‘Acting like lovers’
I was a big PJ Harvey fan back in the Lilith Fair era. Huge fan.
That said, I was always so frustrated by “You Said Something.”
Heard the song on my way to the car dealership this morning.
It’s been probably 30 years and I remembered why I didn’t get it.
I get it now.
“I am doing nothing wrong
Riding in your car
Your radio playing
We sing up to the eighth floor
A rooftop, in Manhattan
One in the morning
When you said something
That I’ve never forgotten
When you said something
That was really important.”
My main frustration was WHAT DID THEY SAY TO HER.
On a base level, I got that artists have to keep music universal enough that anyone can identify with it.
This morning, on a higher level, I finally got it …
We aren’t supposed to know.
I got to thinking about the small handful of super fans I have.
I am under no illusion with at least three of them that they aren’t here for the Taylor Swift song references.
They want clues. They want to see themselves.
They are thrilled with any sort of allusion that feeds THEIR illusion that they are rooted by even just one shrub in the labyrinth of my mind.
If I type “When your Brooklyn broke my skin and bones,” someone probably starts rubbing one out. “Alone time,” did he call it?
I remember six years ago posting, “Do the girls back home touch you like I do?” And hearing thirdhand that one of my fans had a meltdown, thinking it was about her man.
Gurl. No.
Actually it wasn’t about Toad, either. But it’s a good memory and I feel like posting it.
I miss Toadlet. Before he showed his true colors, anyway. Which were beige on his best day and shithead on the rest.
Like someone else I know. Who is here searching or hints about details she missed.
I mean, maybe she beat all the details out of someone. But she knows I have a very good memory.
So she must think I still hold some info that’s in the ether.
We will never know, will we?!
In any event, I’m not going to elaborate on what I thought PJ Harvey meant then or what I believe now.
20-year-old me and 30-ish-year-old me have two wildly different eyeglass prescriptions. I imagine PJ did, too.
As for me, only one had rose-colored lenses.
And it isn’t the one who is about to spend $1,000 at the dealership.
One strange parallel is that both of those mes ALSO just returned from Manhattan.
I was at a rooftop bar in lower Manhattan. And on the top floor of a lower Manhattan hotel.
“We lean against railings
Describing the colours
And the smells of our homelands
Acting like lovers
How did we get here?
To this point of living?
I held my breath
And you said something.”
I just hope I always remember.
Even if for no other purpose than to run the other way next time I hear it.