TBT #82: This is the Day

My boss at work really likes the band The The. We have this little game at work between myself and a few coworkers where we’ll sign our e-mail messages with song lyrics. It started easily enough when, one day at work, I couldn’t get that “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” bit from that The Killers song out of my head. So I started writing it everywhere. I was doing work on a newsletter layout at the time, so suddenly all the filler text on the page I was laying out became “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier.” I wrote it on the tops and sides of my note pages during meetings. I think it even ended up on a sticky note attached to my monitor for a while — a reminder to myself that though I should have soul, I should not be a soldier. Because that would be stupid, I guess. The two really have very little to do with each other.

I signed an e-mail message with it too. And thus the game begun. It started with still more Killers songs, then progressed to damn near everything. Oasis, Janet Jackson, Guns N Roses, (The lyrics to ‘Paradise City’ make an excellent substitute for ‘Sincerely’; you should try it.) even (awesome) throwbacks like Bush and Eve 6. It escalated so far that one of the women I work with was keeping a list of “songs to use” with her at all times, in case inspiration struck. I think she even took it on vacation with her. I really like the idea of someone sitting by a pool, napping, then suddenly waking up, shouting “‘You Might as Well Be Walking On the Sun!’”, scribbling furiously and then going back to sleep. It makes me smile.

My boss wasn’t really involved in the beginning but did get involved later. And while the rest of us were using well-known pop song lyrics, she was going hardcore indie. This freaked me out a little bit, as always happen when I find out that people in their thirties are unequivocally cooler than me. Though, come to think of it, there’s no real reason for that kind of reaction at this point. People in their thirties are cooler than me. Hell, sometimes I think my parents are cooler than me. When I’m at home, they’re going out to party twice a weekend. Meanwhile I’m staying home and reading about the history of Sim City on wikipedia. It wouldn’t even be close if they were better at staying up past 9:30 and Dad would get rid of that Hootie and the Blowfish CD he keeps in his car all the time.

So my boss is cool and knows a lot of indie bands. And she used indie lyrics — including the the — in her e-mails to me. I don’t actually know if The The is indie but they’re certainly obscure. I don’t know if that’s because of their music or just because they have a stupid name. It looks like a typo. And from what I can tell there are at least FOUR possible ways to pronounce it. That’s not a good name for a band; I don’t care what anyone says. Even ChumbaWumba was better. Even Epiphany for Tiffany was better. Even the name of Uncle Jesse’s second band on Full House was better. What the hell was that called, anyway? Big Daddy and the Love Puppets? Something like that. That sucked. But the the is worse. And for whatever reason, despite hearing good things about the band for years — and further accolades from my boss — I could never get into them.

But I had one of those moments the other day. One of those moments that’s really only come into being since iPods (and other mp3 players) have been around. I was walking down Coburg Road toward school, wearing the ridiculous white headphones that I swore I’d never wear but do because I actually find them comfortable and I like how easily they fit into my pocket, when “This is the Day” by The The was shuffled to the top of my playlist. And, walking across the parking lot, enjoying the fact that the sun was still bright even after 5 p.m., I listened to the song and everything felt right. I finally appreciated The The and now I can’t stop humming.

It’s The Best Thing for March 9, 2006 (Happy Birthday, Chris)

Well… you didn’t wake up this morning,
’cause you didn’t go to bed.
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red.

In that moment I felt both epiphany and stupidity. Epiphany because, holy god, my life almost makes sense right now, at this very moment. Stupidity because it was a fucking song that was making me feel that. You aren’t supposed to have epiphanies because of pop songs; you’re supposed to have epiphanies because of, well, god, or something. I don’t know. Do epiphanies even really happen any more? We don’t have a lot left to realize about ourselves. Mostly we’re just bored.

You pull back the curtains, and the sun burns into your eyes.
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky.
This is the day your life will surely change.
This is the day when things fall into place.

It’s made worse by these lyrics. They just fit. It’s so perfect as to be almost trite. And what did I realize, really? It’s nothing that I haven’t thought before. All I realized, when I listened to that song in the parking lot, and later, when I listened to it again walking through the A&A building, and now, as I listen to it on repeat on the first floor of the library, watching people drink coffee in the atrium below me, is that I am in control of my own life. And, like I said, it’s simple and hardly new, but I guess now is the first time I actually believe it.

You could’ve done anything, if you’d wanted.
And all your friends and family think that you’re lucky.
But the side of you they’ll never see
Is when you’re left alone with the memories
That hold your life together like glue

I don’t want to cling to vague hopes that life is about linear relationships. That you work hard at school, then work hard at a job. That one thing leads to another: school, work, happiness and onwards and upwards. Life as a line graph, showing record profits. We’re not on a conveyer belt, an assembly line or otherwise. We move only when we choose to move.

I want a life of ridiculous moments. I want to end up doing something that’s totally unrelated to any past experience I might have. And I want to enjoy it. I want to wander into places I have never heard of before. I want to wake up at 27-years-old and laugh at what I did at 26. And I can do it because there is no reason not to do it. There is no great goal in our lives — nothing ultimate to shoot for — except for that we are happy with our place in the world.

So it’s just a song, blaring into my ear, again and again, but I don’t care. It shouldn’t inspire me, but it does. Not to get up and write or be creative or take on the world, but rather just to be content about things and revel in the fucked-up simplicity of it all. Look at us and who we are: made happy by cheery little pop songs, so in love with the sun, we’re hardly deserving of so much much angst.

You pull back the curtains, and the sun burns into your eyes,
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky.
This is the day your life will surely change.
This is the day when things fall into place.

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