exercises in self-evisceration -- january 18, 2009

One of my favorite parts of High Fidelity is the idea that our attachment to music is largely autobiographical. I am never quite sure if my attachment to a song at a particular emotional crux in my life is because I had said emotion and then the song fulfilled it, or if I heard the song and felt said emotion in a devastatingly complete way. Put differently, is music my autobiography or am I music's autobiography? If Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, what does it mean that I measure mine out in chords and verses? And if I make decisions based on the intersection of one particular song into my life at one particular moment, do I still have agency?

In other words, enjoy the self-evisceration. Real emotion makes for good production value.

original track list:

01. "Cath..." - Death Cab for Cutie (Narrow Stairs);
02. "Neither of Us, Uncertainly" - Deerhunter (Microcastle); *
03. "Skinny Love" - Bon Iver (For Emma, Forever Ago);
04. "New Romantic" - Laura Marling (My Manic & I);
05. "It's Not" - Aimee Mann (Lost in Space); *
06. "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" - Coldplay (cover);
07. "I Will Not Sing a Hateful Song" - The Constantines (Kensington Heights);
08. "Crowd Surf Off a Cliff" - Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton (Knives Don't Have Your Back);
09. "Teeth" - Kristin Hersh (Hips and Makers); *
10. "Lost in the Zoo" - Goddamn Electric Bill (Swallowed by the Machines);
11. "Remember Me As a Time of Day" - Explosions in the Sky (How Strange, Innocence);
12. "90-Mile Water Wall" - The National (Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers);
13. "Never Is a Promise" - Fiona Apple (Tidal);
14. "Have to Explode" - The Mountain Goats (Tallahassee);
15. "About Today (Live)" - The National (The Virginia EP);
16. "Little Person" - Jon Brion (Synecdoche, New York OST). *

NOTE: I forget to check that the tracks were all correct. "Cath..." is now actually "Cath...".