The Goldberg Variations

from The Break-Up Album: 25 Years Later by Imperial Midge

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lyrics

It’s clear now in reading the journals that the separation from Sayer was a very necessary kick in the butt for me. I even recognized this at the time, writing, “Ironically, this whole experience will probably be more useful for me in the end than for Sayer.” In addition to finding better day jobs, meeting new people, imagining myself travelling, I reestablished my work routines on my second animated film “Desert Dive-Inn.”

“The Goldberg Variations”

Glenn Gould mewls and squeaks
Like a child who’s seen a cat
Peek through a window and then leave.
He can’t yet walk across the room
To see what happened next,
So he voices his frustration with a sound.

He’s in the sustained present tense.
I wonder how long can he carry it through?

Actually I’ve heard this record
A hundred times before
And I know that he arrives successfully.
Or that a clever engineer
Created this illusion
By cutting takes together in New York.

Columbia Records Studio
The Goldberg Variations, 1955.

Now it’s 1993
I’m drawing in a still strange room
Feeling adrift and fatherless.
I’ve trained myself to animate
At night and only to this music
No other would suffice.
The pencil pursues its path
It follows the piano
Distracts my thinking from lost love.

And from the end of my twenties and the hopes
That are no longer suitable for me.

Glenn Gould searches for his
Perfect articulation
When everything fits in its place.
And instead he captures
That accidental human sound
That makes the struggle really live.
I push aside a ruined drawing
Of a fish in flight
One twelfth second in my film.
But before I crumple up
The wasted sheet of paper
I write along the bottom of the page:

June 10, 1993
12:17 A.M, I am not alone tonight.

credits

from The Break-Up Album: 25 Years Later, released May 29, 2019
Reid Kruger - drums, voice
Tom Schroeder - guitar, voice
Jonathan Zorn - bass, synths

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Tom Schroeder Saint Paul, Minnesota

einausanimation.com

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