Animal Mask - The Mountain Goats

Think about memory, right. Think about remembering things, think about nostalgia. Think about the implicit space for sadness in lines as wistful as “that was when we were green and young”. We were green and young and shining once but we aren’t anymore and we will never be again and we know that. In the dawning hours of our team. The dawn breaking and everyone young and together and hopeful and new. That’s the kind of thing you can really only be once. Every team only gets one chance to be born, every group of people only gets to be allies like that just the once in their lives. I feel like I’m talking about superheroes but think about that montage at the beginning of the superhero movie, the team gathering for the first time: that’s magic. That’s magic and it flares bright and you can’t get it back again. That was when we were green and young, battle cry rising from your tongue. We’ll never be together like that again and no amount of memory can change that. Everything eventually passes.

Still, I think about memory as a choice. Sometimes the present makes the past sad to us but it doesn’t have to be, it doesn’t have to. Sometimes the present makes the past sad just because it’s the past, you know, because nostalgia grabs hold of your throat and your tongue, makes your eyes water. Everything fades eventually and that is such a hard thing to come to terms with. We were young and green once but we’re not anymore. We were a team once but we’re not anymore, we haven’t been in a long time. The kind of nostalgia where the wispiness of it somehow still manages to slice you open. A quiet feeling but a pervasive one that won’t leave you, just the echo of once, once we had this over and over in your head. You have to make it leave sometimes. You have to frame the past for yourself as something good, something worthwhile. A beautiful thing that happened once and it was so, so sweet. Some things you will remember. Some things stay sweet forever.

There is so much space between those two lines despite the fact that there’s no pause. Some things you will remember. Some things stay sweet forever. Those aren’t the same “some things” and they don’t have to be but they could be. The pre-construction of memory while still standing in the present: I will remember this well. I will remember this as a good thing no matter if it fades. Everything always fades. Some things you’ll remember and some of those things will never lose their glowing light, not even if it was the last time. Not even if you’ll never have that light again. What a thing it is, to think about being green and young and to promise yourself you’ll never be bitter about that. What a thing it is, to decide to live in the sweetness of your memory. When I heard this song live the audience sang the last chorus, very very soft, a strange and hallowed thing springing into the room. Some things you will remember, some things stay sweet forever. JD smiled at us really big. “That was so sweet, when you guys did that,” and even if I never see another Mountain Goats show that will always be a sweet thing. It will have been enough.

Sometimes the past can’t be looked at directly; sometimes the light of the present illuminates things too harshly, too starkly. But you can choose not to do that, if you want, if certain parts of the past are important enough. You can look at it with a softer light, one small flickering candle; you can keep it sweet. You can think about it only in moments when it won’t tip you over some invisible edge into sadness, into the bleakness that is remembering. You keep it on a high shelf, and you remember it, and you always will, but you don’t take it down very often. You keep it safe, you keep it sweet. We were young and green and no matter what happens now you will have that shining moment tucked away somewhere, kept pristine. Kept away from the smearing muddy sadness that gets all over the things you can’t help revisiting, prodding at the wound. Some things you will remember but only rarely, only when you can. Only when you feel strong enough to look at them as they were and keep the present out of it.

Everything passes but that can be a thing of its own kind of beauty. I am not going to compare it to seasons changing because seasons always come back again but sometimes the things you love just end. Every feeling is finite; every kind of love you ever feel is different than any that came before and that will come after. That’s alright, though. You can keep your memories of those things you love the way some people collect tiny models of classic cars or butterflies on cards. So crystal-clear you can still remember the blood in your mouth, your shaking shoulders when you stood together for the first time, a team, your masks in hand. Some things are worth remembering even if they hurt you. Some things are worth keeping even if you never look at them; you know they’re there, tucked away for when you’re ready. Some things are worth holding onto forever.

- Aly & Sophia