“Divorce Song” – Liz Phair
(Words/music: Liz Phair, available on Exile in Guyville, Matador 1993)

A literature professor introduced me to Joseph Cornell and his boxes.  Cornell would create tiny surrealist “worlds” in the boxes, combining found objects together often in a maneuverable, interactive way.  The thing that stuck the most with me about Cornell and his boxes was the way he described the construction of his collages, specifically how he believed the objects conversed with each other in these microcosms.  The meaning of the collage (if meaning could be derived, I suppose) came not from the tally of the objects, but from the imaginary dialogue created by putting these objects in proximity of each other.  Moreover, author Stephanie Zacharek takes the magic of these objects one step further, suggesting that Cornell’s collections of trinkets made his audience acknowledge “that “things” are not always just things; they can also represent the parts of ourselves we want most to secret away from the world. The treasures we hide in messy boxes under our beds are simply stand-ins for those we hide in the corners of our hearts.” 

I often think of mixes, whether made on a tape, a CD, or a playlist, the same way.  When assembling a playlist of songs that my friends know (or, even for myself), I’m amazed at the new things I discover in these songs.  Even more startling is when the selections of songs unintentionally reveals something about myself.  For instance, a few years ago I made a CD for a grad school friend as a way of starting a discussion about music.  From the little I knew about her, I assembled songs that I thought she’d like and that she probably didn’t know (or didn’t remember).  Right in the middle of the mix was “Divorce Song,” one I chose as being representative of the less sensational parts of Exile in Guyville (and for the great harmonica break at the end).  Of course, after spending a little time listening to the mix, I realized that “Divorce Song” encapsulated how I felt at the time.  On the obvious level, I was at the end of a long-term relationship that fizzled out, but it was the mix of rejection, bewilderment, and emotional fatigue that Phair described that hit close to home.  Suddenly, this epiphany highlighted all of these things in my other choices – emotional fatigue in Wilco’s “Shot in the Arm,” the melancholy narrator in Big Star’s “September Gurls,” and the heartbreak in Springsteen’s “Bobby Jean” (especially in the Portastatic version I included).  It made me think of Cornell and his boxes; just as his trinkets “talked” to each other, the songs on this mix got together and sulked a little bit.  More importantly, they spoke things that I wasn’t ready to consciously think about.

For what it’s worth, I thought about the Phair song I’d include now (granted, a lot of the songs on Guyville spoke more to me then than they do now), and I think it would be “6’1”.” I have no clue what this says about me. I guess I have a mix to make.

More on Liz Phair: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm