Once & Again: The Past and Pending by The Shins

I meant to post the video for "Past & Pending" by The Shins.

Like life, like death, music and the stunningly desolate landscape are beautiful. Together, they are almost incomprehensibly bittersweet. But you and I have always known that.

It's filmed on highways. And under bridges. I watched this video several dozen times after I got the news, and I wept and I wept and I wept. But always because of what once was. No, don't believe that. Because that which once was was no longer. And then wouldn't be again.

A wise man -- I'm fairly certain I caught his name as Side Arm Pete -- said: "And after the tears, there is love." Humbly, I would add: "And still before, and in between the tears, there is love."

Whimsy may be a luxury of the undestroyed. I may be a snob, but I've never trusted people who haven't suffered. No: who haven't known true suffering but bleat or bitch because they think they have? Anyway, I love to imagine driving one of the old cars straight off of the HIA, to motor along the two-lanes I love most. After that I would wheel about the old hometown with circumstance and style.

I meant, before, to post this video. Why are French horns so beautiful? Is it because the fist is placed resolutely inside the trumpet? The Past and Pending (and Rilke's future, to be sure). Here are the words again, too:

As someone sets light to the first fire of autumn
We settle down to cut ourselves apart.
Cough and twitch from the news on your face
And some foreign candle burning in your eyes

Held to the past too aware of the pending
Chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale.
Enter the fog another low road descending
Away from the cold lust, you house and summertime.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.

Your name on my cast and my notes on your stay
Offer me little but doting on a crime.
We've turned every stone and for all our inventions
In matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.