When we think of Songs:Ohia or Magnolia Electric Co. (the band) today, our minds write on the tombstone of Jason Molina while we listen to his lyrics. We make this mistake — how so? — of designing an epic tragedy to the existence that has been, we define the pain successfully transmitted almost as the glue of the buried artists, and we feel pity just by hearing their names. You have your Kurt Cobains, your Amy Winehouses… People that certainly, like you and me, wouldn’t like to be pitied, but the veredict cloud that rains on the living makes us see mortality through eyes smaller than our lives. But there is a certainty in this human beauty: a celebration of these beings pointing at their beauty engraved in the art, a celebration of life as a banquet. Something that doesn’t need to be reserved to lives lived in exterior glory, as if they’re our earthly paradise, our affection kept to the faithful. There’s no reason to see a past life with pity; we need to love the seeds planted in the hearts of the ones that remained. In this way, I still say Molina and all those artists managed to reach a way of communicating with us through countless generations, transmitting their beautiful readings of their own souls through the invisible paint of art, lying on Earth after the day, like a moon that lights the night.

It looked like a concluding paragraph, no? Like it is the last thing I would say after having said everything there was to be said about Molina and his art. And maybe, yes, it’s best to start with the farewells today. And maybe I have concluded something. But it’s just to close the book about having to talk about the glory of albums like Magnolia Electric Co. or of songs like “Farewell Transmission”, while feeling that it’s somehow necessary to talk about how these things become more important because, to us in the future, they seem to come from beyond. But maybe you really don’t know who Jason Molina is and you’re waiting for me to define him. I’m sorry, I don’t pretend to do that here. If you want a pityful description, Jason Molina was a prolific artist, a musician, singer and songwriter that left us in 2013 after having alcohol abuse-related organ failure. If you want a description that has more to do with life than with death, it’s necessary that we talk about how he lingered from beyond the minutes of his songs, way before he lingered from beyond his own life. In order to do that, the valid moments in his work for this are countless. But maybe his biggest contribution with eternity was with the self-titled debut record of his group Magnolia Electric Co., but mostly with the way he chose to start this trajectory: his song Farewell Transmission.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, before anything else. Farewell Transmission, produced by the legendary Steve Albini, has a story that always seems to come along with the discussion about the song. According to Molina himself in an interview, the recording of Farewell Transmission was practically miraculous.

“We put, I think, about 12 people in a room and recorded that song live, completely live, and unrehearsed. I showed ‘em the chord progression, they had no idea when it would end, and we just cut it. Steve [Albini] did a beautiful job. I noticed that at one point when it was a little too loud or a little too soft he came and opened a door to make it work, because it was just an ambient recording. When you hear that song kick off everybody knows it, and what’s so disturbing to me is the way that I ended it is I was dictating to the band and Steve — I go “Listen. Listen. Listen.” And then at one point they all stop. It’s great.”

Jason Molina to Justin Taylor from The Faster Times.

Basically, Farewell Transmission was a song recorded in one take, without rehearsals, live and partially improvised with musicians that barely knew how it was going to end. The recording and mixing of the song are miracles and certainly would need to be talked about by someone who knows more about the technical areas of this world. As of me, words are my world. And we’re lucky the lyrics of this song are from another world.

Letra de Farewell Transmission

The whole place is dark
Every light on this side of the town
Suddenly it all went down
Now we’ll all be brothers of
The fossil fire of the sun
Now we will all be sisters of
The fossil blood of the moon

Someone must have set ‘em up
Now they’ll be workin’ in the cold grey rock
Now they’ll be workin’ in the hot mill steam
Now they’ll be workin’ in the concrete
In the sirens and the silences now
All the great setup hearts
All at once start to beat

Molina creates this image for us, right after we’re introduced to his mellow guitar. In this world we’ll inhabit for a few minutes, electricity is gone. All of our electric whims, all of our modern life as we know it doesn’t exist anymore. Humanity regresses to an ancient moment, a moment of manual labor and a more communal life.

I, personally, love the way he calls the light of the Sun in this moment “fossil fire”. We all will share this old flame that burned above our ancestors’ heads thousands of years ago, just like its reflection in the night, that “spills” like fossil blood through the moon. We get in contact with the company of these stars and, just like that, we connect as brothers and sisters once more.

After tonight, if you don’t want this to be
A secret out of the past
I will resurrect it, I’ll have a good go at it
I’ll streak his blood across my beak
Dust my feathers with his ash
Feel his ghost breathin’ down my back

With this beautiful, infinitely beautiful way to show his determination through the image of a bird, like the one from the album’s cover art, Molina volunteers to bring this sensation back to the humans of today. This brotherhood that was given by our proximity that was so rudimentary, so rocky. A last chance to try again, to gorily ressurrect the humanity we once had. And so, we get to my favorite part of the song.

I will try and know whatever I try
I will be gone, but not forever
I will try and know whatever I try
I will be gone, but not forever

I love this. It’s an excelent chorus. So simple, so direct. It’s through words like this, almost directly even, that Molina manages to transmit his eternal livingness. Throughout the song, Molina will show the importance of persevering and the human strenght needed to face the the condemned experience of our lives. In the face of death, in the face of all the suffering we live through, we must try and trust we will come back soon enough. That we won’t lose ourselves in tortuous roads that we follow blindly, because there is no long step that escapes the trail of the dead, but we certainly can found comfort in our seconds, always last, comfortable like bird feathers.

Real truth about it is
No one gets it right
Real truth about it is
We’re all supposed to try
There ain’t no end to the sands I’ve been tryin’ to cross
The real truth about it is
My kind of life’s no better off
If it’s got the map or if it’s lost

We will try and know whatever we try
We will be gone, but not forever
Come on, let’s try and know whatever we try
We will be gone, but not forever

In an impossibly beautiful way, Molina shows his reality almost as a desperation. The futility of our efforts to reach any meaning or direction in a life that’s supposed to be too short and too long, indescribable, but summarized. We must try, even if blind. Try and try. It’s on the try the truth of any life.

Real truth about it is
There ain’t no end to the desert I’ll cross
I’ve really known it all along
Mama, here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall
Mama, here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall

In one of the most damning lines in the whole album, Molina comes back with the idea of the moon being an imeasurably ancient companion of humans, this already dead figure like the humanity that worshipped her when the sky was our most indescribable landscape — the fossil blood of the moon on the first verse. In this vivid imagery, we have a completely apocalyptical view, as if death has finally come to us all. We are, then, ready to say our goodbyes to humanity, waiting that it can keep on being transmitted in some way through the echoes of the universe.

Long dark blues
Will-o’-the-wisp
Long dark blues
The big star is fallin’
Long dark blues
Will-o’-the-wisp
The big star is fallin’
Long dark blues
Through the static and distance
Long dark blues
A farewell transmission
Long dark blues
Listen
Long dark blues
Listen
Long dark blues
Listen
Long dark blues
Listen.

We say our farewells to the song, after all. I interpret this ending as I said previously: this desire that this ong or that humanity perseveres from beyond our expiration dates, so we can find ourselves in a moment after us, so the darkness that surrounded our way through the desert and that consumed our doubtful hearts be spilled in the darkness of the universe, as a last lay to the human soul. As if we spilled ourselves in our resting place as last, ready for another darkness, being heard through our last words that repeat themselves in the empty mind of space; our farewell transmission.

The sea of a song is an endless way

I don’t like the idea of analysing lyric’s content, generally speaking, as if there’s a right direction to read these words that weren’t even uttered by me. But I felt it would be effective to at least say how I interpret them. We’re done with that, now. And it’s almost time to say our goodbyes.

Besides any story and beyond language, there is an aspect of Molina’s work that is set to be communicated effectively as soon as you listen to him. He draws you in to a mind that is quite beautiful, even if tormented. From his voice cracks and the cracks between the words being sang, we have this sort of blinding light of affection that I don’t even know if he knew it was being passed through the static. It doesn’t let you understand him, but it’s as if he’s seeking to comfort you even if in a depressing voice. His is the place of a moon of voice, a place to be shared between the listener and himself, before sending you on your way to your life, leaving him behind on the orbit. And he managed to do this through the kindness that seemed to leak from his words, beside any anger, beside any pain. This lasting feeling of living, from an unelectric voice to love beyond his say.

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