Bluesday, October 10: Radiohead

In Rainbows came out 10 years ago today. 10 years. 

Years ago, on 1101 S. State Street in the South Loop of Chicago, I had people over for a late-night-night-cap. It was probably 2008 or 2009. At one point, a group of us were sitting with our legs crossed on the floor of my bedroom, passing around a mini-bong that was not mine but eventually became mine, filled with half water-half Jameson. Megan Tucker was thumbing through my CD collection, because cell phones were not everything yet. She pulled out this album, decorated in its recycled-paper, darkly colorful and unconventionally folded case, looked at me, and asked, "who ACTUALLY owns this CD?" I responded, "Me. It's my favorite." That statement is still true. It's the one that means the most to me.

Many die-hard Radiohead fans who are the butt of ironic internet satire when it comes to pretentious Generation-X douchebags have said that it's the "most accessible." It probably is. It doesn't mean that other albums aren't- and in a way, I guess they are literally correct. The way this album was consumed was the most accessible- before the Beyonce's and the Chance's and the other big-time record releases with no record store release dates became the thing, there was In Rainbows. But these die-hard fans usually aren't talking about method of listening as much as they are about aesthetic. Singable melodies, un-confusing lyrics, danceable rhythms, a molotov cocktail of emotion, so meticulously balanced as to not cross the land mines of utterly depressive, completely obvious, and corny-ass sadness: it was track after track of perfection for someone who was questioning what "perfect" even meant. 

The catalytic flavors of these songs contain sharp hints of the most important memories of my life, the ones that I go back to, time and time again, the ones that represent my first renaissance, clinging onto an identity that was never the same. Me, quite actually, In Rainbows, with colors representing the different layers of my life, wondering if there could be a sort of Keep in inevitable Growth- at the time, I couldn't separate the light enough to realize the inevitability of growth meant change, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But as I sit here, in the house I "grew up" in, writing this explanation that won't ever fully be able to scope exactly how much this record means to me, I wonder if I ever really understood... and if my growth, inevitably, will separate me from what home is, like ripples on a blank shore. As I get sink deeper, the more I expand, until it's too big to see each individual ripple- they become part of the shore, the water, reflecting the person I have chosen to be.

Hopefully, and I mean that- full of hope, I continue to strive for that whole-hearted esoteric understanding- like the "secret rhythm" of "Videotape," like the downbeat of each measure of "Reckoner," like Jigsaws slowly but surely falling into place. But the difference now is that I control the tempo of their fall. I'm the one who calls tetris- and I'm the one who determines how it affects my life, how my big ideas can actually happen. I think that's okay for now. 

Here's to the next 10 years of 10-track perfections.