My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/26/20 "White Box"

"The box said do not open under pain of death [...] But I opened it anyway/I died anyway." After releasing all the evils into the world, all that was left in Pandora's box was hope. What is hope doing there with all the evils of the world? And what's it mean that hope doesn't get unleashed as well? We get famine, war, pestilence, death, but can we soldier on with hope that there will be something after? No. After playing this song, I dug up the Mountain Goats' cover of it, a small and isolated-sounding track that hearkened back to the old-school Goats, music that made you feel like you'd found a secret shared only between you and the singer, the appeal, in some ways, of Jandek. It was the Mountain Goats who turned me on to Jandek when they posted about the Representative's first live show. Years later, I'd be in Houston, home of Corwood, sitting in the driver's seat of a moving van, crying in the rain, so desperate to leave that city and feeling I never would. Then the Mountain Goats' "This Year" came on the radio reminding me hope had been held inside. -3/26/20. "White Box" from White Box Requiem (lyrics) (one week later)