Straight to You

"I don't believe in an interventionist God. But I know, darlin' that you do." Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, "Into My Arms."

Sometimes I don't feel like communicating anything. Something smolders inside of me, a fire that consumes thought. Call it existential despair. It's a feeling of resignation in the face of oblivion and my inevitable lonely death. I mean in the sense that I'm doomed to face it by myself, probably in the company of strangers. But perhaps with no one with me.

I remember the feeling of wanting someone with me. I can't swim back through the years toward that hope. It's meaningless now. I can't reclaim that person. He's a complete stranger.

At any rate, this song brings back memories of a girl. An era. A time and place. Partly gothic (as in the sense of "goth" music), melancholy post-punk, it has a pop sensibility nonetheless. I'm not sure what I'm allowed as far as "fair use" and quoting song lyrics, but it informs us that "Heaven has denied us its kingdom," and that the saints are all drunk, and "howling at the moon."

"Chariots of angels are colliding..."

As Nick croons, "This is the time of our great undoing..."

And now I've said enough. Wherever that girl is today, over twenty years on, this song goes out to her. Straight to you, baby. Someday we'll meet again.

(Yeah, I know. The quote at the beginning is from an entirely different song. But it's still Nick Cave. And it still is relevant. Believe me.)

And now I want to be silent once more.