You wrote in your blog that Chutes Too Narrow by the Shins was the best album of 2003. That’s the same year that Magnolia Electric Co. by Songs: Ohia came out, so if you were still alive I would call and tell you you were full of shit. But since I didn’t know you that well while you were here, I decided to hear you out. The verdict’s in: the record’s pretty good. Magnolia’s still better, but I’m glad you kept a blog so I can sort of get to know you.
My favorite on Chutes Too Narrow so far is “Young Pilgrims.” I wonder what your favorite was. From what I’ve seen on your blog, you never said.
“But I learned fast how to keep my head up ‘cause I / know there is this side of me that / wants to grab the yoke from the pilot and just / fly the whole mess into the sea”
With all that happened, I guess it’s hard not to interpret. To wonder at your premonitions, if there were any. At your warnings. To project, even. The wondering, the interpreting, the projection: all impulses that create a sort of minefield in which the wrong step would result in something really psychically unfair, for you.
You wrote a lot of it down, though. We could have connected there. I guess back then I was too young. Mostly just a kid on the margin of parties at holidays. If you knew me now, I wonder if we’d be friends. If I could have done anything. There was a crucial time you offered a kind word, and I never forgot it. It’s a karmic debt I’ll never repay—at least not directly.
“Of course I was raised to gather courage from those / lofty tales so tried and true and / if you’re able I’d suggest it ‘cause this / modern thought can get the best of you”
It sure fuckin’ can.
Of course, as usual, I could be totally full of shit. Maybe you were into it more for the instrumentals. I didn’t and don’t really know you, after all. What I do know is you were a hell of a writer.
“in a senseless tragedy, oh Carissa I’ll sing your name across every sea”
I know the Sun Kil Moon guy turned out to be a son of a bitch but, of course, he has a line that applies. Out of respect I won’t say your name here, but maybe one day I can sing it across some seas. Or at least a lake. A pond. Something or something else.
From what I’ve read, you’d probably say something morbid and funny here, just like I probably would if the roles were reversed. Not to distance yourself, but to harden the appeal for closeness, make it more akin to something you’d be able to accept.
There I go with the projection again. I’m human. In the face of uncertainty and ignorance, I make shit up.
Out of all of this, the one thing I know is true is that it’s valuable to leave things behind. If not valuable to everyone, then at least valuable to one person, even if it’s only ever one, and even if it’s decades later. That’s what the whole psychic time capsule schtick is all about; like my friend O says, “I Was Here.”
So were you. And in case you were curious, wherever you are, I’m thinking of you, and do still from time to time.
To close, the lines with which Chutes Too Narrow ends:
“dissolve / magically, absurdly / they’ll end / leave / dissipate coldly / and strangely, return.”
matt nilsen 