On Ok Computer

It feels pretty douchey when you say it. Let’s get that out of the way. It feels like beard oil and mustache wax and flannel swilling an imperial IPA infused with the spirit of Stephen Malkmus. That’s fair. But you also weren’t a 17-year old boy growing up in Cleveland, Ohio in 1997. So, gimme a minute. Ok Computer was a great album.

It was all the things. Immediately different — like watching Michael Jordan in his prime. The game was familiar, but you knew you were experiencing something special. Generational. From the first lick of Airbag through the end It had a heartbeat. It had moods. Emotion. Empathy. Frustration. Pain. Doubt. Love. Panic. Hope. It’s one of my stranded-on-a-desert-island-what-albums-are-you-choosing picks.

But, this isn’t a Rolling Stone review. It’s a few hundred words about a strange thread that weaved its way through my day and inspired me to fire up my computer after writing all day, listen to this album for the thousandth time and tell a story that isn’t trying to sell you anything.

Yesterday was birthday. Today, I walked into this.

And this.

Reader’s note: I’m letting my hair grow out a bit.

Anyway, the culprits filtered into my office and we sat around judging the photoshop skills, eating birthday baked goods and I can’t even remember how we got there but Fergs somehow came flying into the conversation with “…yeah, it’s just like how ‘Let Down’ was about Naked Lunch…” to which I said, “Like William S. Burroughs?” and he nodded like f*ck, yeah. And, that was it. Total sidebar.

Until tonight…when I’m cooking dinner and of course Pandora spits out ‘Let Down’ and I tap the lyrics and screengrab to throw into the work chat and ask what the song was about again? I had forgotten the reference, but the lyrics felt different than what I couldn’t remember was said. Fergs chimes in with a correction — it wasn’t Burroughs. Kafka. Metamorphosis. Makes more sense.

I think maybe there are two camps. People who feel like these threads as I call them — these random one-off mentions that randomly pop back into your day and send you down a path of memories and emotions are coincidental. Or people who surf the energy of the room and allow things to flow back to them because they know that its all connected. We’re all connected.

The latter are the same people who think Ok Computer is a phenomenal work of art.