Life is for the living, or so they say. I'm also told that it's better than the alternative. Although, I have no evidence to back this up. What I do know is that it is a peculiar type of penance, made even stranger by the necessity of your conscious awareness of it. Your knowledge of your need for survival, when colored by the actual struggle of maintaining your existence, can be downright exhausting. Like when I think about all the hours I've spent preparing meals, brushing my teeth, washing and then folding laundry, and working to afford shelter (and food and toothpaste and clothing), and then project how much more time I will need to be doing these things in the future... it's almost frightening to think that it could go on like this for fifty or so more years. On and on and on. It's unbelievable that something like having a body, something you had no say in coming into the possession of, would come attached with so much responsibility and time-intensive labor. And yet, we all make the conscious choice to put forth the effort anyway, myself included. And so long as most of us still have an organ in our chests blasting blood and oxygen into our brains, we will continue to make the conscious choice to perpetuate this struggle going forward. Music makes this choice easier of course. Case in point, I'm preparing to do the dishes while I'm writing this review and listening to Mexican garage rockers Monte Meteoro latest EP Ser Vivo. Of all the things we have to power through to live, washing dishes is really one of the least tedious and painful... but it's still something I'd avoid if I could. If I could, I'd spend all day, everyday, lazily leafing through the pages of a book while lightly bobbing my head to the sunray shimmer and soft but persistent advance of the shoegazy-folk opening "Donde No Duele Nada" or stomping my cleats to the lysergic, Kyuss-trimming freak-out of "Contra." But alas, this is not my fate. Verily I am resigned tonight to scrape pans to the tense, post-punky rebound of the shadow-haze daydream "Nada" and feel my fingers prune in a pool of detergent and sudsy water to the titled balled unwind of "Pársel" as I sway in a slow tilting drift, a faintly defiant swivel, leaning my body first to the right and then to the left and then back again, like a blade of grass tussled by the breath of a dreaming dog as it slumbers on the lawn. I envy that hypothetical dog right now. Living isn't always exhilarating, but it is mostly tolerable. And good tunes like Ser Vivo certainly help keep it that way. Now if you will excuse me, I've got some rinsing and drying to do.
