Red
I watched Red again last night. It’s been 11 (long) years since Renee and i first saw it at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I’ve been slowing digging through Khaela Maricich’s good good writing. She plays in a band called The Blow who make lovely awkward-funny crazy smart language music stuff. I spent 4 nights staying up late with my sister. She’s made a really nice life for herself, working living wandering New York City.
I dunno exactly what i’m trying to untangle here but it goes something like this:
There is a kind of impossible richness of human sorrow.
My roommate couldn’t understand why i find Red so overwhelmingly sad. It is, of course, a redemption story. Maricich weds wonder and dislocation in her writing about France. My sister misses her family. This might be dumb, but i have this sense that human joy is kind of singular; that we all feel happy in mostly the same ways. But human sadness has this breadth, an arching multiplicity, a richness.
Since i’m clearly not going to be able to articulate this well, i’ll direct your attention to the trumpet that comes in on the right at 2:12 into Damien Jurado‘s White Center. It knows what i’m talking about.
Oh, in actual band news: i think i’ve figured out the sequence for the record. We’ll be cutting one of the songs we recorded, but a 13 song, 42 minute full-length seems just about right…