Song of the Day - Day 103

Today's song is...


Museum of Idiots


It is apparently that time. I should have known considering that yesterday, when I turned on my car, this song was cued up on my CD player and then when I got home and turned off the car it was also playing on a completely different CD.

I'm going to tell you a story about my very personal interpretation of this song. Apologies to those of you who already heard it on Tumblr because I'm mostly just reposting it rather than re-typing it all. This will probably be the longest Song of the Day entry you will ever read.

My boyfriend, Gary, and I have been together for almost five years, and we were really close friends for another three years before that. We met at work. He was one of the first people I was introduced to on my initial tour of the store. I remember the manager that was giving me the tour, telling me that Gary didn’t talk much but that they were working on trying to get him to come out of his shell. I vividly remember thinking, “I can do that.” It took at least a good six months of working at him, but I did finally get him to start talking to me. And somewhere in that time, I also remember looking at him one day, before I had even really gotten to know him and thinking, “He is probably the love of my life.” I’m not sure what gave me that feeling. It was one of those things I just… knew.

But somewhere in there, I had also found out that he was already with someone and had been for a long time. Didn’t stop me from wanting to be friends and over the next year we became quite close. But then the trouble started. We were reprimanded at work for being too social. So we toned it down, started hanging out more outside work. Then we started having trouble with his girlfriend. Sometimes she and I got along fine, then others she would be convinced that I was trying to steal him from her, that my behavior wasn’t appropriate between friends. She’d give him curfews, call him with accusations when we were out with friends or at work, and send me jealous, accusatory messages telling me to back off which she would then retract and apologize for when she had calmed down.

Meanwhile, our boss at work seemed to have some sort of grudge against him. She had us reprimanded again for visiting at work on a night when I had been at home, no where near the store. Then, I got promoted and after a few weeks she sat me down and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I would be demoted and he would be transfered if we didn’t cease all contact at work entirely. I wasn’t even allowed to speak to him in a work capacity. The assistant manager at the time told me that, unless I intended to marry him, our relationship wasn’t worth messing up my career over. And we weren’t even dating. We were just friends.

What does all of this have to do with this song you ask? Well, in the midst of all this, Gary gave me a mix CD he'd made to take on a vacation with me because I was getting bored with the music I had been listening to. Included on it, was Museum of Idiots. The song seemed to perfectly capture everything that had been going on. The fact that we were having to fight against everyone, just to remain friends.

A couple of years later, after he had broken up with his girlfriend and we started dating, but had to hide this fact from everyone we worked with, the song seemed to ring even more true.

“They built this whole neighborhood out of wood, out of wood, I guess I’ll still be around when they burn, burn it down.” 

This was our sense that we were stuck in our jobs at a place we had grown more and more dissatisfied with. In the Museum of Idiots.

 “Honey, I’m there when you need me, please believe me, please believe me. I’ll be right where you left me, if you manage to forget me. Where we met is where you may forget, here in the museum of idiots.” 

Through all the awfulness we remained there for each other. Still stuck in the same foolish environment where we had met.

“If you and I had any brains, we wouldn’t be in this place.”

If we had had any brains at all we would have left our jobs, which grew increasingly dissatisfying, and probably just given up on trying to be friends because it just made everything more difficult.

“Chop me up in to pieces, if it pleases, if it pleases. And when the chopping is through, every piece will say “I love you,” here in the museum of idiots.” 

Everyone and everything was trying to chop us apart and we stuck together. And we are still together eight years later, after five years as a couple. And yet, we are still stuck in the museum of idiots. It’s impossible to escape from. Something always seems to keep us there. People say this is a really sad, depressing song. For me, it’s about love in the face of madness and opposition. And if we ever get married, which I hope we will, this will probably be our wedding song. Both because of it’s personal meaning and because our mutual love of TMBG has only brought us closer together.

(P.S. If you've ever wondered why I never refer to my boyfriend by name on my blog, this story is why. But I've just been promoted to a different store in the company, so we no longer work together directly, and thus I am loosening up a little. After five years living in the dark, it is time to shine some light. It feels good.)

And lastly, MY GOD, I love this song. The bass line. Oh my god, that bass line. And the horns. Those bombastic horns. And the crash of the cymbals. Damn. Just....wow.