When Someone Great is Gone
The title of this is a reference to a very simple yet poetic song by LCD Soundsystem, one of my favourite artists. It came up on my playlist today as I was walking back from my workout and looking for something calming and meaningful to play after all the energetic nightclub beats at Barry’s — which I absolutely love, but which have their own time and place.
“Someone Great” is an electronic track composed of very basic layers and a catchy, moody hook that hits deep because of its meaning. When I used to listen to it, and today for the first bar of the song, I would think of how my funeral should be a dancefloor where this song could celebrate my death. I know, morbid and self-centred, but hey, that’s me. Now I listen to it and I wonder, is it about the artist losing a close relative or a young child? There’s something distant yet close about the subject of the song — it’s “someone great” but not someone heavily entwined in the singer’s life. I wonder if it’s about a miscarriage, because the relationship with that unborn child is still forming, or if it’s someone elderly who once had an important role in the songwriter’s life but whose clarity or involvement started to fade away with time. It could also be a parent, or a close relative, like a parent, as I mentioned. I have always seen parents as an extension of myself but not necessarily as a part of me, while a lover can truly become like a part of me.
This brings me to thinking about closeness in relationships. When my husband V and I were in couple’s counselling a few years ago, it became apparent that we operate within opposite circles of love and relationships. For him, his parents and his partner (this was pre-children) exist within the same circle of trust and expectations, while for me, my partner is within my closest, innermost circle, while my family (brothers, parents) and friends all exist on the immediate circle outside of this. Yes, my friends and family exist within the same circle. But that means I literally have no one else that I’m close to besides my partner. Or, I am close to everyone, and he is closer to me than anyone. That’s a lot of responsibility for both of us.
While listening to “Someone Great,” I felt a sense of melancholy I had never experienced before with this song. I can no longer imagine my ultimate funeral bash anymore. I wasn’t very afraid of death before but I think it would be an unfortunate thing, now, to leave behind two children. My husband would be fine — I’ve already prepared a short list of one woman I think he’d match up well with. Or, if he ever reads this, I hope he’d spend more time exploring same sex relationships because I do think he’s more fluid than he thinks. Mostly, I think that my children would miss me and lack the parenting of a mother. My children now take up space within my closest circle, alongside my husband.
Several years ago when LCD Soundsystem announced that they would be breaking up, I remember not being able to focus on my work. I mean, a lot of things distract me into happy procrastination, but that doesn’t discount the fact that I was pretty upset. So I’m gonna leave it at that and close this off with an excerpt from the letter I wrote to James Murphy on the day I heard they were done. I didn’t send it, obviously, god forbid I publicly embarrass myself as a fangirl. Thankfully, a couple years later I did manage to go to one of Murphy’s DJ sets in Toronto. I guess, somehow, he heard my pleas?
Letter to James Murphy
Since the first time I heard your music, sometime in 2006, I knew there was something special there. Every sound you elicited was new, refreshing, dynamic. I listened to song after song, waiting for it to get repetitive or fall into the trap of “hipster electronica”. But the complex layers of your music were undeniable and incomparable, unbreakable by even the most hoighty toity music critics and beat elitists. Each time I listened, I heard meaning coated with chords and melody. You wrote melancholy words juxtaposed on upbeat riffs, created hits with anti-hit messages. Like Kurt Cobain did with “In Bloom,” you had us singing along to tracks that were really encouraging us to look at the music industry and the pop culture machine. You bared your soul to us all, and crooned earnestly without hiding. You said that music was your life, and I believed it. I felt like you were telling us all, in every song, how difficult it was for you to produce the things you did but that you had to keep doing it — like you were squeezing every last bit of yourself out in the studio and sharing it with us as an offering to your rapt listeners.
Do you know how grateful we are for this? I know you’ve given up your life for music. I can hear it. It dictates who you are. Who will you be now, now that you’re done making music? Are you curious?
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Wow, dramatic much? I know, James Murphy, that your life is dictated by more than music, but I was a bit one-track back then. Hope you can forgive me! And thank you for making comebacks and making music with Jarvis Cocker, who I will also one day write a letter to that will be shared on my Medium account for my massive audience of readers.
