Mogwai – I know you are but what am I? – Happy Songs For Happy People

There aren’t any lyrics to this one. Mogwai doesn’t really do lyrics. But it was the perfect background to a nightbus, speeding through Paris, too little sleep and too much travelling. My soul felt empty and there was a sense of dread, but also a sense of being far too small, far too tiny, so tired I was collapsing into myself. My heart was aching, I knew I was leaving France and Europe for at least a year, leaving my family, my home, my friends. Thinking of all the happiness that I had been bursting with, of O. in London, of the ketamine cab-rides through London at night, of the cocaine boosters on E.’s floor, of laying in bed watching TV with my sister, of the food, of the weather, the beautiful architecture all around me… leaving all that behind me so I could go back to a country and people who loved me but not quite enough, feeling a loss of the identity that I felt most comfortable with.

But as Baudelaire taught me when I was but a little’un…
la nuit voluptueuse monte
appaisant tout même la faim,
effaçant tout même la honte

If my life were a (very long and overly dramatic) movie… that’s the soundtrack to that night.

~ by orange on June 26, 2007.