Menomena as a Metaphor for Love ...Continued
The final chapter you’ve all been waiting for! We here at NO FIDELITY thought it rash and uncivilized to print the entire article all at once, so here are the last 400 words of our main feature from the last issue. After the show, I waited around a good while for the band to emerge so I could say hello. I was in unusually high spirits, given multiple recent disappointments. I think inside, I sought some kind of closure. I had a feeling Menomena and I would not likely cross paths again, and I wanted to get a few words in. I ended up chatting with Danny for a couple minutes, delivering my standard incoherent babble about what the band meant to me. He appreciated it. I had him sign my shirt, and he opted to scrawl his name over Brent’s elephant while making a joke at Brent’s expense. The way he told it, I could tell they were still friends. I had Justin sign the shirt, as well as both touring members for good measure, but I can’t remember any words we exchanged. I left the concert alone; my ex had left partway through the show after a single goodbye kiss. This time, I was one to ask. And she was the one to begrudgingly oblige. My second girlfriend and I never had an official song, but if we did, it might have been “Plumage”, a simple song within the Menomena canon. Correspondingly, things
happened more easily with us than with my first. Every new encounter didn’t contain a riddle, and that was nice. The beauty of our collaboration came from compromise instead of contradiction - we never forced things. A few lines that stand out to me go: “Instead I’m just like everybody else who’s tried / I’ve got to say so long to my ideals / They served me once and served me well / Now they only serve to spin my wheels / I guess I ought to face my fears.” These lines always bothered me. They reminded me that I hadn’t tried, like everyone else had apparently done—that I wasn’t able let go of my obsolete values about love, that I wasn’t able to move on and do something new, at least for a time. Even Menomena was still trying, even if they were no longer navigating the existentialist landscapes of their early days. Maybe Menomena never had much to do with my love life, but I can’t resist drawing parallels between two sources of such great emotion. When I listen to Menomena these days, the sounds swell in my head so massively, there’s little room for reminders of love lost. But with the right song and the right state of mind, a bit of nostalgia is inevitable.
By A. Noah Harrison 25
