999,907: Phosphorescent — Cocaine Lights

Have you ever done so much cocaine that the next morning, drinking a beer at the kitchen table, you could feel your “own blood clicking”? I, thankfully, have not, but I don’t need too, because Matthew Houck (aka Phosphorescent) has, and has written this pretty rootsy gospel song telling me all about what it’s like.

Recreational drugs serve a variety of useful purposes, but two big ones spring immediately to mind: they can offer unique insight by giving us a new perspective from which to view the world, and/or they can make us feel really fucking awesome. The problem with the former is that these insights are often false (no, that repetitive clicking just noticed buried deep in the percussion is not the most amazing sound ever recorded). The problem with the latter is that the sensation is fleeting, and the memories are usually hazy, if they exist at all.

And you tend to feel not so awesome the next morning.

Which brings us to a third, somewhat ancillary and decidedly less fun purpose for recreational drug use- putting us through the physical, mental, and spiritual wringer so thoroughly, that we emerge afterward completely raw and stripped of all pretense. This is what hits Houck in the gut while he sucks down his post-binge morning beer. After all the coke and the fun he had the night before with the “new set of hips”, he’s left with little besides the longing for what one assumes is the previous set of hips, and the person one assumes is attached to them. But that’s also where he rediscovers who he really is- his “sense of grace” and “rightful place”. Despite the title, this song isn’t about coke-induced epiphany. It’s about the real epiphany that comes the morning after.

Unlike the revelation about that clicking sound, Houck’s insight is something that may stick, at least until the Cocaine Lights start shining again.

Cocaine Lights - Phosphorescen...