Today is Andrew Bird’s 41st birthday. Not only that, he’s
playing tonight in Bridgeport, CT. Which does me no good as I’ll be in PA.
Sorry to miss him, but I can honor him anyway.
I’ve only seen Bird perform once—as an opening act for The
New Pornographers at Electric Factory in Philadelphia, back when both were touring
to support what are still my favorite albums by each: for Bird: Armchair Apocrypha from which comes
today’s song.
“Dark Matter” has always been a favorite. It has such kick, with a
lift off that thrills me, and it does it without much bombast or any sense that
this is overstated. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure what is causing that
elated feeling. Why is “dark matter” something to get such a lift out of?
It’s a liberating song, somehow. It starts with whistling
that sounds a bit disconnected, like someone ambling along to no particular
purpose, but then we hear the sound of a crescendo approaching and it arrives
like a wave that lifts us—it’s propelled, and propels us (marked by
drums and cymbals). And soon Bird is confiding to us something that might
explain the feeling, or it may be a kind of disavowal: “When I was just a
little boy / I threw away all of my action toys / While I became obsessed with Operation. / With hearts and minds and
certain glands / You’ve got to learn to keep a steady hand / And thus began my
morbid fascination.” It’s like an origin
story, a way of accounting for how mysterious “dark matter” shapes one’s sense
of possibility, of what is and isn’t present.
A boy throws away his action toys and becomes obsessed with
a board game that tries your skill at removing little bits of molded plastic from
recesses that are rimmed with metal—you touch that metal with your metal
pliers, a little zap occurs. You’ve been electrocuted! Can you extract the
plastic without touching? Pride in such a game, we assume, has to do with the steady
hand necessary to achieve success. The task is a test of skill, of patience and
timing.
The song seems to draw its energy from besting such challenges,
but Bird also seems to be considering the last things, and how we’ll face
death. In that context, the morbid fascination makes more sense, as does Operation. The key is going out clean.
And that’s maybe where the dark matter comes in: it’s not
visible but it’s there. It has effects and these lead one to infer that it
exists. The possibilities seem to be
suggestive for Bird as he thinks of harnessing such energy. But it also leads
to the question: “Do you wonder where the self resides / Is it in your head or
between your sides?” The self, like dark matter, can only be inferred, never
actually seen or located.
The “morbid fascination” seems to be with things that have
explanatory power but are questionable, or maybe just theoretical. The part
that really capitalizes on that idea is a statement about DNA as “a noose,” a
deterministic element in a universe that needs dark matter to suggest something
not wholly determinate because still speculative (like the resting place of the
self).
It’s a loopy lyric wedded to an anxious, energetic song.
Lines like “Just before they kick out the ladder” surge with a sense of
release. If only to escape the noose of DNA, if only—to use Henry Miller’s
phrase—to jump clear of the clockwork, if only to shoot rays of dark matter at
anything too stolid, too undeviating. And it’s that “nau-se-ou-se-ous sort of
elation” that sticks with us, for if we’re to escape our genes, or our
conditioning, or our biology, or our mental habits, we need more than a steady
hand, we need escape formulas, mantras, rays of dark matter.
Bird can be an oddly elliptical lyricist, and often his
tunes tend to meander as well. But “Dark Matter” is propulsive, gripped by an
urge to attest to skill, special energies, specific glands and secretions, a
need to prove a location and a purpose for one’s chosen self.
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