Hospice

Funny, the last time I blogged, it was to post the lyrics to Two by The Antlers. Now I'm here again because I just want to post them again. I've probably listened to this song like 30 times in three days.



...These are hard songs to listen to. "Hospice" by The Antlers is a concept album that centers around a woman dying of cancer, the doctor who fell in love with her, and the intense emotional abuse that she subjects him to. When I was given this album, it was by a friend whose mother was dying of cancer, which somehow makes it much more real.

I think what terrifies me so much about this song and this album is the degree to which the line between love and hate has been erased. It questions marriage, and almost makes a mockery of it. It talks about being physically abused. It talks about co-dependance so overwhelmingly powerful that it cripples and disables. It talks about abortion and suicide and violence and hatred.

The climax of the song deserves a repost:

Well, no one's going to fix it for us; no one can. You say that no one's gonna listen, no one understands.

There's no open door, there's not way to get through. There's no other witnesses. Just us two.

Two people living in one small room, and your two half families tearing at you,

Two ways to tell the story (no one worries); two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry.

Two people talking inside your brain; Two people believing that I'm the one to blame.

Two different voices coming out of your mouth when I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout.


You could just tell a story with lines from the album. A sad, sad story.

• I wish that I had known in that first minute we met the unpayable debt that I owed you.

• Sylvia, you are unlike any other. Let me take your temperature, and you can throw the thermometer right back at me if that's what you want to, okay?

• We're not scared of making caves or finding food for him [our unborn child] to eat - we're terrified of one another; terrified of what that means.

• I'd gladly take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself.

• Sylvia, can't you see what I'm doing? Can't you see I'm scared to speak, and I hate my voice cause it only makes you angry.

• All the while, we'll know we're fucked and not getting unfucked soon.

• When you're awake, I'm impossible, constantly letting you down.

• Oh someone, anyone, tell me how to stop this. She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness. I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her. No one's gonna come as long as I lay still in bed beside her.

• Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up, built the gears inside your head, now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating; Eighty seven pounds! And this all bears repeating

What do you say to that? I just think of the man and woman and I grieve for the people that can identify with any of this.