In This Twilight

I'm sitting in a nondescript hotel room in some unimportant part of the American southwest. I'm listening to In This Twilight. And as I sit here, overtired and most likely under the influence, I realize something I probably knew years ago but am now ready to admit. This song has the most immense emotional impact on me of any song I've ever heard, ever listened to.

“Watch the sun,
As it crawls across a final time
And it feels like,
Like it was a friend.”

I hear it come up on the phone I've tethered through the hotel room TV, giving me really the most false sense of improved audio I could imagine. Immediately a flood of emotions washes through the room, bringing me back to every moment in my life this song has played a part to, and every moment it may foretell.

February 25, 2007. I have no recollection – none – of what happened during this day, up until the point I was sitting on my shitty two-position wooden dorm chair, at my shitty dorm desk, in my shitty dorm room, and reading online that a new Nine Inch Nails song had leaked. At this point in time I was in the beginning stages of observing an alternate reality game play out on the net concerning this music. That's not important. What is important is that this was not the first new track to leak from the band. It was in fact the third in 11 days. I can't say I was expecting it, but when I read the news, I was done.

You must realize that this was a band that had (and has) a emotional power that I could not at the time (or since) understand or explain, but that I could (and can) not avoid.

I had listened to the other two tracks. They were great, I loved them, they were what I wanted from the band. But in this game, tracks were not leaked for fun or without purpose. So what was the purpose of this leak? It turns out it pointed to a website named hollywoodinmemorium.org, which is still active and which I hope remains active forever. Yes, I've archived it.

The basic synopsis: a dirty bomb was detonated in Hollywood at the 2009 Oscars. Yeah, obviously that didn't happen. It's a game, and it was played two years before said ceremony. But.... god. I grabbed my headphones. A nice Sony studio set that cancelled all noise without being noise cancellers. Honestly, looking back, there are few moments I remember with such clarity.

I played the song. It was beautiful. It was harsh. It hurt to listen to on multiple levels. My ears burned, but I turned it up louder. I wanted to hear every detail. Every second. Every missed note. Every dull beat. Every mistake. Every perfect moment. Everything. I turned it down a little. Was there something missing? I had never heard something like this song. I have never since heard anything like this song. Then I turned to the webpage, a list of all the people lost in the attack on LA. I read every word, playing the song on repeat, every story of every life missing or ended or altered. I entered an alternate reality where the most devestating terror attack in our nation's history no longer took place in our greatest city, but our most conflicted, our most troubled, our most spectacular.

And then I played the song again. I read the website again. Fuck, I am reading it again right now. I am experiencing the exact same emotions I did that night. I have the song on repeat again.

Forever, I was changed. It sounds grand, and it sounds like I might be exaggerating or employing hyperbole or being facetious. But I was changed. Whether it was small or large, the song, and the experience, had an impact that would not leave me the same as I was before.

I remember hearing it in a different context for the first time. When I first bought Year Zero, the album that housed the most outstanding song I've ever heard, even thought I had yet to know it, I listened to it all the way through on the same set of headphones. I listened to every word and every note of every song, and I finally reached the penultimate track, my soul-crushing friend of the sun.

I truly believe this was the author's finest effort. Every single word means the world. Every single one. I have often found myself wondering many of the same things that the narrator, or whoever the lead character is, has wondered. I worry about not living a better life. Just getting by. Could I have been a better person? If I could only do it all again.

It pains me. Time and time again. I never escape the song without the thought. Night descends. Could I have been a better person? Then I think about what would have happened had I not heard this song, or if it had never been written. Would I have never had this thought? Aren't I better off contemplating this tragedy than accepting everything as is? Why would I not assess what has happened and analyze those actions, those thoughts, that life? I am better off.

I first heard the fennesz remix of this song shortly before the release of Y3ARZ3R0R3M1X3D. I thought the song was beautiful before, and it is. The fennesz interpretation strips much of the grinding angst, and introduces additional beauty to the masterpiece. It is the way I view the original song at times. The most touching of art. Fennesz also brought in a feature that for the length of my relationship with the song, I always wanted: a repeat of the chorus at the finale. My one complaint about the original is the minimal length, the feeling that I am left without the complete piece of art, the full song, and the full emotion. There is no resolution.

And maybe that was what caused some of the strife when listening: the abrupt end to the most intense song I've ever heard. Fennesz provides a resolution. What I appreciate about this is the way it is presented. This is not the only way. It is one of many ways to hear and to feel this song. It is a calmer version, a more intimate version. But not necessarily the realer version.

I was in Manchester, New Hampshire, on November 8, 2008. It was the first time I had seen the band perform since release of the record. After a very long, very exhausting show, I heard the opening bars of In This Twilight. I knew this was the end of the show, not because I had read that the song ended the sets on this leg of the tour. I knew it was the end because that is what this song signifies. The end of an era. The end of a being. The end of the way things were. It is not a sad end, entirely. There is instant nostalgia and heartbreak and loss. But there is also hope. And heart. And, most of all, love. This song, in the end, is about love. The love of those you are close to, and the fear of living without those people. In every pivotal moment of the song, the narrator is addressing not himself, nor herself, but their loved ones. Their most intimate of partners. They want to be together with that person at the end, holding them in their arms, reassuring them that really, in the end, it's all going to be okay, because they are together, and they are in love.

“And the sky is filled with light
Can you see it?
All the black is really white
If you believe it
And the longing that you feel
You know none of this is real
You will find a better a place
In this twilight “