The Go! Team - The Power is On

One foot positions itself quickly and efficiently in front of the other. A woman has just overcome an impossible height. A man places the final brick into a wall that has taken a lifetime to build. Endurance beyond endurance. He isn't looking past the duty of his feet save to keep from crashing. People are staring as he balances the curb. Someone he knows sees him this way, but that someone will never know how many people lost their teeth at that moment--how many people just kicked the shit out of something.

  The Go! Team, "The Power is On," Thunder, Lightning, Strike (Memphis Industries, 2004)

Microchip

"My body is a microchip."

Animal Collective - Who Could Win A Rabbit

We all deserve a break from the "hungry bread and butter hustle." But the awkward time signature presses us forward. The universe threatens to go cold, and we constantly threaten to swallow it whole. Better to bring your food on the train. 

  Animal Collective - "Who Could Win a Rabbit," Sung Tongs (Fat Cat Records, 2003)

Jean Grey

The tyrannical bald man, dressed so conspicuously normal, must have known about the fire that would soon burn and resurrect and burn and resurrect all heroes, splintering them like wood. He must have recognized the first spark in the most beautiful woman we had ever seen--red and black and fierce; so beautiful that her lover will beg to die alongside her in the cockpit. After this moment, only the unchanging fire would remain. Why not tear each other apart?                                   

    Classic X-Men #8 (Marvel Comics, April, 1987)

Art Brut - Good Weekend

I remember reading John Darnielle on repetition in music, commenting on the lines "Sad, sad, sad; I broke my leg." If memory serves (I cannot find the article), he was saying that the simple repetition of a basic emotional state can make a track universal while adding an extra pop punch. Likewise the use of a basic scenario. Art Brut, as we see here in 'Good Weekend', makes excellent and extended use of such repetition. However, the emotion is positive, centering on the excitement of fresh love. "Got myself a brand new girlfriend." The date moves from cinema/cinema, door/door, and then finally down to the floor. They can't even wait to reach the bed! Signposting the repetition, the narrator tells us that "I've seen her naked twice! I've seen her naked TWICE!"

    Art Brut, "Good Weekend," Bang Bang Rock & Roll (Fierce Panda, 2005)

The Washroom

Entering the washroom, warm and moist and claustrophobic as an old British pub, we smell the man in the stall. He thickens the already thick air. Hard question now: breathe through nose or mouth? Each chooses silently, fearful either of embarrassing the man at the centre of our predicament or of admitting the violation of our space. We do not realize that we've been made brothers in this experience. 

I find myself thankful for the smell of my own piss wafting up from the urinal. At least its mine. I can live with myself. Myself and the day's coffee.

Upstairs, she's telling her friends, at a buck ten tops, that you don't need muscle. And, shortly after those words, a large man walks without resistance through a crowded doorway. I hear the truth in the first moment and see it in the second.

Perfume Genius - My Body (Live)

Perfume Genius. Indie darlings of the present moment. Listen as 'My Body' moves from masculine Lynchian strut to feminine drone-chorus and back again. Listen to that heartbeat in the background. Listen to all that blood. 

    'My Body,' Perfume Genius, Too Bright (Matador Records, 2014).