August 06, 2005
What Would Lisa Do
So, um, what's up with Rachel Sweet?
When invisible people are downloading songs from my computer, I check what songs have been sought; when it's an odd choice, say "2541," I browse their collection in return. Isn't technology wonderful? And I don't even have that robot named after a famous nightclub that does your sweeping.
This is how I was reminded of the existence of "Who Does Lisa Like?" Perhaps you have been holding it in your short-term cache, but I hadn't thought pon it since maybe 1871. Every single little thing she does is magic, especially the fact that her nonsense syllables, "oh ta ta ta," replace the line "ooh it's all right," and immediately suggest it isn't, really, as the song shifts toward a sort of tsssk-ing judgement right there in Akron's Firestone parking lot, killing time with local gossip.
It's not live for today, it's this is all we got. "Nothing's important if that ain't important, so don't change the subject," she says before the last verse: "people are starving in India, fighting in Baghdad...but we don't care. We'd ask herself but it's none of our business, besides, we don't dare." Cut to the chorus, with its perverse urgency, how the empty night fills up with the concern closest to hand, without a religious commitment to the local, overburdened with absurd interest, excessive affect, panic guitars, whatever has some power against vacancy...
Update: we still don't know who Lisa likes. But did the car tires and Baghdad seem so obviously intertwined back then, such an obvious haunting? And hadn't we better get some new stuff not to care about?
Posted by jane at August 6, 2005 01:00 AM | TrackBack