Stephen Malkmus is Sending Me Secret Messages via His New Videos

At first I thought it was just a coincidence — or that I was perhaps operating under an exaggerated sense of self-importance (as is my wont) and maybe a bit of paranoia. I know it’s not exactly a great sign when you start seeing signs everywhere, messages directed at you. (That was one of the important messages in A Beautiful Mind.) It’s been a stressful month, I figured, what with the earthquake (which I at first thought was someone coming to get me, by driving a tank through the walls of my house) and the hurricane and all. (The hurricane, I didn’t take personally. I don’t believe in God.) And I also know it’s not wise to obsess over celebrities and our mostly imaginary relationships to them. (That was one of the important messages in A Fan’s Notes and The King of Comedy.) And yet I’m pretty sure that Stephen Malkmus is trying to communicate with me through the videos for the songs from his new album, Mirror Traffic.

I have not yet bought Mirror Traffic. Though it has gotten good reviews, and I pretty much buy all of the music Stephen Malkmus makes and sells, because he is one of my favorite musicians, I haven’t yet been able to pull the trigger on this one. I don’t find myself listening to Malkmus’ solo records as much those he made with his old band, Pavement. I like the new records, but not as much as I do the old ones. (And it seems, actually, that I’m finding less and less time to actually sit and listen to records these days. Which is a whole different sad conversation, of course.) This situation, the preference for the old stuff, has maybe been exasperated by how fantastically super-awesome the Pavement reunion concert that I saw in Central Park last summer was. I have been listening to the old records a lot this past year.

A couple weeks ago, around the time the new album came out, a video came out for a song called “No One Is (As I Are Be).” The song is very pretty, and reminiscent of “Range Life,” the even prettier, if a bit more shambling, song from 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain album wherein Malkmus expressed a wistful hope that he could one day settle down. (He wanted to find a nice quiet home on the range, it seemed, after he’d finished his ranging around; one of the better double entendres I’ve ever heard in the lyrics to a rock song.) But I don’t know that Malkmus was thinking about “Range Life” when he recorded “No One Is (As I Are Be).” And I don’t think he was thinking about that when he made the video. I think was thinking about me.

For the past few years, I’ve had a small fear — more of a worry, really — that I might have creeped Malkmus out a little bit upon meeting him and his young daughter in my old neighborhood, which was also his neighborhood at the time. Because we got into a friendly conversation that led to me telling him that I had sort of named my own young child after one of his songs. And I was sweating a lot.

So when I watched the video for “No One Is (As I Are Be),” I was really pleased to see Malkmus there, hanging out all relaxed with his wife and daughters — they have had another daughter since we met — and a bunch of other families at what looks to be a nice picnic or birthday party in a park or someone’s large backyard in Portland, Oregon. (Malkmus moved his family across the country to Portland shortly after we met. I’m pretty sure he had already planned the move. At least I like to believe that.) There’s a really sweaty guy in the video, too, who appears to be a friend. This seemed to indicate that Malkmus was not, in fact, hiding his family from creepy, stalkerish superfans. The fact that he would make such a video, and put it out for public view on the Internet, almost seemed to be saying, “Hey, Dave, give yourself a break. I wasn’t creeped out by you at all.” It made me feel better.

And then! A second video for a song from Mirror Traffic came out. It’s for the song “Tigers,” and it’s a video all about tigers that presents a lot of interesting factual information: how tigers are the heaviest species of the family felidae, and adaptable to a great variety of environments, and how they are “good swimmers, able to carry prey over water,” and how everyone loves tigers and puts pictures of tigers on their flags and makes them the mascots of their sports teams and stuff.

The video reads as a visual argument lobbying for the awesomeness of tigers. It’s as if someone were very angry about people who think tigers don’t rank that high in the cat family.

Look, I know tigers are awesome. I’m not a total idiot. All big cats are awesome. And I will take the hint and purchase Mirror Traffic on iTunes today. But no, Stephen Malkmus, I will not listen to your tiger-lobbying messages. Not everything is always about you, dude.