Rutti

One of the things about writing a blog which no one (well, almost no one) reads is that it gives you some leeway to spout all sorts of crazy shit. Which brings me to being awake at 4 am (or close to 4 am). The point is: what's the soundtrack at 4 am, when you're alone in an apartment, and the only sounds are the ghost echoes of half-remembered conversations in your brain refracted through acute feelings of missing someone? Elliott Smith sang a perfectly good song called "2:45 am" which captured that odd ennui of being at someone's house at almost 3 am and kinda wanting to go home but not having the energy to. But that's 3 am. What about 4?

I give you Slowdive's "Rutti." I was a late arrival to Slowdive, having completely missed them when they were an actual functioning entity. Something made me get the greatest hits double CD (Catch the Breeze) that came out a coupla years ago. I took it to Bangladesh with me, and in the monsoon-drenched humidity of a July in Dhaka, I would lay awake at night in my parents' house, listening to this song on the headphones. The jet lag and "Rutti" would take me up to 5, sometimes 6 am.

Tonight, there's no jet lag, just insomnia and insanity, the former enabled by the latter, and the latter enabled by some recent missteps of mine which have fucked up a lot of things. So here it is, Slowdive's "Rutti." It's about 10 minutes long. Don't let the first few minutes fool you, it does indeed take off, and at about the 4 minute mark, it achieves a kind of hypnotic mood that will float you right along until it's 5 am and you can't stay awake any longer. Sleep well, my millions of readers.