Planted and Enchanted: Vol. 18- February '22

Planted and Enchanted
Written By Evan Hammonds
 

You can enjoy the Planted and Enchanted: Vol. 18 playlist in its entirety on Spotify. Just click on the included Spotify plugin.

Playlist Highlight: Hospital, The Modern Lovers

Try as I might, I still can’t get my arm’s completely around “Hospital” by The Modern Lovers. There’s so much about it that just doesn’t make sense, even though I’ve tried desperately to unravel its secrets, either when I deliberately sit down and study it (with the same ferocity as archaeologists do the Dead Sea Scrolls) or when it has the nerve to try and slink past me on a shuffled playlist. You know how the Zodiac Killer would mail in cryptic cyphers to newspapers that were nearly impossible to solve? It’s kinda like that, but without, you know, the murders and stuff.

Anyway, if you aren’t familiar with the song, that’s perfectly understandable. But do me a favor, just start playing it. Just the first minute or so. Go ahead, I’ll wait………………Ok, I’m glad you’re back.

If you had to guess, when was that song recorded? Mid-to-late 80’s? Maybe early 90’s? Hell, who knows? 2015?

This song, the very one you listened to (which has not been remastered in any way) is over fifty years old!

It was recorded the same year the U.S. invaded Laos. Richard Nixon was still in his first term. Disney World just opened. Louis Armstrong was still alive. Harvard still did not admit women into their school. The Godfather had not yet come out. And it was just two years after The Zodiac (Ted Cruz?) had been active.

I usually have good radar for how old a song is, but this throws me off more than any other I can think of.

Lyrically, it’s a complex narrative and it’s difficult to find a consistent story thread. It doesn’t have a Wikipedia page or even atrocious Genius Lyrics interpretation written by some internet goober (this is where I come in), so I don’t have a lot of source material to work with outside of the words themselves. So, I’m going to hit you with a lot of quote blocks in the next few paragraphs. Buckle your chin strap.

Here’s how it starts:

When you get out of the hospital

Let me back into your life

I can't stand what you do

I'm in love with your eyes

For a long time, and perhaps still, I interpreted this whole song as a love letter to a former girlfriend. The narrator wandering the city (which I feel like is Boston, though not explicitly stated), haunted mostly by the memory and power of his former lover’s eyes. The relationship may have deteriorated as a result of substance abuse on behalf of the girlfriend, which would explain why she’s still in the hospital (i.e. rehab) and he’s waiting on her to be released so they can resume what they had before.

But the very next set of lyrics completely undermine that theory. It’s gets swatted away as though it were foolish enough to try and score on Mutombo (and got a finger wag for its troubles).

And when you get out of the dating bar

I'll be here to get back into your life

I can't stand what you do

I'm in love with your eyes

Uh, how can she be at the hospital and the dating bar at the same time? And if she’s at the dating bar (where I imagine her dancing to The Hustle, but that can’t be because that song was recorded four years after this one!) she’s moved on, right?

Then, more evidence of the song’s uniqueness, it breaks into an upbeat sprint to the chorus, before dropping the tempo when it cuts back to the next verse.

Oh by the way, this is just a perfect lyric I had to call out. No analysis, just to appreciate:

I go to bakeries all day long
There's a lack of sweetness in my life

For the next few chorus and verse exchanges, it’s mostly just the narrator moping around a city missing a girl (Weird, right? I’d never do that.)

Then it gets to a space that completely floors me:

Now... your world
It is beautiful
I'll take the subway to your suburb sometime
I'll seek out the places that must have been magic
To your little girl mind
Now as a little girl
You must have been magic
I still get jealous of your old boyfriends
In the suburbs sometimes

First, notice the ellipsis at the beginning; I’ll come back to that in my unified (conspiracy) theory of what’s happening in this song.

But something about “I still get jealous of your old boyfriends in the suburbs sometimes” is rattling. It honestly one of my favorite lines in a song ever. He’s not jealous of her, he’s jealous of her previous boyfriends who had the privilege of knowing her and all of her magic when she was growing up, prior to them meeting.

There’s something called “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” which if you get nothing else out of this article, you’ll be glad you checked it out. It’s basically words for complex feelings you’ve had but were never able to properly verbalize. Here are a list of 40 good ones to start you out on.

One term is “Gnossienne” and it’s definition is as follows: n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.

I think this is what the song’s narrator is describing. He didn’t know her growing up, and will never get a chance to know her as a younger person, which he laments because it’s a mysterious and locked door, forever and always.

With all that said, let me propose my alternative take on what’s happening narratively. She’s not in the hospital, he is, and he’s suffering from bipolar disorder (previously and commonly referred to as “manic depression”) where symptoms include mood swings, sadness, and loss of touch with reality.

Those symptoms manifest themselves by the stop and go tempo between chorus and verse, as well as ellipsis breaks mid-sentence. The hopeful-to-frustrated-to-melancholy moods in a single verse, and finally, a detachment that would explain the inconsistency of where she and he both are at any particular time.

But even still, I’m not that confident in that interpretation. Maybe (ok, definitely) I’m overanalyzing this, so maybe just enjoy the song? But for me, it’s still one big mystery that I’m not sure will ever been solved. Like, you know, who the Zodiac Killer was.

What is Planted and Enchanted?

If you’re anything like me, you surely have a “junk drawer” somewhere in your home. It probably consists of an old flashlight with dead batteries in it, a handful of rubber bands alongside some pens running low on ink, enough loose keys for you to qualify as a middle school janitor, some birthday cards given to you years ago (how quickly can I throw these away without it being rude? Better wait another decade just to be safe.), the box to your old iPhone simply because it’s a pretty darn cool box, and a small library of service manuals for among other things: your refrigerator, hot water heater, and that Instant Pot you used just the one time.

I don’t consider my junk drawer “worthless” mind you, but rather see it a collection of delightful discoveries (Hey! I didn’t know I had a yo-yo!), and delightful rediscoveries (So that’s where my playing cards were!).

That’s my aim for this playlist series: Planted and Enchanted. A monthly track list consisting of songs that likely won’t fit perfectly together in a classic album sense, but are useful in planting the seeds of discovery of new genres, artists, and songs as well as the unearthing of music you loved but had long since forgotten about. Who knows, there may even be a hidden theme or two that the savvy listener can piece together. The best part about this playlist? If you don’t like it, that’s okay. We’re talking about junk after all.

If you have a specific song that you’ve recently discovered or come to love, we’d love to hear from you. Just email us at freshcutfinds@gmail.com. We’re planning to roll out more content and a new playlist series in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Each month, we put together a playlist of our favorite discoveries new & old. Each playlist will be about the length of a mix CD (80 mins) and will be sent around the 15th of each month. Subscribe with your email address to receive the monthly Planted and Enchanted playlist, plus other occasional speciaty playlists.

Evan Hammonds
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Planted and Enchanted: Vol. 19- July '22
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Planted and Enchanted: Vol. 17- December '21