Songwriting

Leonard was making a paper plane this morning and shouting 'Jet' so I put on Band on the Run. Haven't heard it in a while - and got enough sleep last night to be feeling cheerful this morning - so I was amused, again, for perhaps the fiftieth time over twenty years, by what a dark night of the soul feels like when you are a stratospherically rich, adored and pampered popstar:

If I ever get out of here

Thought of giving it all away

To a registered charity

Oh god I love it. Drop out, shed your material wealth and all the spiritual burdens that go along with it, but make sure the loot goes to a registered charity! Get a receipt for tax purposes so your accountant can write off your gifts against your expenses! I can just so relate! Lyrical expression for the ages.

I'm listening a lot to LCD Soundsystem's This is Happening because it's beautiful. But I'm afraid that this fail of a grammatically correct utterance (from 'All I Want') really shits me

All I want is your pity

All I want are your bitter tears

 Shits me to tears, in fact. What's the point of writing and recording an otherwise wonderful piece of music about desire, separation, compromise and regret - about love, really - if you can't get basic subject/verb agreement right? Or is that a symptom of why the relationship was doomed from the start? Anyway I don't appreciate being distracted into grammar resentfulness when I'd rather be getting lost in the lines and loops of sound.

While I'm here I might also just say that I am a big fan of Sufjan Stevens and I listened to Carrie & Lowell every day for months, but towards the end of that time I began to be disillusioned by a sneaking suspicion that most of the lyrics don't really make any sense. With some distance now between me and that particular auditory obsession I am ready to say that I was right and they don't.