“And the sun goes down,
I watch you slip away.
And the sun goes down,
I walk into the waves.”

Malibu (1998) :: Hole
Song of the Day

Malibu. This song reminds me of something I wrote, and it reminds me of the someone, and the moments, I wrote the thing about. “Malibu”, the song, reminds me of long drives up PCH with this song playing LOUD and the windows half down. Smoking a cigarette even though I quit, tears teasing at my eyes, but I pushed them back, singing louder, breathing in the salty air.

Malibu. Sometimes I dream of it. I see the footprints we left in the sand late at night, and how we watched the waves wash them away. All evidence leaving almost as soon as it was laid down. “Malibu” the song came out before Malibu meant much of anything to me. But, I still felt the lyrics, they still felt relevant, necessary, as many of Courtney, and Hole’s songs, seem to.

“Malibu” the song is from Hole’s third studio album, “Celebrity Skin”, which was released on December 29, 1998, just days before the year changed. Courtney Love, Hole’s lead guitarist Eric Erlandson and Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins wrote “Malibu”. I hear shades of The Smashing Pumpkins’ song “1979” when I listen to it. They sound great paired up together.

The music video was directed by Paul Hunter, and was shot in Malibu, mostly on the beach. Eric is seen waxing a surfboard, and lifeguards hold up plastic dolls, which are supposedly representative of the TV show “Baywatch”, as Courtney walks into the ocean. The video also features the band’s new drummer, Samantha Maloney, who replaced the original drummer, Patty Schemel, who had left during recording sessions of “Celebrity Skin”.

 

Live on “Later With Jools Holland” (1998)

Here’s what I wrote…about Malibu…and memories there…

Three left turns

Early morning at that house in the cliffs,
three left turns from Malibu.
I woke to find you watching me sleep,
the salty ocean air sneaking through half-open windows,
gifting chills across our naked bodies.
For hours we said nothing,
becoming a tangled mess of hair and skin,
your body inseparable from mine. All language deemed unnecessary as everything fell silently into place.
That line creased between your dark eyes –
I made a baker’s dozen worth of wishes on it while you stared down at me,
your hands holding me so still.
Before the words arrived, before we broke the spell,
after you kissed lyrics into the curve of my spine, playing me like one of your guitars, strumming a new song for our bodies to sing –
I smiled at you crookedly, offering my name up to yours.
We breathed a future into our lungs that morning,
exhaling complications, ignoring the mark on your left hand where a ring should be.
I wonder now while you’re away from me, the buzz of a lawn mower and a three crow caw startling you awake,
while you lie there in her arms, and I’m still here next to him.

Do you feel me reaching inside your memory
pulling the sheets back over us as we return to that house in the cliffs, three left turns from Malibu, up there far above the sea?