Love Always Remains

Please be kind and tolerate the fact that my entry is essentially a memorial: highly personal yet leaning on the song for emotional succor. This MGMT gem has helped me release my grief and given me comfort during the recent death of my adored pet. So PLEASE indulge me as I share this little eulogy & massive gratitude to both my cat Asha and MGMT.

What a sweet, staggering, simple tricky little track! Naysayers of MGMT just can't evolve.

Initially, before my chaos began, leisurely listening to this song lead me to toy with the notion of the lost island of Atlantis.....and then my life veered into the drama that was bound to happen one day but came to pass just a few weeks ago. This has left me with a truer, albeit selfish, sense of this song.

Praise to MGMT for giving me this musical panacea to cling to as I cope with the absence of my beloved feline who's spirit left this planet on July 27th, at 12.55pm via lethal injection. I cherished and doted upon and marveled at the connection i had with this beautiful silky-seal grey, golden-eyed once feral cat named ASHA , since July 22nd, 1997. We were 'lover and beloved' for 14 years and 5 days. To say that Asha was, as cats are said to be, my "familiar" or 'channel' is to vastly under rate our uncanny connection.

During his demise, I held the most surreal and self-sparing space with him starting on July 11th during the 'thyroid storm' and the two strokes that occurred over his last 17 days. You don't eat, you don't sleep, you forget to floss, your bills go nearly forgotten and you are ALL ABOUT YOUR LOVE. Well, Asha's spirit was ready to leave and his guides were there, ready to take him 'home'. On my end, this meant recognizing this stage and ultimately lead to the angel injection that shot him to heaven.

You just don't realize what you're capable of witnessing or sacrificing until you truly love a being who is vulnerable and dependent upon you. I was dumbfounded by what I underwent as Asha valiantly lived out his last couple of weeks.

I did so much stupid shit in the 6 months before Asha succumbed that I'm still undergoing extreme self-berating for my behavior. To cut to the crisis: his last stroke rendered him unable to recognize me at all--and his pupils were so dilated that he was 'blind'. Once at the vet, ready for the angel injection, you don't quite realize how fast it works--the shot stops the heart almost instantly, and you're still there, cooing and murmuring your devotion to your beloved. But they're gone.

But "the love always remains"

For a day or so, I could not bear to hear a note of music, knowing how lyrics unzip me. And i was beyond grief-stricken, i myself was utterly without MEANING, without Asha to turn to. i didn't want to have any lyrics 'meaning' anything to me, I wanted to disintegrate/drown/dwell in the stunned reality of Asha not being HERE.

Enter the grace of a song like "Love Always Remains".

When my heart yearned for music again, guess what song chose me? This one here. Because of the unconditional love that Asha had for me, his mammal mummy, he summoned me to be a better person than i would have been. He was a reason to not go too far off the rails, to always come home to feed and care for him, and in the later years of his life, to give him subcutaneous fluids and other meds so he would be hydrated and healthier. He had little seizures from 12 weeks til he died.....they manifested as crazy bouts of excessive self-grooming when he was a youngster..and only lead to deeper symptoms in his older years.

Folks, I still feel like I might go to pieces (pieces of what? ///pieces come together for some reason just as well) at any moment.

And I do declare that "time doesn't heal all wounds"...it lulls me into the business of life, and then i default to an Asha flash, and I'm bereft and bewildered by how it is that he isn't here anymore. Nor do I want time to assuage the memory of Asha, I only ask that Time always ennoble and honor Life with Asha.

Asha's Love Always Remains. it is in the ether, it is all around me here in my home, it is in my heart and soul and in countless pictures of him. I'm still gutted, emotionally eviscerated by the lack of his willful, feisty, intuitive nature and his inexhaustible desire to be near me. He was extraordinary, and we were corded in a way i've never felt with a human, even though i have been deeply in love.

I'm looking for Asha's ghost all the time. If I literally 'saw' Asha's ghost, not only would it change the way I think, but I would welcome leaving this life. I'd certainly let it all out fast.

Right now, I'm living in the past.

Other appreciations: I love the production on this song. The chaotic electro at the start and finish. The way it resolves. The perfect touch of auto-tune on the chorus. The way the chorus has the real 'instruction' of the song -- "if we hold the hand etc....." overlaid upon it.

And the way it chillingly builds up and then cuts and drops you into the shimmering, echoing persistence of the repetition of 'THE LOVE ALWAYS REMAINS..REMAINS...etc...... with those few little keyboard notes just perfectly underscoring the beauty of the sentiment, the truth, the wistfulness of relying upon the love of a lost one always remaining.

This song is both redemptive and yet desperate in what it describes. It is so hard to lose what we love.

All in all, a very healing and cathartic song for me these days.

And i just love this band. I say "pish" to those who can't handle their proclivity for clever or self-indulgent songs. I take MGMT as a whole, and embrace them. They're in my town this weekend, SF, at the Outlands festival in Golden Gate Park playing on the same night as the Shins. Both bands are so personal for me, that I wont' venture into the fray. But its cool to know they're in town!

Wow. Just as I was reviewing my comments before posting, the mailman brought me Asha's ashes---did you know that they're actually called 'cremains"?

I'm going to attempt a bit of a 'closure' ceremony here in the sun with my survivor cat Biba, and see if we can invoke Asha and get him to help us move along with love in our our hearts.

Thanks to any readers for your kindness in letting me share this.

Bless up everyone...