June 17 - Pseudothyrum Song

A blast from the even further past, this song feels like an ancestor of the Sunset Tree but simultaneously sung by an older narrator, one who could get the perspective that The Sunset Tree deliberately eschews in favour of immediacy. It's a song about sadness regarding cruelty, and feels like it comes from a place of regret and an attempt at understanding rather than anger.

But that said, the first time I heard the line "I think someone was mean to you when you were little" it felt like the funniest most biting burn I could think of. A flawless way to put a cruel person in their place, and yet. And yet. It's with the repetitions that you realise that this is at first an attempt to understand, and then finally an attempt at compassion. Man hands on misery to man, as Larkin put it, and this song nails that cruelty is a learned behaviour.

It is remarkable for a person in pain to hold this much empathy towards the person who caused it. It takes a love of the world to love even the people who add nothing but hurt to it.