"The Passage Of My Life Is Measured Out In Shirts" from "King's Lead Hat" off of Eno's Before and After Science (1977). That line, almost certainly being born of nonsense, has always jumped out as an authentic sentiment among the rest of the song's tone-poem lyrics. I do imagine Eno as uttering that line in conversation, and it ringing true and profound, and it subsequently existing both as a meaningless string of words as well as a sentimental expression of banality.
It is for this reason that it holds a kind of sacredness: Young Eno as a Fashion Icon; his shirts no unimportant matter. But for middle-aged me, I spend far more energy engaged in trying to mitigate the food stains on my chest. The tension between the ideal and the practical that keep my life mired in the mulch, and not in the world of ideas.
Oxychloride X was a universal solvent from an episode of X Minus One (1943) that could not be contained, and burrowed down toward the center of the Earth, taking the town in which it was created with it (perhaps eventually destroying the entire world). It was a radio play that my father vividly remembered hearing - he must have been 10 years old - so there's that dimension with me: The stained clothing of my father before me; my becoming an adult with stained clothing of my own. My banality manifesting with far less glamour.
"The Passage Of My Life Is Measured Out In Shirts" from "King's Lead Hat" off of Eno's Before and After Science (1977). That line, almost certainly being born of nonsense, has always jumped out as an authentic sentiment among the rest of the song's tone-poem lyrics. I do imagine Eno as uttering that line in conversation, and it ringing true and profound, and it subsequently existing both as a meaningless string of words as well as a sentimental expression of banality.
ReplyDeleteIt is for this reason that it holds a kind of sacredness: Young Eno as a Fashion Icon; his shirts no unimportant matter. But for middle-aged me, I spend far more energy engaged in trying to mitigate the food stains on my chest. The tension between the ideal and the practical that keep my life mired in the mulch, and not in the world of ideas.
Oxychloride X was a universal solvent from an episode of X Minus One (1943) that could not be contained, and burrowed down toward the center of the Earth, taking the town in which it was created with it (perhaps eventually destroying the entire world). It was a radio play that my father vividly remembered hearing - he must have been 10 years old - so there's that dimension with me: The stained clothing of my father before me; my becoming an adult with stained clothing of my own. My banality manifesting with far less glamour.