Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Expo '86, by Death Cab For Cutie


I am waiting for something to go wrong
I am waiting for familiar resolve
I am waiting for another repeat
Another diet fed by crippling defeat

The whole of human physiology is so constructed that we should immediately flee or fight when we experience fear. And normally we do. But there are certain kinds of fears, so slow and quiet in their attack, that we are literally paralysed by them. They can remain for years, alternating between quiet and loud periods; sometimes they never go away at all. This is not a natural state for humans, and this fear is not a natural one like the fear of a predator, it is something entirely invented by the human mind. That’s why it’s so hard to explain, or to fight.

And I am waiting for that sense of relief
I am waiting for you to flee the scene
As if you held in your hand the smoking gun
It takes a certain kind of disposition to empathise with this kind of fear – the fear that everything good in life is by definition fleeting, especially the incomparable goodness of being with the person you love. The fear is that at any moment it will all be gone, and for no apparent reason. The upshot of this kind of paranoia is in any case a failure to properly enjoy the moment for what it offers. In a lot of cases, it can alienate the very person you hope to hold onto, and be a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. I wish I could stop it, but I just can’t. This song shows that I’m not alone in this irrational fear.


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3 comments:

Ernesto said...

"The fear is that at any moment it will all be gone, and for no apparent reason. The upshot of this kind of paranoia is in any case a failure to properly enjoy the moment for what it offers. In a lot of cases, it can alienate the very person you hope to hold onto, and be a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. I wish I could stop it, but I just can’t. This song shows that I’m not alone in this irrational fear."

Oh, I share that disposition. Of course you are not alone, my friend. It's not necessarily an "irrational fear", though: sometimes that fear comes from that very disposition, also a particular way of experiencing life. You are so right: the painful part is when it alienates that person you love and you fear so much losing (because we know, don't we, that we will "lose" them, sooner or later, also because we have never, we will never "had" them).

Thanks for a great post. I have added the mp3, hope you don't mind.

Small Ball of Anger said...

Yes, I agree completely, thanks for the comment.

And thanks also for adding the mp3. I will have to figure out how to do it, so I can do the same myself in future.

Ernesto said...

The mp3 does not seem to be working. May be because the file's name has got an apostrophe. I will try to upload it again over the next few days without it to see if it works.