Here in the garden
Let's play a game
I'll show you how it's done
Here in the garden
Stand very still
This'll be so much fun
And then she smiled, that's what I'm after
The smile in her eyes, the sound of her laughter
Happy to listen
Happy to play
Happily watching her drift
Away.
Happily waiting
All on my own
Under the endless sky
Counting the seconds
standing alone
As thousands of years go by
Happily wondering, night after night
Is this how it works?
Am I doing it right?
Happy to listen, happy to stay
Happily watching her drift
Away.
You keep on turning pages
for people who don't care
People who don't care
About you
And still it takes you ages
To see that no one's there
See that no one's there
See that no one's there
Everyone's gone on without you.
Finally something
Finally news
About how the story ends
She doesn't exist now
Survived by her son
And all of her brand new friends
Isn't that lovely?
Isn't that cool?
AND AIN’T THAT SO FUCKING CRUEL?!
And aren't I a fool to have,
Happily listened,
Happy to stay,
Happily watching her drift
Drift
DRIFT
AWAY!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------BEGIN TRANSMISSION-----------------------------
----------DRIFT AWAY--------------------------------------------
The second single from Perversions, if anybody wants it.
One of the strangest things leading into the album was my newfound interest in Steven Universe. If you've ever been on the Internet for more than a minute, you'd know that the fanbase doesn't have a positive reputation. For example, a joke review-bomb of real-life Keystone Motels - where all reviews mentioned events that happened in the episode "Keystone Motel," from Ruby boiling all the water out of the pool because she's so darn angry or Sapphire cranking the AC all the way down - led to the businesses complaining about the influx of one-star reviews (which impact foot traffic to said businesses). There's the fact that the show received several critical hosannas despite more outspoken (and socially conservative, but I'm sure that's just a coinkydink) people criticizing elements of the show, from its scheduling to Rebecca Sugar's pronounced use of queer theming to even how the finale and the epilogue miniseries handle the main villains of the show. And of course, everybody's heard about the fan artist incident, which I'm not going to mention in detail. The show has a terrible reputation on the Internet.
So imagine my shock when I went to watch it and it turns out it was good. As a matter of fact, it was pretty good. At times great when the show was able to - and I don't mean in the sense of "they let the space lesbian gems do a same-sex relationship." I mean the moments people hated were either really good in a deconstructive manner - the Uncle Grandpa spinoff showed the show could reign in the wackiness of Pete Browngardt's vision, plus give clever foreshadowing from the mouth of the weird uncle-grandpa man (why would he suggest Steven polish his gem like a diamond using terminology that is regularly only used for diamonds, for starters); a good deal of the epilogue played with fans' expectations and showed people how utterly psychologically destructive having a black-and-white sense of morality can be (especially for somebody like Steven, who was just given "fight the Diamonds, your mom was a hero" stories and was entirely unprepared for how messy and morally grey the truth is). And of course, there's the movie - which served as a nice little linking point between the main series and the epilogue, plus with even more people screaming at Steven that his mom is not the issue here but how he unhealthily both sanctifies and demonizes her. It's what a lot of people call the Madonna-whore complex - you're either Mother Mary, innocent and sweet, or you're Delilah giving Samson a high-and-tight. No in-between, no grey area, no spectrum to work from. You've lumped people - especially women - into these two categories. And Steven Universe deliberately demonstrates us to show us that being a kid with superpowers who gets to see all sorts of cool worlds is really not a good thing.
And it does so without shock-killing Mami during her Tiro Finale just to show Madoka that shit's serious for real without having Kyubey monologue about entropy way too early. The fact that a kids' show finds a cleverer way than an adult animation to showcase how destructive a lot of the expectations of heroism, black-and-white morality (and Madonna-whore), and destiny are - and why we need to strive to be better, even if you're lesbian space rocks - is both sad (adult media should strive to be more thoughtful) and heartwarming (media intended for kids can impart meaningful messages that apply to everybody). Rebecca Sugar took a seemingly ordinary idea - show based on her and her brother Steven's adventures in Delaware and New Jersey when they were kids - and found gold.
Also the show has some really good tunes, the movie especially so. In particular, I found the song "Drift Away" to be very powerful - powerful enough that, after running through it a few times on my acoustic, I decided to record it as part of the lockdown sessions. It's Spinel's "why I'm a villain" song, her tragic backstory - the funny and angry rubberhose slapstick gem who definitely mains Peacock is a tragic figure, who would've thought - and a song that beats out the entire discography of Jered Threatin in how it explores manufactured identity, emotional anguish, and trauma in a more concise way than "BUT MOOOOOOOM LIVING IS DYING" while also obviously being a song about how she got abandoned by her best friend. Spinel's had a tough 5000 years. Let's give her a hug so she won't inject Gem splooge into the Earth.
but at the same time, if Steven kissed the land wrecked by the Injector and it all returned to its former glory, why didn't he do the same to Peridot's failed garden at the American Kindergarten, boy i sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------END TRANSMISSION----------------------
Cardiacs has finally reached Bandcamp. This is genuinely one of my favorite albums, especially with the varied compositional styles, the mixture of psychedelia and prog rock, and Timmy's lyrics. Clicker Records
