I USED TO...

A while back - I don't remember when it was - I used to have an enthusiasm for Arcade Fire.  I'll call it an "enthusiasm," because obsession sounds crazy and crazy doesn't sell paper, so we'll stick with "an enthusiasm."
I read about them.  I studied their music, their lyrics, became "enthusiastic" about the smallest of things.  Why this insistence on being "Canadian" when they weren't so much Canadian at all?  I mean, half of the band was from Texas, after all.  So, why not just be from fucking Texas and be done with it?  I mean, I wasn't from Texas and never had been, but how bad could it have been?  I was from Indiana, after all.  Indiana could be pretty fucking gloom-and-doom.  Indiana had a misogynistic-slash-homophobic governor that practically the entire state elected.
But, here they were, an entire band sort of claiming that they were Canadian when they weren't... I mean, not really.  Yet, I still loved them and their sort of oh-god-I'm-in-a-hole-how-did-I-get-in-this-hole kind of sound.  They had this weird French-Canadian female sometimes-lead who had taken up with another lead and they sang songs, mostly to each other, about fucking heartache and growing up and falling in love and basically wanting to rip each other apart so that neither of them would ever have to live another day without the other.
And maybe I wanted that.  Or wanted to write about a love like that. 
Or was it that I just hadn't experienced that?
In "Crown of Love," Win sings:
"I carved your name
Across my eyelids
You pray for rain
I pray for blindness"


Well... okay.  So, the way I see it, he only wants to see her name for the rest of his life, you know... across his fucking shut lids.  That right there is true dedication.  I guess it could be looked at different ways, but either way, it's love.


But my focus isn't on this band.  It's on my actual focus.  I DO this.  I find a subject and I "get enthusiastic" about it.  Maybe it's a model.  Maybe the curve of his ass makes me follow his Instagram for a month.  Maybe it's a singer.  Maybe one line in a song makes me fascinated with her... "why did she write that?"


It's rarely a "real person."


"Real people" are terribly disappointing. 


"Enthusiasm" is best left to enjoy from afar.