US, BABE
by Sean
Please note: MP3s are only kept online for a short time, and if this entry is from more than a couple of weeks ago, the music probably won't be available to download any more.


 

Jazmine Sullivan - "Forever Don't Last". It was the same heartbreak as all the others but it was more acute. He found himself doing all the same things - staring out windows, listening to sad songs, banging his head on the door of his car's trunk - yet each act seemed more serious, more important, than it had before. He wept at commercials; wept more, harder, at the happy family and their dumb little dog. Sometimes the volume of his emotions felt almost too high to bear. Just sitting in traffic, a song on the radio, an acoustic guitar twanging - his vision darkened and his throat tightened, he thought he was going to die. The traffic lifted, the song ended, the darkness lifted... still part of him wondered if he had died back there, stopped during the sad song, suffering from the most acute heartbreak of his life. And he never enjoyed it, this feeling; usually, after the end of a relationship, he found a perverse enjoyment in the melancholy, cherished it almost. Here, now, there was no satisfaction in his sorrow - that it proved the seriousness of his feelings, that it entitled him to mope. His heart had broken and he just felt ruined, torn down the middle, grasping at what was left of himself, absolutely unable to sing. [buy]

Posted by Sean at February 9, 2015 10:22 AM
Comments

I like your writing (I really enjoyed Us Conductors), but I have to say that I cannot listen to this song. Actually, I find Mitz's Lee Hazlewood suggestion would go much better with this text ;)

Posted by Madalina at February 13, 2015 11:26 AM

This is familiar and black and blue like a fresh bruise, and lovely all the while. Really grateful for the introduction to Jazmine Sullivan.

Posted by Priya at February 23, 2015 9:26 PM

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Sean Michaels is the founder of Said the Gramophone. He is a writer, critic and author of the theremin novel Us Conductors. Follow him on Twitter or reach him by email here. Click here to browse his posts.

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