my brain on never love an anchor
i think the closest i can get to a conclusion for Never Love an Anchor is twofold. first, my maternal response to a lot of my friends. at any sign of trouble, i used to find myself shifting registers to emulate the softness of a caring mother.
while i’ve grown out of being motherly to a limited extent (lol my former councilmates still call me mother for my instinctual responses) and have started doing so more as a deeply-caring equal, i know that my care even now is modified by the detached reading i have of my mother, a necessary distance to provide care superceding the want i have to be close to someone. that i will provide even at the cost of my closeness to them.
second, the somewhat-subtle (ehh) but monstrous language of the song is particularly resonant with my incapacity to view myself as anything but a monster. i have probably implied it before but, as of late, i have only been able to conceptualize myself as a monstrous creature whose mere presence is costly and repulsive. the notion of expressing love but necessitating distance, to provide strength and need at any cost just to be understood, only to be undermined by the reality of being so diluted in a, well, ontological evil… that’s exactly what it is. to have levy but never love the anchor.
[…]
ok my brain is insisting that i provide surface-level reading as well of why i like the song and how it makes me feel.
so the song appeals to me lyrically because it has an almost impudent desperation to communicate. the language used is rather blunt, fairly reminiscent of how i try to be in my relationships. while blunt, though, it still maintains some kind of… transparent? obtuseness that feels familiar, if not outright homely. the allusions feel really direct to me and the words are exactly what they are. it is largely uninterested in being unclear and that especially hits.
musically, the instrumentation insists on being consistent. everything feels like it is very anchored to the percussion. it is so insistent on its regularity, it almost feels relentless. even as layers move in and out, the percussive line is unfazed and unmoved. between verses, i feel like i’m falling behind listening to the track and the verses have to time themselves to jump in with the rest of the song. it lends me this feeling of being left behind.
this only really breaks in bridge, which almost feels like the scene has shifted into slow motion and slowly accelerates back into realtime as the drums shift into halftime. it feels to me like a surrender, allowing the self to fall away as the beat continues. it feels to me like the verses don’t come in after that because we’ve accepted being swept past, that we can’t catch up anymore. the momentum is no longer ours and the anchor has been well and truly left behind.
i don’t have any music knowledge whatsoever, so i can’t speak to how it is written with its chords or wtv, but the whole song evokes a sunny-cloudy day to me. when the sky is dim and gray but the sun is somehow shining past, almost through a thick smog in the air. it feels bashful, even if pessimistic. the song nails it with “guilty, not remorseful”, because that’s exactly it. i think “lament” is probably the word i would use for the overall thing.
anyway, yeah, that’s my brain on Never Love an Anchor
also im obsessed with that fucking snare drum line they drop into the third verse what the fuck did they put in that shit