Jason (jcreed) wrote,
Jason
jcreed

Feeling a little down today. Listened to "Mood Indigo", which still after all these years of listening to it is pure magic: all at once it's peaceful and exultant and exhausted and anguished and sexy as all hell. But above all it is a profound breath, a breathing-in, such as one might breathe in despair or joy; it is a sigh, a yawn, an inhalation of perfume, a craving gasp:

and after it we release whatever it was we had taken in so much of, let go of the weight and pressure in our lungs:

I mean, sure, I love the rest of the song, too, but those first (and final) four bars stand apart. Of all the instantiations of that I-II7-ii7-V7-I pattern (A-Train and the Super Mario 2 theme spring to mind) it's not just nice to listen to, it's not just beautiful, it's pure. I'm getting a bit ridiculously over-laudatory and mystical here, I know, but I really do feel like every time I listen to it I'm suddenly connected with all the past moments I've heard it, and disconnected with everything else about the present --- Borges had the right idea in a footnote in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: "Today, one of the churches of Tlön Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a certain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare."
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