Wednesday, January 26, 2011

the age at odds

i've found myself incessantly whistling one tune in the last couple of weeks. whenever i turn on my ipod, it's usually the last track i listened to, and the one that urged me to put my headphones in in the first place.
the opening ekg beeps give me a glimpse of single individual's heartbeat as he realizes his circumstances are worse than he thought. in an instant the storm is upon him, and the heaving synthesized sounds swell like waves of pixels crashing over the gunnels of his tormented ship. in the darkness that is only broken by fluorescent flashes of lighting he calculates the odds. they are against him. he considers giving up, yielding his vessel and soul to the ocean below him, but in a moment of clarity he finds resolve. "when i die, when i die, i'll rot. but when i live, when i live, i'll give it all i've got." he returns to the helm, sets his course against the waves, and then reefs and trims every sail to utilize the gusts that once threatened his life to, instead, bring him to safety. through the whole of it he sends up a prayer of promise to be better if he makes it out alive.
perhaps i feel an affinity for this song because i daily feel as if i'm tossed on a sea of advertisements, sensationalism, and stimulation. some say the world will end with fire and some in ice, but to me it seems that it will drown in an ocean of pixels, flashing banner ads, and self-perpetuating algorithms - a neon apocalypse. at this point i feel as if i'm calculating the adz, and they are against me. there are so many decisions to make that will affect so much in the future, and there are so many sources competing for my attention. the waves are incessant and never let me dry out and think. am i the lost of lost? i could just give up and let myself be carried overboard. or i could grip the helm, trim my passions, and direct my course against the opposition. "when i live, when i live, i'll give it all i've got."

1 comment:

  1. i love whenever i find out we've been in love with the same album at the same time. when it first came out, i listened to it once and pretty much put it away. i was disappointed in the abrasiveness. but then i realized sufjan's only doing what i love him for--embracing the times not only through his lyrics, but through the sound in the music. his albums before 2010 are more comfortable now, which is fitting, and now it's harder listening to someting relflecting the chaos of the more recent world events. i love "i want to be well". and hate it. haha.

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