Lowly, "Fire"

I have what I guess you would call a diminished capacity for joy, in that there is very little that makes me smile anymore. Even the places in which I once found pleasure now see me broken and bereft, wondering what happened to the delight with the world that came so easily before. Everything feels empty and fake and the simple act of showing up in hopes of being entertained seems like a gross complicity in the hollow artifice that those who are still able to experience enjoyment use to distract themselves from the creeping certainty of death. Nothing tastes good. Nothing tastes of anything at all. So when I come across something that actually makes me sit up and pay attention I do a fairly rigorous self-inspection. Did I recently hit my head on something heavy? Am I having some kind of chemical reaction to decongestant medication? Have I been fooled by a brief bout of nice weather into believing things are better than they are? Once I have assured myself that none of those conditions apply I go back to whatever it was that somehow lifted me out of my state of suspended emotional animation and re-assess. Do I still feel? Does it still move me? Is it still good? This song, by a band about which I know nothing, is indeed good. It is, in fact, great. I first heard it on Thursday and have listened to it multiple times each day every day since then. I am not quite sure what it is that makes this song as good as it is but sometimes magic happens and things that shouldn’t make sense in any rational world cause a crack in the crust through which the most inexplicable mysteries emerge. Magic happens here. Enjoy.