Yuk Bon

YouTube – Animal Collective – Cuckoo Cuckoo Malta Festival 2006.

I don’t know, I kept dismissing Animal Collective for years — too twee, too annoying, too faux-artsy-fartsy. And then I heard this song and I couldn’t stop listening to it, sad chaotic and I didn’t know why; and then I heard “what would I want? sky” and I fell in love with the singalong and “My Girls” is very sweet and bizarro like a male Bjork. But I kept coming back to “Cuckoo Cuckoo”. In the broader sense it’s about losing childhood and sorrow, but in the more specific sense I am pretty sure it’s about a miscarriage. Note the album version has the last verse as “where’s my friend i wanna hold him tight” but this live version it’s definitely “where’s my wife i wanna hold her tight”. The piano part samples are so mellow and ordered — I want to say Chopin but it doesn’t feel sharp enough and I’m too lazy to google it out. Liszt maybe?

How I lost my boy

The king in I died
He kept floating past my eyes
And singing his songs
Life was good now death’s all wrong
Cause you can’t feel a thing
No heart flutters in late spring
You just drift and pray
For sun kissed golden days

And I can’t hold what’s in my hand
Don’t do any good to say this isn’t what I planned
And little kids sliding down the steel park slide
Little kids can’t play with things that have died
Sometimes all I want is one favorite song
And two to three minutes don’t seem so long
And where’s my mom I want to hold her tight
She’s so far away from crowded nights
I’m going cuckoo cuckoo
We’re all going cuckoo cuckoo

He said please stay
You can see me, don’t go away
I can’t see the landscape
Please describe its amaranthine haze
It’s odd where I am
There are people you’re not like them
They just look away
For rain quenched golden days

And my tears quench five feet of lawn
And I can scream, but I cannot yawn
And people gonna come and people gonna cry
He just woke and dreamt and ate and died
Don’t try and erase what you have done
Put your fingers in a mouth and kiss it if it wants
And where’s my wife, I want to hold her tight
He’s so far away from mountain lights
I’m going cuckoo cuckoo
We’re all going cuckoo cuckoo

i finally stopped hating my personal little slice of hurt in the world, thursday 2 weeks ago at 2am.

Another year, and it gets further away and it hurts less, I guess. Eventually I will be able to stop feeling it at all. And if there were even the slightest bit of genuine sorry, we could be friends. Such a bitter pill. Last night at the big B, rockin’ it with Tai-tai:

me: So I’m sad.
tai-tai: Why?
me: because it’s the 4th of July.
tai-tai: So?
me: It’s my anniversary for when my drama-llama bullshit happened.
tai-tai: oh.
me: I mean, I bet you don’t even remember when the thing with your sister happened.
tai-tai: no, I don’t know the day or even the month. I remember where i was and what I was doing.
me: but that’s my point. I can’t forget, and even if I did, there’s fucking fireworks to remind me.
tai-tai: like a party! YAY!

in which Sterling provides an apt summary:
“I consider it my personal Vietnam. If I had gone in and struck hard and fast and all in one go, none of that shit would have gone down. But because I didn’t, because I took it slow, I sabotaged myself. And I think it was because [removed].”
“…So you consider it all your fault?”
“Yes.”
“And none of it would have happened and [removed] would still be friends with [removed].”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of guilt.”

in which Laura considers the possibility that there may be a better way to handle situations
Laura: so, he is right. we do need more time. though i think he went about it totally wrong. but, i do realize he doesnt have the emotional capability/tact that i hhave
(erm, maybe i dont always hav tact)
David: like when you laughed at [laura's ex-boyfriend]‘s naked erection?
Laura: yes
David: some people might say that was …. less than fully tactful

in which Little Trouble Girl summarizes her complex love life:
“So I’m going to see my husband in the hospital, but I stopped by to have lunch with my boyfriend — that I’m not having sex with because he’s married — to tell him about how I didn’t get laid last night with my coworker/crush because he couldn’t get it hard despite a long blowjob and to complain about how my fuckbuddy just left for [unnamed country] which is good because we might be developing feelings for each other. Which would be bad.”

in which i make an ass of myself at a party:
“dude i was in college when you were still sucking your momma’s dick!”
“you know my mom’s dead, right?”

So I come in to the restaurant and sit down and say “Hey! Sorry I’m late, your tits look great!”
To which she says: “They should, I’m pregnant.”

She had broken up with her boyfriend recently, just…differences, you know? and the short version is that one time a month ago they fucked up, and now my friend is getting an abortion, and is horrified and guilty and I feel sorrow for her. It’s the right choice for her, and it’s excruciating bordering on the unbearable for her to choose this.

I’ve had other people in my life who had them — a high school friend during my Christian phase who was afraid to tell me because she thought I would take it poorly, another was someone I drove ~400 miles to see because of it^1,2 (and she’d gotten another one I wasn’t supposed to know about, but we never spoke of it obviously) and then another who drunk on her birthday while talking about a mutual friend having a baby just dropped it in conversation matter-of-factly (in front of her current husband) about how she’d had one when 18. It’s heart-wrenching, it really is. Necessary and liberating in a way, and in many cases, it’s the only way that makes any sense. But still.

¹ If you’re still reading: you know who you are. Are you still reading? I wonder sometimes. I stopped trying to check; I figure if you can’t tell me, you just can’t.
² Technically, I went to cheer her up because of heartbreak. The Legendary Pink Dots’ song “Home” reminds me of this period, and I cannot listen to it more than once or twice a year (which sucks because it’s on my favorite LPD album, “The Maria Dimension”), because listening to it instantly brings me back to waking up slowly with the light, dim in the morning and the traffic slowly waking up and my back stiff from the mattress on the floor, the cat freaked out.