Songs: Ohia
The Lioness

I.

There is the horizon slipping away and a car speeding along, a boy inside driving it.

He likes feeling the wind in his face, even though in this strange August of the plains, the sky seems to press with yet another storm. While the sky grumbles, the dark and gloomy sound of this "The Lioness" spreads from the car. There are guitars with a bruised sound like the sky becoming more metallic, threatening. There’s Jason Molina floundering with his uncertain voice like the future. It has started to rain. There is a carpet of guitars advancing darkly, funereally, almost. The opening’s incipit of "The Black Crow" is strange. A series of heavy, minor chords. Archaic, atavistic. It resembles a Bachian passacaglia, upon hearing it again.

In the car, the music shows no sign of diminishing, it’s blaring. Meanwhile, it rains harder. The road that was once a strip of black, sunbaked asphalt has become a torrent without a source or mouth. A few days of a summer alone to evaporate leaving nothing. The car raises water like a speedboat wrestling against the quicksand of the soul. There are flashes of lightning and Jason keeps repeating: ...we were lightning across the whole world we were lightningwe were lightningwe were lightning...

The car slows down in a remote village, the boy is thirsty. There is a bar outside with tables, deserted due to the rain. There’s a blonde girl standing on the threshold, legs crossed, eyes murky like this strange August sky. She’s dressed in white and looks at the road absently. Smokes a cigarette as if her soul is burning with her, smoldering in the boredom of summer inertia. She has earphones in and is listening to music, in which she seems lost. Her gaze meets that of the boy in the car. They look at each other. The boy hesitates. He would like to get out and drink something. Or he would like to get out and say: "Here I am too, you’re no longer alone. We are no longer alone". Instead, he speeds off, still listening to "The Black Crow" blaring, and shouting to the wind and rain Jason’s desperate refrain: "I’ m getting weakerand I look down and see the whole worldand it’ s fadingit’ s fadingit’ s fadingit’ s fading" And he too would like to disappear, like a point in infinity, dissolve like the rainbow after the storm will.

II.

The way that boy looked at me was strange. It was full of desire, but not the stare of a creep. It wasn’t one of those looks that strip you, like I’ve felt so often. Maybe because I am beautiful, and everyone wants to undress me. No, that gaze enveloped, it didn’t strip. I wanted to tell him: "Why do you look at me like that?" Instead, I did nothing. I wanted to stop listening to the music I was hearing, rip those earbuds from my ears and hear only what he would say. But I didn’t. And I continued to listen to what I was listening to. "The Lioness". I like this album. I like its gloom, its desperate and angry air. Its wild yet metropolitan vibe. Now I am listening to "Tigress", with those keyboards carrying me away, dry like a savannah, but I’m not sure if Jason is right when he whispers: "And I believe every woman has made up her mind to win". Maybe I am the tiger Jason talks about. But I don’t have a savannah or even a zoo. Too many look and admire me because I’m beautiful. But I’m so frightening, and I don’t know why. I’m a tiger pacing angrily and wounded in a cage with no bars, and from which, more so, it is impossible to escape.

III.

I have turned off the car and thought of that girl. I'm by the river, swollen with the storm waters. Now Jason Molina sings "Lioness". The atmosphere is suspended, shrunk, over Jason’s melismas. "It is for me the eventual truth... " Is there anything true, in the world? Anything fair? This song is beautiful. When Jason whispers "Wanna feel my heart break if it must break in your jaws" it almost seems like I can feel it, my heart, as it goes crick-crack in the painful jaws of nothingness. I think back to the girl dressed in white, and I hear Jason repeat stuffed with rage: "You can’ t get here fast enoughyou can’ t get here fast enoughyou can’ t get here fast enoughyou can’ t get here fast enoughyou can’ t get here fast enoughyou can’ t get here fast enough". No, you can’t get here on time. Indeed, you can’t get here at all. "I will swim to you", but first I must not sink into the shallow, marshy waters, into the quicksand, of another potentiality that never was.

IV.

I keep smoking cigarettes and listening to "The Lioness". In this summer where there should be sun, I am the only girl who looks like a ghost. I like "Just A Spark". A few strokes of guitar and a swirling melody dragging you into the abyss of nothing. "Will that look be your only reply you lower your head in reply here it is white and full like a pale ghost across the sky". This song burns up in just over two minutes. "Like my cigarette," thinks the girl. She too is a ghost, wondering if someone will ever embrace her one day.

V.

The boy is still by the river. He thinks of Glasgow, where this record was recorded. He thinks of its dark atmospheres, the somber and desperate intimacy that soaks it. He thinks of 'Arab Strap' who collaborated on this work. He thinks, ultimately, of a lot of nonsense. But mostly he thinks of the girl in the bar. Who was beautiful and ethereal like an angel, in that white, with that look. Maybe she was his bride. Maybe. And he seems almost to revive when he restarts "Nervous Bride" "And I lay down tonight as nervous as a brideshe’ s not nervous but she triesand it’ s vaguely goodbye". The car speeds again towards the town, accelerating, while there is a fresco of the Arab Strap sound painting "Being in Love"

"And I am proof that the heart is a risky fuel to burn

yeah, we are proof that the heart is a risky fuel to burn

what’ s left after that’ s all gone I hope to never learn

but if you stick with me you can help me"