GLEAN

WHAT IS GLEAN?

It's more than a feeling. It's more than a telephone. It's more than the slow tapping on your living room ceiling coming from the apartment with the people that no one has ever seen.

What is glean? You might find glean when you're all alone or in a crowded room. You might find glean taking a long walk all alone or taking a long walk in a crowded room.

It's more than songs. It's more than howling, howling, howling at the empty night sky. Glean is nouns and salutations and words and sound all mixed together to create a blinding light. So, so bright, so bright you'll never even see it coming.

There is no warning. Glean doesn't need friends. Glean is taking a long walk in a crowded room.

Talk to glean. It's been calling and it misses you.

Pt. 1

You will find it. The patterns will make sense, keep digging. Find it in the silence. Imagine its claws around you. If you had any sense you would run. You won't. You will find it.

Glean is the first of a series of albums that were composed of the results of the 2015 Dial-A-Song project, in which TMBG released one song a week for 52 weeks of 2015 — the other two albums being Why? and Phone Power. We'll write more about this project on Phone Power, on account of that album is literally called Phone Power.

While I can't reasonably explain Glean without doing something first, I want to explore the question of what glean is, as discussed in the above 2015 IFC notes on the album. There is an event horizon, and beyond that horizon things simply cease to exist. There is a nothing, and that nothing hates something for being something. The nothing is glean. Glean is postmortem childlike innocence, it is the basement in the basement where you don't dare venture, it is behind you in the silence.

Erase establishes a desire to return to glean, because the narrator hears glean's call. Darlings must be murdered. If the narrator simply forgets about everything, drowns in the water, it'll all be okay. If the narrator simply reunites with his Underwater Woman, it'll be okay. The motif of water throughout Glean's runtime represents this masking, in which no one can tell when she cries; to drown is to suppress, to forget, to glean.

There's an almost uncanny valley to it, honestly; this state of perpetual detachment, one where you can only change the part. This is why Music Jail, Pt. 1 & 2 is the way it is; the music is a jail, but it is perpetual, and you cannot escape it. You can only change the part. You've already caught on that we seem to love metatextual reads of TMBG, so it's hard to not view this as more signs of TMBG's feelings about itself.

This uncanny valley continues in I Can Help The Next In Line, a story about the removal of one's consciousness from their actions due to normal things. To be in the BMV line is to glean; to wait is to glean. To glean isn't solely to be stuck, but it is a state of stasis. The stasis is uncanny, it is Unpronounceable, it needs to be found. It's asking for you. Aaa discusses a state of rummaging through the ephemera in one's life, trying to find glean in the walls, trying to find what's hiding. Glean is the superposition when you don't know what something is, but you can kind of picture it, maybe. It is the Answer, and that answer is found in alcohol. Alcohol brings you closer to glean.

If you are attempting to achieve glean, you are a piece of shit. Let's be clear, here. Madam, I Challenge You To A Duel is nonsensical in premise from the outset, in which someone who's obviously obsessed with formal systems and ethics would want to challenge a lady to fight. The sweet has gone sour; the rules have been broken. All The Lazy Boyfriends is about those who choose to achieve glean — let's be honest here, anyone who wants to glean is a guy — about never losing your edge. You never lost your edge. You were just a piece of shit. I'm A Coward, then, is about attempting to channel a relationship out of pity in this light.

But it'll kill you. It's not Good To Be Alive if you're trying to glean. To accept that it is good to be alive is to negate glean; glean is not death, but death is glean. The truth is to not hate the villain, but Hate The Villanelle. Glean is the narrative around you, it is the call, it is what is attempting to seduce you. You'll never see it coming. You have unfinished business when you're at the End Of The Rope still — glean is not death. Glean will keep you going beyond death. It needs you.

Let Me Tell You About My Operation... Huh. Okay. Wait.

Okay. I have to go watch a movie now. Bye.

Pt. 2

So this is an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind concept album huh