On Getting Sucker Punched in the Feels · 11:35pm Jun 18th, 2015
This post wasn't supposed to be difficult. It really wasn't. It simply occurred to me that, since not all of my readers have picked up on my affinity for Idiosyncratic Chapter Titles,* I realized that many folks are going to look at the next chapter title and let out a hearty "WTF?!" (or perhaps a WTH if small children are within earshot).
Thus the plan was to preemptively explain that all of the chapters in Transdementia are named after songs by School of Seven Bells (which, I suppose, is exactly what I'm doing right now). SVIIB's brand of electronic dream pop has been a huge inspiration for me for years. In fact, I was listening to them when the idea for Petriculture came to me in the first place. However, as I scoured YouTube for videos to show as examples, I came across this:
That's SVIIB's cover of "I Got Knocked Down (But I'll Get Up)" originally by Joey Ramone. And it's the last song that Benjamin Curtis, the band's guitarist/composer/arranger, performed before he died of lymphoma 18 months ago. In fact, I believe that with the exception of Alejandra Deheza's vocals, the entire track was produced and recorded from Curtis' hospital bed, on his laptop.
It's surprisingly hard to explain my emotions here; I never met Curtis. I never even had the chance to see SVIIB perform. Rationally speaking, I shouldn't be so worked up over his passing 18 months after it happened. But music isn't rational. It taps into some deeper part of the psyche, connecting emotions and memories and ideas in ways that seem impossible to fully understand.
... I originally had planned to end with something pithy, but I can't remember what it was anymore.
Well, it's the same reason the loss of Christopher Lee or Terry Pratchett was so upsetting-- you may not know these people personally but you know the art they make and love it and now the person who made that art is gone.
We're going to say "WTF" when we see the next chapter title, huh...?
Theory: You're going to rearrange the words in that song's title so it's "I got knocked up, but I'll get down."
3162718 - Oh, no, that's not the case at all. I won't be using "I Got Knocked Down" because 1. It's not originally a SVIIB song, and 2. Anyone who didn't read this post would assume I was referring to that stupid one-hit wonder from the 90s by Chumbawamba (which is actually titled "Tubthumping," but I digress).
No, the reason for the WTFery would be the fact that many of SVIIB's songs have intentionally misspelled, grammatically incorrect, or impossibly abstract titles.