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Feb. 19th, 2020 11:05 amI wish it were more appropriate to, I don't know, maybe approach your co-workers or friends and say "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed" in Marvin the Paranoid Android's voice, so that you've warned them about how you're feeling but you've done so in a light-hearted way so they don't worry too much. Instead people are forced to put on a happy face to socialize, and expected to bury personal feelings. No one wants to be around Marvin the Paranoid Android, not even the other Hitchhiker's Guide characters. I wonder if that was intentional commentary from Douglas Adams, or accidental.
I had a dream I was a producer/guest host on Live from Here. I'd curated the perfect show, including jazz standards from myself, sketch comedy from my sister (who is a writer, but not a comedic one, so I have no idea where that came from), and guest performances by Lana del Ray and Bedouine. However, the show started running overly long, and I ended up having to cut pretty much everything original that my sister and I had created, just to get Lana del Ray and Bedouine to perform on time. I wonder if this was also unintentional commentary from my subconscious- the thought of bigger names desrving more attention than I do.
I saw a quote that I hadn't remembered from Barry, which was Fuches telling NoHo Hank over the phone that he was the "sweetest kid ever" or something to that effect (I can't really rememeber if that was the right context, either- it might have been Fuches meeting Cousineau for the first time?), and suddenly, my mind came alight with the lyrics of Punch Brothers' "The Blind Leaving the Blind, Movement 1, Part 2" (also known as "Red-Handed"):
Sweet young man goes walking down the street wiping blood off his hands.
And it doesn't look good, but he does what he can
To erase the signs of the nightmare he faced at the scene of the crime.
She snuck up behind him as he knelt by her victim.
Whispered "I knew you'd come, but there's nothing to be done,
"And if I was you, I'd run.
"'Cause no one cares about what you felt
"When they see any signs of guilt.
"You kissed its face.
"You held its hand.
"You always were a sweet young man."
He's still a mess, so he hires a car
To take him to the fountain at Balboa Park,
Where he used to play when he was young.
He's gonna wash off in front of God and everyone.
Everyone...
For some reason, that one line- "you always were a sweet young man"- has stuck with me for so long after I first heard it. I keep wanting to poach it for one of my own writing project. Maybe it's the way it's phrased. Actually, the entirety of "Red-Handed" has stuck with me for a long time. The first half of the third movement of "Blind" is my favorite, but this one section is a close second. Funny, because it's also the lyrics that I understand the least. "Blind Leaving the Blind" was written about Chris Thile's divorce from his first wife and his loss of faith (or rather, rejection of organized religion, not necessarily a complete cutting of ties with spirituality as a whole). The closest interpretation I can think of here is that the thing being murdered (notice the "its" pronoun, it's not even personified) is their marriage, and the "sweet young man" is being blamed by his ex for being the one responsible for ending it, while he knows that she was the one to end it. I have no idea if that's accurate. I probably know way too much about Chris Thile's marriage as it already is (and that's not a lot, I've just read the very few interviews where he mentions it) and I shouldn't be speculating. But anyway, "Red-Handed" reminds me a lot of the character of Barry, and how he's trying to symbolically wipe the blood off his hands and start fresh, but he can never go back to being that sweet kid again, not after everything that's happened to him. (Funny now to think of how Sally was the one to use the "out, damned spot" scene from Macbeth, when that's what Barry is trying to do. I know the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" scene was a more powerful one to use in the climax of the penultimate episode, given how Barry's guilt-induced breakdown fit the scene so well, but now I almost want to know what that episode would have been like had Sally kept her initial scene, given that both are decent parallels to Barry's situation...)
I had a dream I was a producer/guest host on Live from Here. I'd curated the perfect show, including jazz standards from myself, sketch comedy from my sister (who is a writer, but not a comedic one, so I have no idea where that came from), and guest performances by Lana del Ray and Bedouine. However, the show started running overly long, and I ended up having to cut pretty much everything original that my sister and I had created, just to get Lana del Ray and Bedouine to perform on time. I wonder if this was also unintentional commentary from my subconscious- the thought of bigger names desrving more attention than I do.
I saw a quote that I hadn't remembered from Barry, which was Fuches telling NoHo Hank over the phone that he was the "sweetest kid ever" or something to that effect (I can't really rememeber if that was the right context, either- it might have been Fuches meeting Cousineau for the first time?), and suddenly, my mind came alight with the lyrics of Punch Brothers' "The Blind Leaving the Blind, Movement 1, Part 2" (also known as "Red-Handed"):
Sweet young man goes walking down the street wiping blood off his hands.
And it doesn't look good, but he does what he can
To erase the signs of the nightmare he faced at the scene of the crime.
She snuck up behind him as he knelt by her victim.
Whispered "I knew you'd come, but there's nothing to be done,
"And if I was you, I'd run.
"'Cause no one cares about what you felt
"When they see any signs of guilt.
"You kissed its face.
"You held its hand.
"You always were a sweet young man."
He's still a mess, so he hires a car
To take him to the fountain at Balboa Park,
Where he used to play when he was young.
He's gonna wash off in front of God and everyone.
Everyone...
For some reason, that one line- "you always were a sweet young man"- has stuck with me for so long after I first heard it. I keep wanting to poach it for one of my own writing project. Maybe it's the way it's phrased. Actually, the entirety of "Red-Handed" has stuck with me for a long time. The first half of the third movement of "Blind" is my favorite, but this one section is a close second. Funny, because it's also the lyrics that I understand the least. "Blind Leaving the Blind" was written about Chris Thile's divorce from his first wife and his loss of faith (or rather, rejection of organized religion, not necessarily a complete cutting of ties with spirituality as a whole). The closest interpretation I can think of here is that the thing being murdered (notice the "its" pronoun, it's not even personified) is their marriage, and the "sweet young man" is being blamed by his ex for being the one responsible for ending it, while he knows that she was the one to end it. I have no idea if that's accurate. I probably know way too much about Chris Thile's marriage as it already is (and that's not a lot, I've just read the very few interviews where he mentions it) and I shouldn't be speculating. But anyway, "Red-Handed" reminds me a lot of the character of Barry, and how he's trying to symbolically wipe the blood off his hands and start fresh, but he can never go back to being that sweet kid again, not after everything that's happened to him. (Funny now to think of how Sally was the one to use the "out, damned spot" scene from Macbeth, when that's what Barry is trying to do. I know the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" scene was a more powerful one to use in the climax of the penultimate episode, given how Barry's guilt-induced breakdown fit the scene so well, but now I almost want to know what that episode would have been like had Sally kept her initial scene, given that both are decent parallels to Barry's situation...)
