I read an interview with Gareth on Pitchfork. Here's what he had to say about this song.
"Pitchfork: There's a brutal moment on "In Media Res" where the music gets nauseous and you talk about your corpse falling from a plane: "Drop me at the highest point and trace a line around the dent I leave in the ground/ That'll be the initial of the one you'll marry now I'm not around." Where there any moments on the album when you were like, "I'm going too far with this"?
GC: Well, the germ of those lines on "In Media Res" comes from quite a playful place. When I was at school, we used to peel an orange and throw it in the air, and when it landed on the floor it would fall in the shape of a letter, and that letter would be the initial of the person you were going to marry. So, in this instance, the orange peel becomes the dead human body. That lyric is about being replaced.
There are a couple literary passages that informed a lot of the set-up for the record. In his first novel, Travelling People, the author B.S. Johnson wrote, "Look, you think you're so bloody tragic, your love having been killed. But there's much worse than that, love. Much worse, much worse, much worse. When your love reveals herself to be utterly indifferent, to have betrayed you, to be nothing like the love she seemed. That is just as final, just as definite, just as much a bereavement as death, but still there's this physical thing that walks around in the image of your love, reminding you of your lost love, tormenting you of what might have been. Believe me, that's worse than death, love. Worse than the death of your love."
That's what set up that song in particular-- the idea of bereavement of your own death through the loss of a relationship and how that can leave you. Come to think of it, that bit is very heavy. But I really like it because my ultimate favorite musician ever, [Xiu Xiu's] Jamie Stewart, sings on it as well, and and he totally owns it."
I read an interview with Gareth on Pitchfork. Here's what he had to say about this song.
"Pitchfork: There's a brutal moment on "In Media Res" where the music gets nauseous and you talk about your corpse falling from a plane: "Drop me at the highest point and trace a line around the dent I leave in the ground/ That'll be the initial of the one you'll marry now I'm not around." Where there any moments on the album when you were like, "I'm going too far with this"?
GC: Well, the germ of those lines on "In Media Res" comes from quite a playful place. When I was at school, we used to peel an orange and throw it in the air, and when it landed on the floor it would fall in the shape of a letter, and that letter would be the initial of the person you were going to marry. So, in this instance, the orange peel becomes the dead human body. That lyric is about being replaced.
There are a couple literary passages that informed a lot of the set-up for the record. In his first novel, Travelling People, the author B.S. Johnson wrote, "Look, you think you're so bloody tragic, your love having been killed. But there's much worse than that, love. Much worse, much worse, much worse. When your love reveals herself to be utterly indifferent, to have betrayed you, to be nothing like the love she seemed. That is just as final, just as definite, just as much a bereavement as death, but still there's this physical thing that walks around in the image of your love, reminding you of your lost love, tormenting you of what might have been. Believe me, that's worse than death, love. Worse than the death of your love."
That's what set up that song in particular-- the idea of bereavement of your own death through the loss of a relationship and how that can leave you. Come to think of it, that bit is very heavy. But I really like it because my ultimate favorite musician ever, [Xiu Xiu's] Jamie Stewart, sings on it as well, and and he totally owns it."
The rest of the interview is here, if anybody's interested. http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7769-los-campesinos/