Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean

My deletion folder is littered with the bones of KRISTEENYOUNG song appreciation posts; I never capture what I love about this elusive band, but here’s another try (this one from Music For Strippers, Hookers and the Odd On-Looker).

As the album closer, “Halfway Across The Atlantic Ocean” is first remarkable for its placement – it follows “Protestant,” a mighty song which ends with a long, stately outro; to hear such a definitive album closer as “Protestant” suddenly give way to the much gentler opening chords of “Atlantic” is one sign that this unusual album is not going to die without a struggle. Nor does “Protestant” to “Atlantic” fall into the big-drama-into-cooldown-ballad pattern of record-ending; instead, there is a re-ignition of nervous tension which burns to the end.

The second remarkable thing about “Atlantic Ocean” is that it references “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” without irony – which is really the only interesting option these days. I can’t be sure that this was intentional; it’s a half-quote in the opening chords which recalls the song’s wavering bridge, rather than the famous melody, and I might not have sat up quite so suddenly had I not known that Young is a great fan of Garland’s, and has several times lyrically referenced her and Oz. But knowing this, it feels like a personal response to a performance most of us view through a vaguely academic lens -not even a campy lens so much anymore- and that made the original seem suddenly new to me.

Young begins “Atlantic Ocean” in reverie, a soft halting delivery (particularly on the word “clear”) giving way to a more confident, plaintive one: “The day…that it became… clear – was/the first time that I saw you for the hundred-and-fiftieth time – but can you blame me? I was reaching – reaching, halfway across the Atlantic Ocean.” Read the opening lines how you’d like; I think it lends itself to “I was too distracted by my efforts to reach you to notice that you were no longer there” and “can you blame me for wanting more than I’m given?” as well as “I’m trying to do something patently impossible; take a moment, gentlemen of the jury, to acknowledge the scale of my labors.”

But the lyric, while sometimes ambiguous, is not vague. The song has a plot. Love is found in the first verse, lost in the second; Young and her friend are in the water, attempting to cross it at first (it’s uncertain whether they start together or try to meet halfway); in the third, Young winds up diving under the water in an attempt to cross it alone, collapsing in exhaustion (possibly dying; in any case, she comes to rest “eternally reaching”) but in the process ending the built-up tension of the title (which ends each verse) by stretching her hand, finally, “more than halfway across the semantic ocean.”

(Was the ocean in question, therefore, meant to be read as a “sea of words” throughout the song? Or does she triumph -sort of- over the sea of words as consolation for not being able to bridge the Atlantic, whatever odd symbolism the song attaches to that act? Again, there could be a bunch of readings, all of them relatively straightforward and none of them contradictory, which is a mark of good writing.)

There’s also a cutting twist in the sped-up refrain, with the appearance of a second Dorothy -Mrs. Parker- whose most famous title is referenced in a long list of potential methods of suicide – “I have enough rope when you’re gone, gone, gone/the oven’s cozy when you’re gone, gone, gone,” etc. The list is sort of played for laughs, but it’s really a nightmare sequence. These dangerous objects surround the speaker with a friendly, domestic pull (“the traffic’s playful,” “my knives are sharpened,” “prescriptions filled”) and their threat is very active. It reminds me of the Smiths’ “the sea wants to take me/the knife wants to slit me,” but it has an air of desperate energy, rather than the dreamy passivity of “I Know It’s Over.”

Beyond that, I have to praise the song’s phrases and internal rhymes – I especially like “I will swim till my limbs are numb and dim” (which has not only the  -im/-im, but that pair of -mb words). Likewise, I love that each verse begins (and there is enough space separating the verses that this stays subtle) with “the day,” “the place” and “the time” respectively, as if to describe some final appointment either with death or with the lover/addressee. And the stretching-out of words (at the start of the song, she tests the water with her toe, and the word “toe” stretches and twitches, lasting nearly as long as it takes her to be grabbed into the water in the next line) elegantly demonstrates lapses and differences in timing.

But “Atlantic Ocean” doesn’t come down to any of that for me; it comes down to a strange ability to sincerely show a bad mental state to the listener without implicating the listener for being a voyeur. I really don’t feel awkward pointing out the technical achievements of a track about the breakdown of a life, because for me, despite its intense content, it doesn’t feel at all melodramatic (and thus you feel as if you can meet it on its own terms, looking at the emotion straightforwardly, which means seeing the form straightforwardly as well).

Responses to it will vary widely, I know, but as Wilde said, when critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. Except I don’t know of many artists who appear to genuinely enjoy being disagreed over, so maybe he should have put it slightly differently.

(If you are somehow read this whole thing without knowing the album, the blog Nine Bullets just also put up three other tracks from Strippers, with a very nice review.)

Lyrics under the cut.

The day…
that it became…
clear…
was…
the first time that I saw you for the 150th time,
but can you blame me?
I was reaching, reaching…
halfway across the Atlantic Ocean.

The place…
it socked my square jaw face…
my toe had dipped to rate
and you grabbed me, in up to my waist.
Contrary to unpopular opinion, the water was welcoming warm,
and we slid easily,
wrapped up and reaching, reaching…
halfway across the Atlantic Ocean.

GONE, GONE, GONE: I have enough rope when you’re
gone, gone, gone. The oven’s cozy when you’re
gone, gone, gone. Prescriptions filled when you are
gone.

The time…I grope to find
that there is no sign…
with bottomless hope, I’ll dive.
Then, I will swim ‘til my limbs are numb and dim,
With a paralysed hip, I’ll slip, fingertips to sea lip.
Eternally reaching, more than
halfway across the semantic ocean.

GONE, GONE, GONE: I have enough rope when you’re
gone, gone, gone. The oven’s cozy when you’re
gone, gone, gone. Prescriptions filled when you are
gone, gone, gone. It’s cocked and loaded when you’re
gone, gone, gone. My knives get sharpened when you’re
gone, gone, gone. It tastes like almonds when you’re
gone, gone, gone. The traffic’s playful when you’re
gone. Take flying leaps when you are
gone. Autoerotic when you’re
gone. See, I’ll be fine when you are
gone.