Review Summary: yet life goes on.
I lost a friend this past year. Not in any literal sense; there was no actual fighting or falling out. It was something quieter, subtler; a breaking of trust, and a newfound distance that could no longer be traversed. I remember the exact moment when it happened: she referred to someone protesting the “war” in Gaza in a TV interview as a “horrible Palestinian woman”. She had decided, in that typical and all too human way that we yearn for a simpler world, a world in which good and evil are defined clearly and absolutely, that the solution to the “war” was for Israel to just steamroll over Gaza, and for the remaining Palestinians to be assimilated into the state. I never confronted her about this; I disengaged, and waited for a more pleasant conversation topic to emerge. Eventually, I stopped responding entirely. I was a coward. I still am.
I saw Godspeed earlier this year, in a small, unassuming city where I never would have thought a concert like this could happen. I went into it knowing that they were mostly going to play new material, and I had no idea what to expect. The concert was incredible. Godspeed hadn’t created new material this inspired, this purposeful, since
Yanqui UXO, and possibly even since before that. When they played what I now know to be “Babys in a Thundercloud”, and that melancholic violin entered about halfway through, I knew what that violin was weeping for. When they played what I now know to be “Pale Spectator Takes Photographs”, I knew that the urgency and anger of it could only be coming from one thing. When they revealed the title of the album, I knew exactly what it was referring to. We all did.
But I’m just making this all about myself, aren’t I? Am I not still a coward, sitting here writing about music, sometimes trying to
write music, failing, getting stuck, deluding myself into thinking I have some grander purpose in this world when thousands of children in Gaza will never see the age of 27? Is it not cowardly, and selfish, and nauseatingly naive, for me to be doing any of this? I’m sure the members of Godspeed feel this way too, at least sometimes. What purpose could music possibly serve in times like this? But unlike me, they actually managed to create something. Maybe this album will do something for the world, maybe it won’t. It has moved me, profoundly, just like it did earlier this year; maybe that’s enough? But there I go again, thinking that a piece of music’s impact on
me specifically is somehow important. Thousands of people have died pointlessly; Godspeed have made a pretty good album, potentially also pointlessly; and I’m just sitting here, losing friends, getting stuck, writing strange, directionless prose. Overthinking, as I always do. Obsessing over things that don’t matter, and some that do, and not knowing the difference. Working. Playing video games. Twiddling my thumbs. Existing. We don’t all get the privilege of that these days, I guess.
