Themes of Transience
One of the last times that we had everyone together at the Governor house, Ratatat's Seventeen Years started playing from Bryan's computer. Alan pointed out that during their last road trip, someone (I think Bryan) decided that Seventeen Years embodies loss. The song begins with a series of glitchy beats, power chords, and nintendo-style beeps before it buils to a sort of soaring melodic point in which it all comes together. But the soaring section only lasts for about 20 seconds, and by 1:40 into the song it all crashes into handclaps and more glitchy beeps. You've got 1:40 to enjoy the buildup, and then another 3 minutes spent listening hard for that part of the song to come back. But it doesn't. The song only fades into gentle harmonies and then dies out.
Warning: the following could all be a function of my current mood. But I've been listening to a lot of Ratatat lately, because it seems like an apt soundtrack. Seventeen Years might represent loss, but I keep thinking there's more than just that. Each song follows a similar motif - open song, build themes, resolve themes, move on, build new themes atop similar beat, resolve these thems, continue. The concept of verse-chorus-verse doesn't exist in Ratatat's world. So rather than loss, I think that the album as a whole embodies transience. Each song blends fairly seamlessly by way of thematic melodies that open, build, resolve, and give way to new themes. You don't even really notice it happening, because the background beat changes very subtly if at all. Once in a while you'll come back to a theme, and you sort of remember it, but can't tell whether or not it's part of something from a previous section or if you're just still in the same section of the song.
Considering that most of us have just graduated, I've been considering transience quite a bit. We go off to college for 4 years, about midway through our time there we begin to call it home, become familiar with the themes that we've built overtop our shared background beat, and then those melodies resolve and we disperse.
The last few days, I kept on asking people in the house the annoying question, "What's next? What do we do now?" Most people kind of just took it in and didn't say anything, or offered the usual answers. Which is fine, because it's a stupid question. What's next is the same thing - we're going to build new themes around ourselves, and we're going to grow familiar with them until we have a home nestled within these melodies. But right now, what I find more comforting is that the background beat will be the same. Because after 4 years of knowing each other, I don't think that the beat we march to can change more than subtly, in ways we won't even notice. So these new themes will be built, naturally and in such a way that they grow from rather than supplant the old ones. When we see each other again we'll remember the old themes, and I hope that we won't know whether we're revisiting an old melody or just still just in the same section of the song.
I miss you guys.
Warning: the following could all be a function of my current mood. But I've been listening to a lot of Ratatat lately, because it seems like an apt soundtrack. Seventeen Years might represent loss, but I keep thinking there's more than just that. Each song follows a similar motif - open song, build themes, resolve themes, move on, build new themes atop similar beat, resolve these thems, continue. The concept of verse-chorus-verse doesn't exist in Ratatat's world. So rather than loss, I think that the album as a whole embodies transience. Each song blends fairly seamlessly by way of thematic melodies that open, build, resolve, and give way to new themes. You don't even really notice it happening, because the background beat changes very subtly if at all. Once in a while you'll come back to a theme, and you sort of remember it, but can't tell whether or not it's part of something from a previous section or if you're just still in the same section of the song.
Considering that most of us have just graduated, I've been considering transience quite a bit. We go off to college for 4 years, about midway through our time there we begin to call it home, become familiar with the themes that we've built overtop our shared background beat, and then those melodies resolve and we disperse.
The last few days, I kept on asking people in the house the annoying question, "What's next? What do we do now?" Most people kind of just took it in and didn't say anything, or offered the usual answers. Which is fine, because it's a stupid question. What's next is the same thing - we're going to build new themes around ourselves, and we're going to grow familiar with them until we have a home nestled within these melodies. But right now, what I find more comforting is that the background beat will be the same. Because after 4 years of knowing each other, I don't think that the beat we march to can change more than subtly, in ways we won't even notice. So these new themes will be built, naturally and in such a way that they grow from rather than supplant the old ones. When we see each other again we'll remember the old themes, and I hope that we won't know whether we're revisiting an old melody or just still just in the same section of the song.
I miss you guys.
