It's not my fault really that Nottingham have had some p4k 'gems' in the past few weeks, and thus i am provoked most unfairly to keep these gigs in the blog roll, despite my reluctancy- i am reluctant. i am.....
On Monday night, The Antlers played at the Social....and it was incredible.
It seems we need to start providing bands with some sort of award if their live shows can actually outshine their album/hype mutualism. When i first listened to "Hospice" i thought it was an awesome album, as did probably everyone who bought/downloaded it. I tried my best to ignore the contentious maps of meaning through the inter-webs that crumbled around Pete Silberman's beautifully constructed tower as if it didn't exist- and i couldn't see it falter. I paid no attention to the lyrical density or the fact that albums like this can have real 'concepts'.
...But it became apparent to me on Monday night, that "Hospice" cannot be exclusively phlegmatic on any level- the more you listen to it, the more obvious the hidebound of someone's extremely painful experience, and it's quite frankly, terribly haunting. Not merely because of the emotional burden that goes hand in hand with scenes of illness, hospitals and death that form the bathing fluid of Hospice, but because these emotions can be so probing to even those who haven't fully experienced them.
Death is inevitable, and we all have death anxiety; Irvin D. Yalom (who wrote a wonderful collection of stories called "Love's Executioner and other tales of Psychotherapy") calls it the 'price of admission to self-awareness'. Everything i've realised is down to evolution and telekinesis.... and an extension of such is the way death anxiety works on a collective consciousness. Everyone knows what it is to die, what it means to not exist or to not have someone else exist, to come to terms with the fact that it's a lonely old world and no one person has much of a chance of existing with you forever, no matter how much you love them or need them or want them.
It's also only when we face death that we have the sudden capacity to do remarkable things for others and for ourselves.
'though the fact of death destroys us, the idea of death can save us'
the fact is that she won't survive, the idea is that i keep bedside manners and do the best i can.....which means she can throw the thermometer right back at me if she wants to, she can scream and curse and then apologise as many times over as she wants, she can tell me to leave because she doesn't like my tone, even though i'm only trying to make her smile, but something keeps me standing by the hospital bed.
Peter Silberman's lyrics cut through me like a thousand knives; all of which can be found very neatly presented here
"There's a bear inside your stomach, a cubs been kicking you for weeks, and if this isn't all a dream, then we'll cut him from beneath. Well we're not scared of making caves, or finding food for him to eat. We're terrified of one another, terrified of what that means. But we'll make only quick decisions, and you'll keep me in the waiting room, and all the while i'll know we're fucked and not getting un-fucked soon. When we get home we're bigger strangers, than we've ever been before. You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor..."
I guess the track "Bear" is somewhat obviously touching on the idea of abortion, but it kinda reminded me about a form of cancer therapy based on 'visual imaging'; an admittedly pathetic sense of self-healing where the patient creates a visual metaphor for their chemotherapy fighting against a visual metaphor for their cancer. I thought of the bear inside her stomach as this wild and growing tumour in her body, and them not feeling scared of finding food and caves was the created sense of boldness they both had in getting through chemotherapy, he mentions making 'all the right appointments' in an earlier verse, and being terrified of one another stands for each others situations; one coping with a terminal illness and the other knowing and sensing the huge loss that is about to present itself, yet somehow the relationship needs to stay together, until it is no more.
You think you can say everything to someone who you know is going away for a very long time, but things just don't work that way, and all you care is that they don't notice how scared you are. I didn't ever intend to cut these lyrics up like this, but they come alive on that album, and whatever it means, the last thing i want to do is vitiate them. But what is this album if it isn't one to rip up? Hospice is so overexposed, it's actually underexposed....you can't understand another person's grief. This is where collective consciousness doesn't work.
I'm scared to sleep i hate my voice 'cause it only makes you angry. I only talk when you are sleeping. That's when i tell you everything, and i imagine that somehow you're going to hear me'.
When i try to move my arms sometimes, they weight too much to lift. I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift). But you return to me at night, just when i think i may have fallen asleep. your face is up against mine, and i'm too terrified to speak................
