The View From Scranton

A Song of Laughing and Forgetting

We read ourselves into things. I do anyway. Sometimes I read the wrong things. Sometimes I read the right things for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I just read it all wrong. But for some humdrum reason, it's always me at the core.

Like in Elbow's Forget Myself. A read of a telling tells me I was way off; it's a Friday Night bit of a fright song about a cat making the prowl around Piccadilly. Seems said cat's got a lot to think about, specifically (I think) his kitten. He's a bit desolate, despondent almost, and he cranks a rankled eye-view of the punters as a result.

I got the last part, the think about, and I ran. I felt it, I walked it, I wore it. And I guess I got it all wrong. But oh how right it did feel. Still does. Maybe even more so.

To me Forget Myself is more than just a Friday night fright song about a cat who goes prowling, I take it as a song about laughter and forgetting, or, perhaps, laughing about the idea of forgetting. Beneath the smirk and the smile lies a reveal so close to the soul that I can't help cozying up to it. At the library I Yahooed the video to a constant, then a coincident in Paste allowed the same at the House. Play, play and more play. Till there is no play left in me. Then I play some more. And each and every time I'm struck by a chorus of resound:

No, I know, I won't forget you
But I'd forget myself
If the city would forgive me

Right, bright, and brilliant. And, to this bull’s-eyed soul, rightly, brightly, brilliantly on target. So damn simple it hurts double. I get that sinking feeling a lot, the clear and ever present memory of a face I can't forget, a regret that I'm doomed to remember. Miami, New York, Chicago, London, even Buffalo – I've hurt and burned and crashed and double-crossed 'em all. When you wrong an entire someone you scar; when you wrong an entire city, you've gota go for complete and utter forgetting and forgiveness.

I’ve done both. Of course the wrongings have a face, faces, or, in my case, many, many faces. I won't name names – they've suffered enough at my scarred hands – but I might name instance. Instances. Not so quiet thefts, not so clever lies, borrowings and burdenings and all around baddenings. Twofold. Thricefold. Tenfold. Twenty. There comes a point when counting just doesn't add up.

Elbow’s angle sticks in the crook of my maw. “Look for the plot where I can bury my broken heart” is to me, for me, a tear that still streams. “Are you falling in love with every second song?” is a question I answer with Yes. I’m still looking for the plot of gold, and I’m still falling in love, every second song or so, even if it is from a distance, with a distant. There’s not much laughter, and seldom any forgetting, but I’m getting there. With Elbow’s angling, I’ll be getting there tunefully.

posted by John Hood. @ 7:47 PM