Eels
Earth to Dora

Everyone has their problems, but there's a limit to everything…

Of course, if I had been the son of Hugh Everett III, I wouldn't have taken it well at all.

With all the infinite copies of myself existing, with all the infinite branches of the Universe, did I really have to end up living in this one?

He could have thought this theory a bit better or at least imagined some preferential treatment for his family..

It's not easy to witness, in sequence, the death of a father at nineteen, then a sister (suicide), then a mother (from cancer), and finally, now, a marriage..

Sure, everyone has their problems, all of us, to varying degrees, have the face of the clown on the cover hidden in the drawer, but there's a limit to everything…

As far as I'm concerned, it was about a week ago that I realized that, in this branch where the most God-forsaken or ill-fated copy of Mr. E released “Earth to Dora,” my Rt index had exceeded the alert level…

After about nine months, I resumed running.

And while running, I listen to music, including the songs from this latest Eels album.

An album with a partial return to certain atmospheres, rich in magical post-traumatic melancholy, of albums like "Electro Shock Blues" or "Blinking Light and Other Revelations," which had apparently been abandoned lately.

The music box ballads that made the fortune of Shrek's soundtrack.

Two tenderly naive little waltzes typical products of a shattered heart (personally, I find “Who you say you are” enchanting)..

An album that certainly doesn't leave you speechless but is sincere and moving, really pleasant to listen to, very well played, and with some small novelties.

The presence, for example, of a recitative in the style of Johnny Cash, or a vaguely spaghetti western sound in certain passages of "Are You Fucking Your Ex" or the title track.

I like to think there's, underneath it all, a tribute to the recently deceased Ennio Morricone, much loved even in the United States, although it probably isn’t so.

I listen to it and think of Mr. E's father and his (elusive?) "Interpretazione_a_molti_mondi."

The quantum interferences that can exist between these worlds, to my distant daughter, volunteering on the front line for the desire for independence and stubborn dedication to university studies..

She could have in these days been at home following online classes (like last year) or be in that distant city in the far north attending them in person, surrounded by colleagues and perhaps new friends.

And instead, in the end, thanks to these mysterious interferences, today she is in the far north attending them online, closed in a hole of a house that isn't hers, away from everyone except for one fellow recluse as stubborn as she is..

Perhaps I should also blame the old Everett and all the theorists of this damned quantum mechanics (which has fascinated me for years), but it doesn't seem like the right case.

I console myself by thinking that anyway, if old Everett is right, in some branch of the Universe right now there will be a copy of me talking with my daughter and, while she perhaps tells her about the new friendships made in a university classroom full of people, listens to the most cheerful album composed by Mark Oliver Everett, happily married and eager to recount, after so much misfortune, the joys of a perfectly successful marriage.

And maybe in that world, covid never entered.

And then we would all be truly happy, even if with one beautiful and painful song like “I got hurt” less, which might be a pity.