flâneur

Notes on "Julia" - by Sasha Chapin - Sasha's 'Newsletter'

sashachapin.substack.com · 838 words · saved by 1 readers

—This song provides a helpful suggestion to anyone who is attempting to make music, charm someone, or craft a universe: provide almost complete satisfaction. This is the method of its melody, which is an example of exquisitely torturous restraint. You know, deep in your bones, that John’s voice should reach up and touch C# during the refrain, on the words “song of love.” But he doesn’t, sliding sideways saucer-like, instead, and the droney gesture sounds almost wrong. When the melody finally does reach up towards the promised crest, just before the song’s end, and then once more again, it is like an iridescent inkwell spilled backward onto what has gone before, making the grey opalescent, revealing all the colors that were longed for. —This forestalling, tantalizing quality mirrors the sensation of wanting someone you can’t have, whether the non-having is the fault of incompatible desire or inconvenient mortality. Ironically, it’s the absence that you crave, ultimately—the image built

—This song provides a helpful suggestion to anyone who is attempting to make music, charm someone, or craft a universe: provide almost complete satisfaction. This is the method of its melody, which is an example of exquisitely torturous restraint. You know, deep in your bones, that John’s voice should reach up and touch C# during the refrain, on the words “song of love.” But he doesn’t, sliding sideways saucer-like, instead, and the droney gesture sounds almost wrong. When the melody finally does reach up towards the promised crest, just before the song’s end, and then once more again, it is…

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