Today I want to get close with The National, specifically with their song “Mistaken For Strangers”. This is one of my all-time favorite songs of theirs. It was the second song from The National I ever heard, and quickly fell for.
Do you have a favorite song by The National? Or a few favorites? Do you remember which song by The National you heard first?
“Oh, you wouldn’t want an angel watching over.
Surprise, surprise,
they wouldn’t want to watch,
another un-innocent, elegant fall,
into the un-magnificent lives of adults.”
“Mistaken For Strangers” by The National
from the album, Boxer (2007)
My Top 5 – March 9, 2011
1. I’ve gone through years of feeling like a stranger in my own skin. A stranger to those close to me. A stranger to myself. Sometimes I feel like it took me until right now to finally start to get to know myself. And, I’m still learning. Still changing. Some days I’m no clearer on who I am then I was at fifteen, or nineteen, or thirty. Maybe this kind of confusion is a forever thing. Maybe it’s part of what being alive is.
2. Does anyone ever truly know us? Do we every truly know anyone else?
3. There is something magical about quarters. Of all the American coins, it’s the quarter that has this element of delight to me. Perhaps it’s the grown-up geeky girl in me, the one who used to line quarters up on the ledge of a Ms. Pac Man game at the local pizza place, or arcade. Maybe it’s the woman in me who, as an adult, has often had to do my laundry in a coin-operated machine, all of them taking only those magic quarters as currency. We attach strange personalities to objects, don’t we? Though I do like the idea of making the ordinary magical. We all can use a little magical.
4. The National is one of my favorite bands of the last few years. Without exception. every song I’ve let myself really listen to I’ve ended up loving.
5. “Oh you wouldn’t want an angel watching over, surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch” is my favorite lyrics in “Mistaken For Strangers.” It reminds me of Castile, from ‘Supernatural’, and the notion of angels among us. Fallen angels. Wondering how much, or how little, they’d want to be involved in our mundane lives. The darkness, the lightness, the drama, and the boredom. Maybe they wouldn’t be interested, at all.
