Wednesday // Elderberry Wine

Post by Misha //

I just finished a week of 12 hour work days. Not the kind of 12 hours where you clock in and sit around waiting to be told what to do, but 12 hours of the breakneck, acute awareness that, however interminable it feels, 12 hours is not going to be nearly long enough to do the endless, meaningless stream of tasks at hand.

It used to be, after I worked a bunch of very long days, that I would feel the small exhilaration of accomplishment. The satisfaction of having gotten to the other side of a challenge. That was when I still viewed every challenge as inherently worth overcoming by virtue of it being challenging. Before I realized that sometimes there’s nothing worthwhile on the other side, just the shittiness involved in getting there.

Anyway today I don’t feel exhilarated. Today I pretty much feel pulped out. Brain: pulp. Body: pulp. I’m waking up from anxiety dreams about obscure problems with graphics files and encoding errors. There’s an ominous crackling sound followed by a sharp vertebral stab when I turn my head in one direction. More painful: the aftermath of having cogged myself yet again into the great machine. Where no matter how many good and human intentions go in, the only thing to make it out is sexy, lifeless, and hell-bent on technologizing us all out of a job.

My point is, it’s going to take days to claw my way back from this, psychologically speaking.

But as I was washing up on the beach of Friday night, I saw the Colbert performance of this song and I started looking forward to having a moment to sit and listen to it and maybe write something. The easy twang of the chorus, the grassy roll of the verse, the promise of connection, of simplicity – it hooked me, gently but inescapably, and started pulling me back towards that which makes a life meaningful and substantive. Art will do that. Sometimes it’s the only thing that will.

Sometimes I don’t remember why I write stuff on this blog. Sometimes it feels embarrassing. Not like more than a handful of people read any of it. Not like it makes a difference. Except to me, maybe. Except on days like this.

Buy Elderberry Wine here. Out via Dead Oceans.