Kaputt
Destroyer
Kaputt,
I don’t even know why I like you but you kept me in on New Years. You’re keeping me away and under and turning.
I am playing with sandart at sandart.com. I am sprinkling hued pixels onto the screen with my arrow and the sand makes a noise like the ocean (imagine it, go there).
Let’s create a cursor which points to the right.
There is sand in your video for “Kaputt”—sand and pyramids and fog and a computer screen and a whale and a metaphoric balloon. There are strange noises everywhere—the fridge dying, text messages ringing in, and you in the corner writing poetry for yourself.
Your voice is a thing of purity. It’s you and only you and magenta is only partially pink and blue is only partially sky. The ocean sandart sounds sound perfect behind you.
I don’t even know why I like you but it’s 11:11 and that seems wickedly symbolic. “It don’t mean a thing, it never means a thing,” you sing.
I don’t even know why I like you but your last song is 11:18 minutes long and it feels like something sacred, strange, immensely secretive and naked and how can I get everyone to listen to it and feel it like they mean it? How do I computer screen scream without using exclamation marks?
There is a moment at exactly 5:11 (11 is my lucky number) where music does to me what it rarely does: makes my stomach feel like tiny silver fishes tickling holding breath (imagine it, go there).
Longings, longings, longings. Pixels. Pixelated balloons lifting us up out of this year and into something strangely similar, but not. Pop it with your cursor. Steal everything.
Kaputt is an expression for ‘done,’ isn’t it? Feels true.
“The world’s just bones. The world is black stones dressed up in the rain with no place to go but home.” That’s my favourite line and on a night like tonight I’m pro stars, pro sky.
Destroyers can be creators too.
Kaputt, we spent the morning together. You made it through the underground and through metro-window reflections.
The tide comes in. Bathed in gold and sunlight all around. Let’s imagine it. Let’s go there.
Yours truly.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 18, published January 11, 2011.
