moon_pix raze listening to "what would the community think" by cat_power stoned and realizing how many more words there are in the original version of "in this hole". thinking the slowed-down deconstruction on "the covers record" is an exercise in seeing how much she can take away and still have a song, and then taking away a little more, kicking out the legs of what's left, watching it crumble. wondering if i've done the same thing to myself from smoking too much weed. brian_eno sings, "perhaps my brains have turned to sand," and i can feel it happening to me. so i smoke some more and i stay in my room and i smoke some more and i stay in my room and i stay in my room and i smoke some more, bending a stainless metal pipe screen so it curves into a little bowl that sits right there in the mouth of the glass pipe. that way the weed won't fall into the chamber. lighting it up with a red barbecue lighter. the same kind he used when he was cooking frozen burgers in the backyard. i breathe it in and feel my lungs turn black. i can still nail a high falsetto harmony over the chorus of "dani california" when the music video comes on tv, a fifth, a harmony no one in the band would have ever let me sing. and i don't even like that fucking song. but i can do it. i can. i have a lot of ideas. but if i ever tried to do something about them, they wouldn't be ideas anymore. they'd be things. and i don't want things. i don't want anything but this: the way those doubled guitars come in when chan marshall sings, "jackson, jesse, i've got a son in me." the heaviest clean electric guitars ever recorded. and then what her voice does at the end of "taking people" when she sings, "that's all i have." it would be a laugh or a shrug, but it's not strong enough to get there, so instead it's the sound of admitting defeat without giving up. "it leaves some certain sickness you'll never know inside of me." she knows. i know it's shawn. i know that's the way you're supposed to say her name. but it's going to take me so long to stop saying chan inside my head with the hard beginning and the soft end. it feels better that way. you know there's no bass on any of those early albums? "he turns down" has upright bass on it. that's it. there are drums and electric guitars, but there's no electric bass to pin things down, so even simple chords that aren't minor or major shapes start to suggest strange possibilities. nothing resolves the way you think it should. nothing. even when the guitars are out of tune they don't sound wrong. they sound honest. i think that's why "the greatest" doesn't grab me at first, doesn't sock me in the gut the way "moon pix" and all the other albums that came before it did and do and always will. it's too clean. there isn't enough empty space. it doesn't hurt me. half the songs on "moon pix" were written in one night. she felt the earth shaking. it woke her up. she felt dark spirits smashing into all the windows of her house. she got out of bed and grabbed her guitar and a tape recorder and she sang out all her fear so god could hear it. she wanted to leave something behind for whoever found her body. that's why the album feels like a frightened prayer. that's why it cuts so deep no matter what you believe. it's the sound of her soul fighting to stay alive. metal_heart, you're not hiding. metal_heart, you're not worth a thing. and i still want to know what she wants to know. where do the dreams of babies go? 'cause you know they're all so good. and they're all gone so fast. 211013 what's it to you? who go blather from