I was trawling the internets looking for cover art images to totally deck out my library with the appropriate images as is my obsessive compulsive way.
In doing so, and in being up to ‘M’ for ‘The Mountain Goats’, I stumbled across this little gem of a quote from Mr. Darnielle himself, in response to a rabid fan trying to track down a never actually released EP ((Jack and Faye):
no I disagree! the worst thing about our present age is that people are always trying to deny oblivion to things that have earned it, it is OK for there to be things that nobody’s ever seen or heard & in fact it’s GREAT that there are such things, that is like my deepest religious belief
Quite possibly never a truer word has been uttered. There is something so cloyingly desperate about our modern society that requires us to try and maintain every semblance of everything that was. And I’m certain we’re wrong. Maybe that bird is supposed to be extinct, maybe that friend from high school was meant to drop out of your life and not look you up in facebook. Maybe you were meant to get on with your life.
Maybe we’re all just so riddled with guilt that we have to cling desperately to what we know in the face of a brave new unknown world? I know what I’m choosing.
The oracle of John Darnielle.
I agree with both of you.
“People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need in my life is to be liberated into feeling bad. Not sad. I have plenty of sad. What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness. ” – John Darnielle.