The National Obsession

Lately, I’ve been a little obsessed with The National’s High Violet album. Matt Berninger’s emotional baritone delivers some lyrics that burrow under your skin like a tick and are just as hard to remove. My favorite line comes from the song Conversation 16. “I was afraid I’d eat your brains. ‘Cause I’m evil,” but unfortunately, I just couldn’t work that one into a blog post. (Except there! I did it!) But the line that really haunts me comes from the central track, Bloodbuzz Ohio. Not only does it give me a clear differentiation between the term “housekeeper” and “homemaker” (not the song’s purpose by any stretch) but I think it spells out the meaning of life (probably not actually their intent either).


“I never thought about love when I thought about home.”

And there it is. The answer to one of life’s Big Questions. The Performance Measure. When your kids grow up and think about home, will they think of love?

If they do, then, as the coach in the movie Teen Wolf says, “The rest is just cream cheese.”

So there it is, the answer to one of life's Big Questions, embedded in a plethora of pop culture references.



Stop there. Save the extra language for later. Try to link to the track.







That really is the point of it all. The Performance Measure. It’s actually pretty unlikely that the things we pay the most attention to – laundry, homework, sleep schedules, commutes, being late or on time – will be what our children remember of the homes we make for them. Or if they remember them, it will be more like the still images at the end of a movie as the credits roll where the soundtrack tells you how you’re supposed to feel about them. Is it a happy nostalgic Disney end credits? Or is it a melancholy pointless lost kind of 60s movie end credits?







How would it be if we could actually keep Bloodbuzz Ohio playing in our heads as we went through those routine actions? What yoga could generate the kind of mindfulness to remember, in all of our actions, that the memories we are laying down should be memories of love?