Flavor of the Biweek II

“Future Starts Slow” by The Kills: Driving Past the Heartbreaker’s House

It was all an accident. Suddenly, while listening to this dark grey vagueness of mature longing that is The Kills’ latest album and driving around an area that I shall not mention should that attract unwanted attention, I realized I felt nostalgic. I like that feeling, though, and sometimes I do creepy things like this on purpose—you know Dragon has a crush on you if it looks like raccoons partied in your underwear drawer.

But I was not wearing my driving gloves the other night since I did not have a mission planned where impeccable scramming skills were necessary. I was simply doing ordinary errands and then there it was in my throat again…that gumball of someone else’s acrid tobacco breath expanding in gratefulness for a much needed heartbreak. Remember how you insisted so much you let yourself be drained of hope? Yet it keeps overflowing because that is what love is all about, man: “You can swing, you can flail, you can blow what's left of my right mind. I don't mind.”

VV and Hotel entrust us with a vigorously vulnerable song that provides a soundtrack to the way your face reacts as you drive past the heartbreaker’s house. Shoot intense glances at your mirrors and take in the partially reflected hot mess that you have become, so detached from the perkiness you always forgot to downplay in this fucking place when you were still invited inside. Sunglasses and cigarettes are essential in this conclusion to your current emotional state: “There's a time for the second best, and there's a time when the feeling's gone. But it's hard to be hard, I guess, when you're shaking like a dog,” and then you remember how insecure that person made you feel and you are kind of glad you are no longer dealing with their indecisiveness because now you can find this sort of comfort to your passions. Is there anything better than feeling sickly poetic?

If you could not find an answer to that question, then let The Kills be part of your sick poetry.

-       “Fried My Little Brains,” for when you have consumed large quantities of hard drugs and you don’t give a fuck about being caught loitering

-       “Love Is a Deserter,” yeah, I’d say

-       “Hook and Line,” since you liked them more than they liked you but you kept pretending like you could somehow change that

And if you are unfortunate enough to be a heartbreaker and cannot seem to find any of this useful to your daily routine, remember the golden rule of heartbreaking: you only learn to do it if it is done to you first. So start digging up those old wounds and fill up the gas tank because we are on an obsessive excursion to all those places where you wish you had not been not good enough.

-       Dragon