This Year 365 songs: January 13th
Jan. 13th, 2026 11:53 am Today's song is "The Last Day of Jimi Hendrix's Life"
A few days ago, I stopped putting the names of the individual songs for each day in the tags for the posts, because I remembered![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ambyr mentioning there is an upper bound on how many tags dreamwidth will let you have, and I wasn't sure I wanted to use up 365 of them on individual Mountain Goats songs.
The annotations on this piece include a reproduction of text of Auden's poem "Museé de Beaux Arts", and Darnielle's reflections on how his song is a response to that poem. I'm fairly sure I've encountered the poem before, but I didn't really remember much about it. It's worth reading—that's the opposite of a hot take, to be sure—but in the context of this song, in particular.
They never forgot
The "they" here is the old masters, who Auden is praising for recognizing that intense suffering (or ecstasy) happens alongside the everyday goings-on of the rest of the world. Did I quote this passage because it says "dogs go on with their doggy life"? Yes. Of course I did. Darnielle's song removes the comparison between subjects (Icarus's suffering vs. the normalcy of the ploughman's day) to juxtapose the same contrast within a single subject. The elements of Jimi Hendrix's last day (in the song) are unremarkable: a hot shower a cold glass of water. This is contrasted with the unstated tragedy of his death.*
Okay, so, moving song, interesting reflections on where it came from. The annotation also mentions his father, which is somewhat rare to see him talk about (compared to his very frequent and unpleasant memories of his stepfather).
*There is a word that is not the word "synoptic" and not the word "enthymeme" but is in the neighborhood of one of those, for the literary device of not talking about/describing the details of his death in order to make it a focal point of comparison, but I spent about 10 minutes trying to remember the word I was looking for and I cannot, and it is going to drive me nuts.
A few days ago, I stopped putting the names of the individual songs for each day in the tags for the posts, because I remembered
ambyr mentioning there is an upper bound on how many tags dreamwidth will let you have, and I wasn't sure I wanted to use up 365 of them on individual Mountain Goats songs.
The annotations on this piece include a reproduction of text of Auden's poem "Museé de Beaux Arts", and Darnielle's reflections on how his song is a response to that poem. I'm fairly sure I've encountered the poem before, but I didn't really remember much about it. It's worth reading—that's the opposite of a hot take, to be sure—but in the context of this song, in particular.
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
The "they" here is the old masters, who Auden is praising for recognizing that intense suffering (or ecstasy) happens alongside the everyday goings-on of the rest of the world. Did I quote this passage because it says "dogs go on with their doggy life"? Yes. Of course I did. Darnielle's song removes the comparison between subjects (Icarus's suffering vs. the normalcy of the ploughman's day) to juxtapose the same contrast within a single subject. The elements of Jimi Hendrix's last day (in the song) are unremarkable: a hot shower a cold glass of water. This is contrasted with the unstated tragedy of his death.*
Okay, so, moving song, interesting reflections on where it came from. The annotation also mentions his father, which is somewhat rare to see him talk about (compared to his very frequent and unpleasant memories of his stepfather).
Apart from what I've just discussed above, I found myself thinking a lot about the album "Transcendental Youth" (which, push come to shove, is probably my favorite Mountain Goats album). Here's John Darnielle performing a track from that album, talking about and singing "Harlem Roulette" off of Transcendental Youth, and if you watch this video, you'll see why the connection lit up in my brain:
*There is a word that is not the word "synoptic" and not the word "enthymeme" but is in the neighborhood of one of those, for the literary device of not talking about/describing the details of his death in order to make it a focal point of comparison, but I spent about 10 minutes trying to remember the word I was looking for and I cannot, and it is going to drive me nuts.
