My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/8/20 "I Met You"

"Now that you’re here, tell me/Is it the best place you ever know/Because I’m at the best place I ever knew/And it’s just after I met you." It was warm on my walk home today, but growing overcast and windy in anticipation of the rain that's supposed to arrive tomorrow and linger all day. I listened to this album on that walk and the dissonance of Jandek and nice weather was heightened by the content of the music. The lyrics, uniquely, are hopeful, addressing a person who drew the singer away from the typical despair and isolation of these songs. That emotion is undercut or possibly ironized by the long instrumental stretches, seemingly more discordant and atonal than usual. Are these sincere expressions of affection by someone unfamiliar with the forms, or are they something sinister, the declarations of an obsessive and a stalker? When do we give up on insisting that there's hope? -5/8/20. "I Met You" from The End of it All (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)