SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-“Will You Return/When You Come Down” (2020).
As part of The Flaming Lips’ slow release of new songs from American Head, here comes this gentle song “Will You Return/Will You Come Down.”
Wayne sings his falsetto vocals over a gentle piano and bells melody. He sings the title a few times before the verse begins.
The verses are very Flaming Lips–a friendly vocal melody about death.
About half way through, after the second chorus, the song takes off with soaring backing vocals and more instruments added.
A vocal line (Wayne’s voice sped up?) sings the “will you return” part a few times before a folky acoustic guitar comes in to take over the chorus. The last minute or so goes full on Lips with strings, different vocal lines (screaming from beyond) and a wild guitar solo.
Although there’s not much to this song, there’s quite a lot going on.
[READ: August 21, 2020] “Woven, Sir”
After reading some bizarre and exciting stories, this one felt rather dull.
A man is in a hotel in Madrid waiting for a friend. He looks around the hotel, makes observations about the other people there and then notices a man name Tyler.
There’s a number of interesting lines in the story which I liked. Like when the narrator requests food from the waiter and Tyler, who is not facing him, says
I notice that, regrettably, you haven’t improved your pronunciation. You are as lost in Spanish as you once were in English, he says…. You don’t listen to how other people talk. You never say to yourself, He speaks well, so I’ll listen to him and learn how to speak.
Then we learn that the narrator knew Tyler (it’s his last name, first name unknown) many many years ago, when the narrator was six or seven. Tyler was a tutor at a facility called the Green Hut.
But the memories don’t seem to be real.
If he was six or seven, is it likely that he and Tyler (who was much older) brought water to the Hut. And could he really not remember what they “did about shitting” if the Hut had no heating or plumbing? How could you possibly forget that?
The story bounces back between the present and the past. As he watches Tyler eat a sandwich he flashes back to Tyler teaching him how to write. Did the narrator go to school as well? He has no real understanding of how The Green Hut worked. Tyler told him:
Forming the letters in not writing. Writing involves spelling, straight lines, spacing words, leaning the right way, margins, size legibility, keeping the nib clean
The narrator also learned carpentry, geometry Latin and drawing. And he says he used to take a bus home from Tyler’s flat–so was more going on than is mentioned?
The title is given in the story–the past participle of weave–but not really explained further.
Never never talk about what you see on somebody’s bedside table. Study it if you want to…remember it if you like, but say nothing, for there’s nothing to be said.
And yet Tyler died right after the Second World War. Is this all a dream? A fantasy? The man he is supposed to meet comes to him shortly after the reverie ends.
I just couldn’t get into this story.
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