Songs: Ohia

Word is that Songs: Ohia frontman Jason Molina’s newer efforts, under the name “Magnolia Electric Company,” just aren’t any good.

But I can’t stop listening to the song Just Be Simple (yes, it’s been in my playlist more or less constantly since September. Megan gets annoyed when I do this, because she doesn’t want to get sick of a song. But I binge.)

The lyrics are all about sticking it out and being strong, knowing that running away from problems doesn’t solve them. Of course, I aspire to feeling that way, but you know I think about getting out and putting a new address on things all the damn time. Usually that address is my grandmother’s farm, where I will become an honest workin’ man.

The song goes on “I ain’t lookin for that easy way out– my whole life’s been about try and try and try to be simple again.” Of course, I’m not trying to be simple. I’m making things incredibly complicated. I’m all about unnecessary complications. Sure, I’d love to cut out some of the things I regard as unnecessary, but that often makes things more complicated rather than less. I just dream sometimes of cutting the excess out, cut and cut and cut until everything is gone and something pure and beautiful is laid bare.

Of course, I know that, in reality, that kind of behavior just leaves you with a bloody mess.

When my grandparents bought that farm back in sixty-some, seventy-some, the guy living on it was basically making his living selling firewood. He lived on what he had: deer, a vegetable plot, firewood, squirrels, rabbits, odd jobs, a beat-to-shit pickup. I doubt he kept his teeth much past forty. Why does subsistence farming sound appealing? No health insurance, no culture, no public transit, bad food, long hours, shopping at Goodwill for work-wear. Yet it is a fantasy for a significant number of office drones and working stiffs, including me.

Grass is greener, I guess.