will you join the dance?
6 December 2022 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steppenwolfA note on the type
Based on U2's Joshua Tree; I spent a long time looking for albums with hands on them, gave up, and picked an easy one to parody because I was lazy and in a rush (I'm doing the back minutes before posting haaaa). In my defence, the original cover has mountains too??? Anyway I will never be over this picture of Bill that Con took, ever, probably. background noise
This one is perhaps the most intentional, in that I was specifically looking for songs that mentioned holding hands. So a lot of songs were dropped and a lot of time was spent on mojim.com trawling through hands+holding or whatever other variations. I simply don't know why I do this to myself!
...I know why. Because Con said I would like Bill to hold my hand when we get to the pole. Because he died with his arm over Bill. And because the principle imagery in my head of the two of them is Tealin's Lobster Quadrille, from which this playlist takes its name, Bill holding out his hand, asking Con to join the dance.
Somewhat chronological, but also it's not like I'm going to be standing behind you turning your shuffle button off. Do what you want!!
thank you for the music
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we're halfway there.
Hold my hand and I'll take you there
Look I… think about the only Billcon photo that's just the two of them (unless there's more, please let me know if there's more) standing in the garden in Kirriemuir alive & surrounded by nature & smiling & smoking their silly little pipes a lot. They can have a little place as a treat…
Take my whole life, too
For I can't help falling in love with you
Hello I'm a hopeless romantic. They did rush in and were fools about it (polycule…) but then. Clenches fists. Like a river flows surely to the sea some things are meant to be. "There is nothing," Bill is quoted the Seaver I have only had the courage to open up to random pages because I don't think I can handle it, "that I would not do for him." And I guess that included dying by his side………………………………… man
We really thought we could win
But the door is still open
So come on in
And give me your hand
This was one of the results of my spending half a day on google looking up variations on hands with increasing frenzy. The lyrics aren't exactly to theme in the beginning but I'm a firm believer of taking things out of context to suit my purposes IN MUSIC and the frozen imagery was too good to pass up, and it starts getting very pertinent from verse 2 onwards; so maybe you don't win, but give me your hand.
In fact it could absolutely be a loop song: confusion of time again, time is stretching on, the door still being open... this is going to convince me to do a loop playlist when I don't have time :crylaugh:
Hold out your hand,
Can you feel the weight of it?
The whole world at your fingertips
If the playlist is broadly chronological, then this is the Lobster Quadrille moment of just after Titus's death, just before the blizzard. And I think just like the Quadrille it's Bill speaking to Con: of nature, of a beautiful landscape, of his ability to shape the story, of his heart. The kind of reassurance only a man who isn't afraid to die can give a man who's trapped in his life.
(At risk of sounding like a complete egomaniac it's also the moment of each of us is to himself indelible. ok just had to say that)
Waiting for the hint of a spark
A fun one given the religious imagery of the chorus and Bill's entire deal! (Look I think it still works… it's just postulating if there's no afterlife, and a little thing like that isn't going to stop Bilson.) Thinking here of Con being the last to die, putting his arm on Bill, following him through. Definitely a point of death song.
Your hand in my hand
So still and discreet
So long we become the flowers
We'd feed well the land
And worry the sheep
And then the point of the death itself. They had the perfect narrative death! With each other! In a way that I don't think any of the other primo ships did - Shackles dies without Wild, Titus without Atch, Birdie without Cherry, And Also Fred Is In Jail - it's fucked up but I take comfort in it ok??????????
I'm putting this as anchor song because the lyrics are literally perfect. Our heartbeats becoming slow. Two corpses we were / Two corpses I saw. And they'd find us in a week. I'd be home with you.
There's nothing I won't understand
I'll believe it all
I won't let go of your hand
But what of after... corgis talk about ghost aus a Lot (like a Lot a Lot) and one thing I think that crops up is Bill wouldn't be a ghost. He's just not tied here, he's at peace, he's restin easy, he's vibing with JC. Con is the exact opposite; he's restless, absolutely Not at peace, has so much trouble letting things go. The opposites are one big reason I love them and that emotional counterweight, someone so anxious and overwrought and someone detatched to the point of austerity, but it gives me a bit of MAN.JPG thinking about Bill wanting to leave the material plane and Con wanting to hang on.
This song is ambiguous - maybe the first one doesn't end up flying away, maybe the second one does, and is it still a lie if you believe it - and a little off-kilter, but for some reason I like it on here more than many of the others. I think it fits their relationship better than something straight out balls to the wall romance? That belief despite.. ALSO THERE'S BIRDS.
All the steps one takes to move on to
A place, a world unseen to us all
But it's okay; we'll be together, my friend
I picked up Spiritfarer this year and was absolutely bodied by the dialogue, the story, the concept, all of it. A perfect game. I associate Con with Stella at this point because I am unwell, but also because I think it fits narratively - he's the one writing his friends into the afterlife. What You Will Leave Behind - isn't that Con's words, diaries, our dead bodies?
It's a very polar exploration song in general (I took this off Cherry's playlist because I wanted to put it here instead) but I think following the ambiguity of Two Birds I wanted to end on something if not hopeful then serene. SPIRITFARER SPOILERS [highlight to see]: I think this is reversed, POV wise - after Stella/Con steps off the wire and departs, Bill is the one who will take his hand and guide him through.
All american rejects
A Lot of stuff was cut out to fit the hands theme; I decided to be stupid strict and exclude all general holding, so that left out things like If We Hold On Together (yes these playlists are just my childhood songs) and Make You Feel My Love. To say nothing of No Physical Touch songs like Good Riddance from the Hades soundtrack, which I do feel is at least a Bill song.
Songs that turned up in my extensive handholding search that I eventually dropped included the Fray's Hold My Hand, Explosions in the Sky's Your Hand in Mine, and Greg Or's A Song About Holding Hands.
Avril Lavigne's Kiss Me Like The World Is Ending is actually lyrically near-perfect (On my last day, all I wanna do is / Look you in the eyes and fall asleep right next to you) but didn't fit the rest of the songs musically barks sadly
two - morning || two - will you join the dance?
three - crevasse || three - we die, but we don't
four - ...antics || four - unknown continents || four - going to the match || four - in that final flowing cold
five - dead and gone
no subject
Date: 06/12/2022 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 06/12/2022 11:36 pm (UTC)Farewell
To all the earthly remains
No burdens
No further debts to be paid
Atlas
Can rest his weary bones
The weight of the world
All falls away
In time
like man..
no subject
Date: 07/12/2022 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 07/12/2022 12:17 pm (UTC)