The first time I heard Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, it was last year’s Etiquette, and the simplicity of his synthesizer coupled with the bitterness in his fuzzy vocals was captivating. From the twenty-something lonely heart anthem I Love Creedence to the tell it like it is Young Shields whose lyrics read like a regurgitated parental lecture, Etiquette makes me wonder whether college dropout turned low-fi songwriter Owen Ashworth is claiming that unused intellect, vintage pearls, bleak loveless existences, and endless, reflective subway rides home are the sad realities of young urban bohemian life.
Three months later I tell the guy behind the counter that I’m going to need a second bag. I spent my subway money on records from the $.10 bin, precious, picked-over gems filled with ancient country ballads and framed by time-scarred cardboard sleeves with fraying edges. Two Casiotone for the Painfully alone LPs, Pocket Symphonies for Lonesome Subway Cars and Twinkle Echo are the only new vinyl I splurged on. There’s no way I’m letting my brand new and second hand treasures get ruined by the shitty weather.
As my clothes soak through, and my shoes get heavier, and my hair sticks to my face from the rivers of tepid rain falling out of the flat, gray sky I trudge through the soggy Philadelphia streets clutching my albums tightly in my arms. Normally when I walk home through Center City past the coffee shops and neat, tidy square parks, all I can see are the beautiful things about the city in the summer: sun-warmed murals on the sides of buildings, couples eating at outdoor resturaunts. But this rain is depressing. It’s pounding me down. The further I walk, the darker my mood gets, and my mind starts to fill up with all the to do lists, petty embarrassments, and unpaid bills I’d hidden away in dark places until they drown out my positive thoughts.
I stop fighting it and lose my conscious mind in a sea of self-pity. The deeper I fall into all my hidden lonliness and sorrow from all the little failures I manager to conjure up like my student loans from the degree I haven’t finished, dread for my demeaning night job as a cater-waiter, the money I borrowed from my mom and never paid back, the more sick pleasure I start to get. Indulging my inflated sense of self-righteous sorrow and lonliness feels so good that I drive the knife deeper and deeper, reminding myself of untouched dirty laundry, unwashed dishes, broken appointments.
This is the paradox of despair: the inexplicable, overwhelming sense of relief after a long sobbing fit, and the enjoyment that we get from wallowing in our own self-depricating thoughts. I decide that I’m going to use my interview with Owen Ashworth to unlock the mysteries of sadness. He is, after all, a kind of musical moping guru.
I’m disappointed when Ashworth is downright lighthearted in our interview, calling my question about the nature of despair an essay question that makes him think of Edward Gorey cartoons. He’s never been to Philadelphia, which bums me out even further, since in I Love Creedence he had his characters “take an apartment at south 9th,” and that would put them right in my neighborhood.
I finally get what I’m looking for when I ask him what he thinks is the most sorroful music he’s ever heard. “I have a recording of a teenaged Jeanette Carter singing “You Are My Sunshine” for a Carter Family radio performance,” he replies. “It is probably the saddest song I have ever heard in my life, and it’s only a minute and a half long.” Good answer.
That description despair in youth is a paradox for the same reason that Pocket Symphonies’ definitive track, The Subway Home’s two slow quiet arpeggios can form a song so emotionally complex. “It gets worse before it gets better…” drones Ashworth, dipping into a pool of anguish so universal in it’s causes that I feel like we’re swimming in it together, running into all our friends. It’s a self-pity party, Casiotone is playing, we’re all miserable, drowning in our own dashed ambition, and it’s a great time.
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July 20th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
haha bummer.