when i was first getting into the album, i too was confused at “2011″‘s introduction of keta and had to ask a friend who she was; obviously she was one girl with whom the “narrator” had a relationship, but i actually thought that keta was an endearing nickname given to sarah that became phased out after years of mutual disregard. this is not a particularly logical conclusion but was simply how i’d interpreted it. i understand fully your decision to leave out that third song to develop keta’s character more, and the accompanying blog posts at this point are part of the album for me, making that third song unnecessary. however, not everyone will have the same amount of curiosity as i’d had in searching for those posts (not that they were particularly hard to find, but [i assume] you get my point). all in all, though, while it’s worth discussing once one has become more intimate with the album, the point is rather moot because this brief confusion is easy to overcome if you haven’t received all the exact answers so it detracts little from the story and even less from the quality of music; while “2011″ and “2007″ may be more confusing in terms of story than the preceding five songs, they are, in my opinion, the most compelling songs on the album.

musically, i find the entire album (and moreover gavin’s entire library) confusing because i honestly haven’t a clue how one person can create such diverse and complex art.

your discussion of “2038,” with the ‘miracle’ of being able to structurally and conceptually make the lyrics of the song work in your favor, i’m reminded of this video alluding to the fibonacci sequence in the song “lateralus” by tool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7CZIJVxFY

i’m excited to see your interpretation of Home and only see it fit to give my input once you’ve dissected it and i can weigh in on what you’ve taken from it

Your explanation of Keta and Sarah makes sense, and may be the reason I felt disconnected when the focus returned to another relationship. Until Keta comes in, it felt like my understanding of the central character was deepening with each song, and when “2011″ starts, I’m ready as a listener to focus on his relationship with music and how that deteriorated, leading to its abandonment. Instead I’m brought back to how his romantic relationships affected his the path his life takes, which even with Sarah, who’s given more time than Keta, doesn’t feel like the heart of the narrative.

This feeds into another disconnect I felt. In “2011,” the end of future-Gavin’s musical dreams is specifically attributed to his desire to please Keta, but in “2007,” his reasoning is more complex, and to me, feels like the direction the narrative was leading me. Obviously the decision to give up your entire life to lead a status quo life is layered and can be attributed to many things, but Keta’s involvement muddled the narrative through-line for me.

The reason I’m drawn to the EP is the complex character at the center and his conflict, which doesn’t seem to be women, but his dissatisfaction with the reception of his music and the return he gets on his investment in it (ironic metaphor?). I felt like as a listener, I was being led from his suicide, through a failed romantic relationship, through the anxiety, to get to the heart of his real problem, which is the love/hate relationship he has with music and all the bullshit he has to go through to make music and be “successful.” Returning to failed romance takes me backward (or forward? *head explodes*) in the narrative. It feels like doubling back down the trail when I expected to emerge on the scenic peak of the mountain I just climbed as a listener.

Even your description of the two women as types makes me wonder what the focus is supposed to be. Sarah and Keta can’t possibly get enough space in the narrative to be anything but props because of the story’s tight focus on future-Gavin, which is why I wondered if Keta needed to be introduced at all. The transition from “Married Dad Guy” to “College Guy,” for me at least, is less interesting than the transition from “Idealistic Artist” to “Empty Suicidal Husk,” and despite my personal preference, the EP seems to follow that trajectory up until Keta comes in. I’m probably just repeating myself at this point with different words.

Knowing that Home follows ABALAK, I’m intrusively speculating into your personal life (sorry!) and wondering whether what you experienced while writing this EP bled into it and was later fully developed on Home. Total speculation, of course, but I’ve had similar experiences writing stories that I realized after the fact were all about things going on while I wrote them and subverted my intention for the characters in that particular story.

Anyway, it feels really presumptuous for me to make guesses like that, but I’m always intrigued when artists explore their personal lives through their art (probably because I’m attempting to do the same thing). I’m interested in looking closely at your music (okay, really just the lyrics, I’m inadequate) because it engages me emotionally and intellectually in such an effortless fashion, so I want to figure out how it ticks so I can learn from it and enjoy it from new perspectives.

Thanks for talking!

I do think a third song with Keta would have fixed the imbalance I sensed, but in a narrative this dense, adding more, like you said, doesn’t usually work, and would probably just bring up other questions that would need answers, and the cycle would continue until you had a double LP that completely missed your original point.

The jump is sudden, but so are all the other jumps. I guess the problem is that I could anticipate the previous transitions. The jumps from suicide -> divorce -> loss of job -> anxiety/pills are all set up in the preceding songs, but when we go from “2020″ to “2011,” there’s not enough to help me understand why the end of his relationship to Keta is meaningful in the context of the previous songs. It makes sense in relation to “2007,” and I can fill in the gap between Sarah and Keta myself, but without any hints I’m really just making stuff up.

Not to belabor the point, but now that I’ve had time to think about it a bit more, I think that’s a better description of my impressions than what I wrote above.

Thanks for commenting on how the music supports the lyrics. I don’t know enough mechanically about music to recognize what you described on my own, and my vocabulary is limited, but even though I can’t explain it, the attention you pay to how the music interacts with the narrative is obvious, and that’s the reason I’m writing about your music and not someone else’s. I’ll listen for the specific connections you mentioned.

I attempted to write about the music itself in my posts, but everything I wrote was very surface, and would be obvious to anyone listening to the songs, so I took it out. Thanks so much for commenting! I’ve never had the artist behind anything I’ve written about respond, so it’s very much appreciated.

The relationship with Keta is crucial to the story because it is a foil against the relationship with Sarah. Keta and Sarah are two very different types of women (it’s not a coincidence that their names are interesting and bland respectively). Keta does not know what she wants – she pressures the narrator to stabilize and redirect himself so that he attends to her more and subsequently loses respect for him when he does. She is attracted to a man that does what he wants (in this case, another musician) – just not when it starts to seem pathetic. Sarah, on the other hand, knows exactly what she wants and always gets it: financial stability and status quo. She is fine carrying on a shell of a marriage as long as those things are intact (when they are not, she’s out). She wouldn’t cheat on him because in his new bored world she is the center of things. Keta, on the other hand, stays in a relationship where she is not the center of things (most likely due to issues with her own self-worth).

It is important that the narrator (hi!) runs from the first relationship to get to the second, never realizing that he is not himself in either situation, and that neither love is unconditional. For that reason, I think that having the story jump from Married Dad Guy hanging out in the park with kids (that are old enough to play on slide and whatnot) to College Guy getting cheated on has a wonderful way of suggesting that the move to marriage and family life was a rushed (and maybe not well thought-out) endeavor. I’ve seen this scenario often in my life—the rush to something safe as a reaction to heartbreak— and it never bodes well. I think that sort of mistake would be in keeping with the theme of our stupid narrator (hi!).

Also worth mentioning (but maybe irrelevant in a lyrical analysis) is that the emotion-regulating pill addiction is also personified in the mind-numbing 8th notes of the guitar parts unwavering over the frantic and far more interesting drum patterns. This is how I chose to connote corroding repression – something bubbling just beneath the surface of the harmony bed. The guitar parts in the chorus smooth out and become far more interesting… this is because they are supporting Victor’s voice.

This is true of all the songs – the rhythm patterns and styles are married to the character development and often times the monologue itself, but I’m particularly proud of 2038.

In regards to your comments on 2011: several things are at play there. The first is an intentional exclusion of the courtship and subsequent marrying of Sarah. Depicting a suddenly upbeat section of our story right before the punchline seems counter productive to me. More importantly, as I alluded to in this post: http://gavincastleton.blogspot.com/2009/05/09-15-2044-truth-exercise.html, the marriage was (will be? tenses get stupid when time travel is involved) less about finding Mrs. Right and more a response to the destruction that Keta left (expounded on here: http://gavincastleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/2014-meddling.html). That kind of massive mistake in matters of the heart is a whole other album, but I felt like giving Sarah any more air time around those early years gives her undeserved weight.

Another large factor is exactly what you guessed: 2011″ is an extrapolation of a real life situation.

And perhaps the biggest factor, is that there was a third song in the Keta era that was removed. Had she spanned 3 songs, you might not feel it so rushed? I removed the song because for where it fell (2nd to last) it didn’t deliver enough development. It wasn’t necessary enough (except, arguably, for pacing) to the unfolding tragedy. I removed it because I wanted to accomplish exactly what you’re finding impressive about this EP – extremely efficient writing (a product of heavy doses of Hemingway and Carver).

In response to this “Proving a point to the ‘adult world’ by entering that world out of spite doesn’t seem reasonable”
I think you’re absolutely right, and yet I feel like doing it all the time… especially after my breakup. The man just got completely emasculated… it’s entirely plausible that he would respond unreasonably!

Overall, I agree with you – it’s a sudden jump, and I apologize.