MOG

The main reason I started this little 10 song project is that I wanted to know why these songs, in particular, move me so much. They're far from the best songs in my collection or the ones I respect the most or consider most "important." They're just the ones that happen to affect some bizarre psychological, subjective reaction that I can't understand, but makes me want to hear them again almost immediately after they're over.

Upon examination, I find that one thing outweighs all others in determining which songs mean the most to me: context. And, surprisingly, the context for a few of them is this--they remind me of dreams I had once, long ago. Dreams that I wouldn't remember unless I associated them with these songs; and these songs wouldn't mean as much to me if I didn't associate them with these dreams. I don't know what in the world that's all about.

But, let's go with it. "Red Shoes," which I love mostly for that swirling guitar sound, reminds me of a dream I had when I was about nine years old:

You are in a huge antebellum house in rural Arkansas. Its proximity to a battlefield caused it to be converted into a sort of museum. When you walk in the front door, you are in a vast, dark, open atrium before a winding staircase. A music box is on the ground and it plays a simple, haunting melody. Walking to the left of the stairway, is a long hall. Men are standing mute and still along the hallway, which leads to a glassed-in sun porch. On the porch: a battered old cannon mounted on a rotting wood brace. When in the room with the cannon, you are overcome with an inexplicable sadness for all the men who died on the battlefield just in sight out the windows of the porch.

I'm not sure that's what Kristen Hersch had in mind, but it is what it is.