Sing Along Songs

Jan. 12, 2012 at 11:26pm with 21 notes

Reblogged from oneweekoneband

music

Charlotte Gainsbourg – 5:55 (promotional video, 2006)

5:55 AM is the Janus hour. It offers a dual experience. The person who is “so much more productive in the mornings” eventually discovers that the earlier they rise, the more morning they have to be productive in; at 5:55 they’ve taken a shower and are drinking coffee and gearing up to answer emails, or to do some personal writing – take their dog for a run – pack for a fishing trip – make their bed with hospital corners – the list goes on. Then there is the person who has been awake all along, and is now facing a momentous decision: go to bed / stay in bed, or get up? At 5:55, if you’re not dealing with a long commute, you can still get 90-120 minutes of sleep in, which is a full REM rest cycle. Also, it is not 6AM, which is morning for everyone. Being awake at 6AM means you are officially an irresponsible person who Stayed Up All Night, perhaps for no very good reason at all. Have you even brushed your teeth? Perhaps you were blogging. If you go to sleep now, you can pretend you did so at night. It’s still mostly dark out, anyway. There’s that dead-fish grey glow on the horizon, but it’s easy to ignore.

That is, if you manage to fall asleep.

No prize for guessing which side Charlotte Gainsbourg falls on – or me. (The fact that thousand-word essays are appearing on OWOB between 10PM and 4AM Eastern Standard Time should be your first clue.)

The video (directed by Yvan Attal, Charlotte’s real-life partner) draws a parallel between the awake-all-night Abyss Of Diffuse Loathing™ and a relationship gone bad – too late to end it now; too early to start again – but the song itself isn’t as explicit. Rather, as Charlotte pointed out, it is primarily concerned with atmosphere: library-hushed vocals and perpetual-motion piano working to recreate that odd, nocturnal sense of suspended time, when nothing matters because no one else is awake and nothing is happening and you are alone, as you always were and always will be. Until 5:55 again.

Been there for sure. Who hasn’t?