Son two is talking to his mother. Son one is in his room, and I’m contemplating the manipulations of Auntie Helen, the Stalinist from Hell. Which puts me in a crappy mood. So I turn to a certain group of songs. The first one has this comment from Youtube

When my wife (bless her heart and soul) left me, I played this song to smithereens. There can be so much comfort? in music!

Well, I went through a fairly intense diet of Nick Cave and others during the period just after the wife left. I like the way he gets the desperation correct in the song, and the sense of abandonment.

Ladies, this is why men disappear when they divorce. It takes time to stop howling at the Almighty and get human again, reflect and reform.

Tori does not do reform very well. She broke one of the great rules of the road — don’t sleep with the crew, twice. Married him the second time: but in the process her heart broke open. During the divorce, this song hurt too much. It does not, and I can hear the hamster going, going, going — the feeling has gone and move on. I hope she has moved on from that.

There has been some beauty come out of pain. We are, as human, with a spark, that allows us to take horror and in it find something real, true, and beautiful. But it hurts. I’m finishing with a song that documented the end of the marriage of the couple who sang it. And it’s harrowing, in any version.