under my skin i am laughing

I bought earwig’s “under my skin i am laughing” out of the dollar bin totally unheard (with a bunch of other records, none of which were any good at all) at Joe’s Record Emporium in Rockville when I was 15. They released this one record as earwig, became ‘Insides,’ put out an inferior album on 4AD (in my opinion), and then disappeared off the map as far as I can tell. This record sounds like a combination of Low’s “Curtain Hits the Cast” and Jarboe’s “Sacrificial Cake” and I’ve never heard anything quite as creepy and gentle and honest and sad. Just for a Day has mp3 links and a good entry on this record.

I dig it out of the collection every year or so, and I lay there last night with my studio headphones on listening to it at two in the morning when I couldn’t sleep and the last track came on and I remembered very vividly how perfectly it described me when I was that age: so prickly and full of rage and pain and the deepest sadness that I felt would never be filled.

I don’t like it when you look at me. I feel awkward, ugly. There’s blood on my clothes, sick in my hair. I know that you’ve only come here to gloat but just open your mouth and I’ll jump down your throat. I wish you liked me. I wish you were scared of me. Don’t be helpful, it’s too hurtful.

There were so many points in my life where that anger and sadness just got too heavy, where I literally couldn’t carry it any longer because it was killing me and I just would let it slide through my hands as if I was driving very fast on the highway and I’d left my heart sitting on the top of my car while I refueled and whoops, there goes that pain left behind me like an oilslick, maybe. I can’t imagine clutching so tightly to it any longer just because it’s familiar.

How we make music mean so much to us, you know?