I wrote about my love for this Lloyd Cole and the Commotions song during our last election cycle, but back then, no one had uploaded videos of him singing the song. This is probably as much a function of these performances not having happened at that time as the technological advances which have turned us all into videographers and documentarians. Now that I have stumbled upon this, I felt the need to revisit the song and, yes, the line, "What she needs, I don't have, that's not in the hand that I'm holding" packs the same quiet punch it did when I first heard it when I was fifteen. I can't help but wonder what was wrong with me that I identified with songs like this back before I had ever even kissed anyone and that I still identify with songs like this even though I have been happily coupled with the same person for close to two decades. Maybe it is a sort of payment I make for being happy. Maybe there is this other Alison out there who is living a life of sorrow for me and I have to listen to these songs or else she will come and take my place and I will be forced to take hers. Maybe I am just a memory and a YouTube video away from finding myself in an apartment somewhere playing Roy Orbison records till dawn. Or maybe I am reading to much into it and I just like it because it is really good and I have excellent taste.
Of course, it is impossible to watch this video without being struck by how Lloyd Cole has aged. he was always an attractive man, Lloyd Cole, and it is a bit unsettling to see how his aging has taken a similar path as another similarly attractive man from that era, Bruce Campbell. It is a bit uncanny. I am wondering if the two men google one another from time to time ("hey, what's that guy with my face doing these days?"). Also, looking at pictures of these men, I am having that weird sense of "how did these guys get so old when I haven't age one bit?" sense because, in my mind, I am still thirteen.
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