wound / wound wind / wind | whoa-whoa-woe: Nothing Gets Crossed Out by...

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Nothing Gets Crossed Out by Bright Eyes.

I almost never listen to Bright Eyes, just when I am recovering from an illness or a hangover. Also, sometimes, when I’m drinking alone in a certain mood. In those three circumstances, it can be just the stuff.

There was a point in time when I was pretty sure Conor Oberst was the only dude still in this shit for nothing more than the sake of making music - yeah ok, glossing over the myriad of benefits that come from not having a “real job” because they tend to be at the very least balanced out by all of the stresses that also come from not having a real job. (If you need an illustration: picture any combination of the stresses that come from not having a job at all, then add the responsibility of contract fulfillment.) There are five or six of Bright Eyes’ albums which come closer than anything else to musical Guilty Pleasures for me because, while I will submit that they’re sentimental and at times melodramatic and easily dated/overlooked because of the age of their authors, if you can’t look past that (hell, even take a second to look at two things at once, and include it in your critique) and understand the strength of the songwriting here then realistically we probably don’t have a whole lot to connect over ‘inna final analysis.’

I’d like to take a second and map this out. This song was released in 2002, with Fevers and Mirrors coming out two years prior. So figure Connor Oberst was somewhere between 20 and 21 years old when he wrote this thing. Possibly younger depending upon if he’d been sitting on it and just didn’t see it fitting with the last record. Between alcoholism exacerbated by anxiety/depression, a budding problem with coke - among other things, I’m sure - and all the regular desperation that comes with just entering your second decade on this planet, who has time to ruminate on ideas like the importance of keeping yourself moving? How, beyond all of it, the only thing left, the only thing that really matters, is to keep your own engine running? Who understands that sort of thing at twenty well enough to articulate it like this?

An idea like this is good because it works independent of whether you can see its guts or not. I know people who have lived through these same things, which makes it that much more incredible that most people living through way, way less than this have trouble coming to these realizations on their own. Some can barely get by on the help that’s being pushed on them. Blind.

Guess I’ll just keep moving. Someday, maybe, I’ll get to where I’m going.