For some reason that still remains a mystery to me, Josh Ritter's recent album The Beast in Its Tracks was the record I returned to again and again this summer. Dislocated from my regular residence (though I would hesitate to call it my "home") for the purposes of study, I found myself gathered with a small group for an eight-week period devoted to reading and study. It was a wonderful time of learning, discovery, and mirth (the dorm chalk board was a never ending supply of nerdiness); and yet it was very temporary. By the time we were friends and settled it was time to return home to students and jobs. The summer, which earlier seemed so laden with promise, passed.
The Beast in Its Tracks is a breakup and recovery (new girl!) album for Ritter, neither which I empathize with at the moment (that would require there to be girls in this state, for starters). But in-between the central emotions of love and loss runs a quiet theme of sentimentally, of memory and wishes for good things. That girl looks like your old lover, prompting an act of recall and memory; in the same way the light at evening or the way a tree frames the sky might remind one of childhood or a specific moment of the past. I suspect it is these themes—perhaps with a touch of my occasional romantic—that drew me in, especially as I was dislocated from my regular habits and thrust into new ones with new people. Even in good times we remember the old, and love is not just something that touches people, but every aspect of our beings. The things we cherish, devout our leisure to, practice, accomplish of our own will—these are expressions of love, recognized or not, perverted or pure. Through his focus on the pain of romantic memory, Ritter touches something that runs even deeper through our veins.
"A Certain Light," John Ritter from The Beast in Its Tracks, 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment
You are a real person, don't make me prove otherwise.