from “The Most Remarkable Thing” by Ben Zuerlein

“…Our protagonist is dragged on his inescapable path through Macon County, Georgia an absolutely real place that his mind makes paradisiacal. Typical of John Darnielle’s song writing, the song mentions a location that exists in the real world but is reframed by the expectations and subjectivities of the protagonist. Furthermore, the location is not one that is revered, famous, or otherwise splendid in its own right. Yet the protagonist only feels motion when he approaches this talismanic attractor, showing that his limerence is powerful enough to make a mundane county and its surrounding world “shine.” And indeed, he is near the singular goal of his journey, his big hands gripping his dicey weaponry, his blood pumping, as the world bursts into candescence.

In the next line he arrives and pronounces the simplest, most honest, and most limerent lines in songwriting:

The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it’s you!

And that you’re standing in the doorway,

His return is remarkable because his lover is his lover. How better to love someone except for the very quality that makes the beloved the beloved? No balder love exists. But the protagonist cannot stop there, his love is not satisfied to be pure, it must be bold. He feels that love must make him crazy and love must make him anesthetized, so he brandishes his gun and then:

[…] you smile as you ease the gun from my hand,

and I am frozen with joy right where I stand.” 

-Ben Zuerlein writes about how he thinks “Going to Georgia” by the Mountain Goats is probably the greatest love story ever written. 

This essay will soon be republished in the long-delayed first issue of The Last Exit webzine. 

In the great tradition of exceptional delays, I am still taking submissions of music-related writing.