Matchmaker!

THE EQUATION:

Ben Gibbard + Regina Spektor x sweet, sweet love

THE RESULTS:

an epic love affair, as outlined below:

1. a critically-acclaimed collaboration effort, full of soulful lyrics and unique piano.

2. A sold-out-in-two-hours international tour. The two become millionaires, but stay humble.

3. Wedding bells! There is a small ceremony in Seattle, family and friends only. The music is mellow and elegant, and the vows are almost heartbreaking.

4. A love child (who will undoubtedly grow up to be the most innovative and talented muscian we’ve seen in years) is born. They name him John, after Regina’s favorite Beatle.

5. They buy a house in a small suburb of Seattle and settle down. No albums are made; fans are disappointed.

6. Infidelity! In a moment of ill-advised desperation, Ben has a one night stand with Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley fame). Regina finds out and they have an angry sing-off. Regina wins and leaves with John.

7. Two solo albums are released: an album-long love poem to a lost soulmate that walks “the lyrical line between understanding and confusion, beauty and brokenness”, and a emotional, self-empowering, fish-without-a-bicycle with and underlying twinge of sadness beneath the electric piano riffs. Both albums are wildly successful.

8. The studios encourage a reunion tour in light of the wild success. Ben and Regina both begrudgingly agree. The tour sucks, but they reconcile at a Flaming Lips concert. 9 months later, John is a big brother.

9. Regina moves back into with Ben. The kids grow up: John drops out of college to be in a band, becomes a huge success, and goes back to school to teach music in New York City; Sarah goes on to write a book that dominates the New York Times Bestseller list for 3 consecutive years.

10. At the age of 98, Ben Gibbard dies from natural causes. Regina is heartbroken. Eight days later, she follows him into the dark.

I don’t know sh*t about music. True story.

I don’t know shit about music. I was under the impression that my musical knowledge was moderately vast, but in the past month or two I have come to realize that how very wrong I was. It’s an unfamiliar kind of startling. I have been thinking about it a lot and the best way I can describe it is as follows:

It’s like you’ve been looking out through a skylight for years and then one day, out of the blue, someone takes you outside and you suddenly realize how little you know about the sky. It doesn’t make what you already knew about the sky any less true or relevant, but it suddenly occurs to you that what you thought was a lot is really only very little, a mere fraction of the bigger picture.

And I guess that puts you at a crossroads: you can break-up with your skylight, promise to stay friend and go out into the world to study astronomy, or you can go back home to your skylight and pretend like nothing ever happened.

But….where does this leave me?