Sound Words: HAIM Dances With the Dead
“A garden of crushed roses floating over opaque ecru water”
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There are two things for which graveyards are perfect: the sulking reflective side of manic-pixie-dream-girls and the throwing of amazing dance parties. Preferably thrown by said girls. More preferably at night.
Look, I have no idea where these danse macabreyards are, or if there is more than one even. Quite possibly they are of the mind, and none of us will ever get to boogie with these mysterious archetypal girls of moody male fantasy writers. But as a moody male fantasy type I have a pretty good sense of what these places must look like.
So does HAIM, apparently. Days Are Gone unfolds like the deep night woods could be coated in slow-rolling fog machines, the headstones are everywhere, glistening synthesizers adorn them like snail trails, their epitaphs, all vague universal statements about artistic purpose and life manifestos, "Dream reality into your fantasies." "Embody the essence of the past in the future." "Become the beauty you know is already dead."
The night haze twinkles, spun through dew-beaded spiderwebs. Doomed romance is the air. These too cool girls spin and twirl in vintage dresses, as the falling leaves weave dark gold stutter-stitched through chopping limbs, arms and elbows all square angles like jittery robo-skeletons. Their leggings all floral prints. A garden of crushed roses floating over opaque ecru water silk stretched spandex.
Neon ghosts glow in the mist. The dancers slink and prance. They do quirky throwback moves that all reference Mia Wallace, or Stevie Nicks in any amount of cocaine. Ectoplasm drips from trees like moss. Floats crisp and staccato like lichen. The dancers work it into exotic choreography. So much revelry rouses ghouls and zombies, their hands lurching out of the soft pack earth. Crumbles of dirt and tufts of grass shedding from the restless tremolo of their fists.
And ultimately the light breaks, those chords of dawn rising over the party, shared revival space at its most alive and also dead. The girls look around, blink adjust to the morning haze, realize they are surrounded by all of the haunting things that linger with us long after we've asked them to just die. To just stay dead. We all want to leave our mistakes behind, but you cannot dance away your spirits in the place where they are buried, only hope to go forward into some sort of non-existent perfection.
It is enough to dance like that for one whole night, and then before the daylight reveals you completely, to just run away.
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