the riyl revolution

I haven’t posted here in like three months. Since before summer started, or really started. Since before I moved to this hot, brown city where I’m really busy all the time but nothing actually ever happens unless it rolls in on four wheels and asks you for gas money and bats its big gorgeous eyes at you and sleeps on your futon and disappears to California or Georgia or New Zealand or wherever the next stop is.

I’ve been worried all summer about saying too much, about being too forthcoming and too transparent and too hopelessly in love with the wrong people or the right people at the wrong time or whatever, everything, all of it. I’ve been sawing off the problematic limbs: the parts that say ineloquent but heartfelt things when shit’s totally unfair, the parts that get enraged when cops harass innocuous crowds of teenagers on Central, the parts that get totally wrecked when the much-anticipated phone call turns out to be a complete nightmare, proving only that we have no clue who one another is.

But then I found the ‘zine Invincible Summer by Nicole Georges. And I started to feel okay being a total sap, such a bleeding heart. I swear I bled heart-juice all over the page and the pages bled it right back, one big red pulpy mess on the living room couch. And that felt better.

In the pages of Invincible Summer, Miss Georges reminded me about Lovers, a band that my friend Sydney told me about almost a year ago. She prefaced that introduction with, Be careful, this shit might be too emo for you. Back then she was right. Take a look at these lyrics from “Winter Takes a Lover”:

like a one kid army of the good witch
all alone i raise my fist
as i ride on my bike around your neighborhood
and shout, “make me pure. make my heart good.”

Lovers – Winter Takes A Lover

Or these lyrics from “Fall Like Stars”:

all your lovers form a circle that sparkles in the street
they hold their hands up to the sky in a gesture of defeat

and you were calm wanting
not to rise so you would not fall
but it doesn’t make us whole to stay unbroken

Lovers – Fall Like Stars

Or these totally indecipherable lyrics from “From a Highway”:

ugfgw;; fucked up family history..!#
junkyard of emotion~~~~
*vv (heart breaking) dgiy789<<-

Lovers – From a Highway

This is Lovers’ Carolyn Berk, whose Myspace influences section reads, amazingly, serendipitously, “realizing that your scarlet letter is actually your red badge of courage.” She is saying too much, being too forthcoming and too transparent. She is hopelessly in love with the wrong people or the right people at the wrong time or whatever, everything, all of it. And it’s totally brilliant. You feel about it the way you felt about Bright Eyes in ninth grade, like the warble in his throat is caused by some golden orb of pain, bobbing and beautiful and delicate and pure. And, because you haven’t been numbed into submission, because you never learned how to not feel things even when they tried to teach you, you dig it.

meagan

Buy Lovers’ upcoming album here.