It’s been a rough year. From politics to the personal, there’s a lot of pain to go around. But there’s also a lot of beauty and wonder. This is a mix of the songs that have been helping to get me through the year. I’ll certainly write more about many of these at some later point, but wanted to take a moment here to discuss the two bookends.
To start we have “The Opener” from CAMP COPE, which doles out equal parts rage and joy. Rage at a world of blatant injustice, filled with men who are utterly incapable of grasping the privileges they wield. But also joy: at the sheer audacity of creation and the righteous noise they can make. It would be a great song for any era, but feels absolutely essential in 2018.
Then, at the end: Floating in the Forth. Long-time readers of the blog will be well aware of my love for Frightened Rabbit. Midnight Organ Fight is one of the the great albums of the 21st century–an expression of the will to live and love, struggling to stay afloat in a sea of depression and pain. It feels all the more poignant now that Scott Hutchison seems to have been lost to the depression he fought for so long.
It’s tempting to read Floating in the Forth as prophecy, given that he ultimately was lost in precisely the way that the song foretold. But I don’t see it that way. It’s a song that tells the truth. The painful, honest truth of a man who understood his own demons so well that he could name them this clearly, could sing of them, and could fight them off. Not forever, but for a long time.
In the song, I hear the undying hopefulness of love. I hear a man in pain, who knows just how hard it can be to put one foot in front of the other, but who somehow has the ability to sing this truth, to put it out into the world for others to share. Scott Hutchison has passed, and I feel the ache of it deep in my soul. But I also feel the hope of his promise, and I know that it will last forever.