there) inside me out, and it’s gradually getting easier, like it always was going to.