Blonde Without the E
ISSUE #167
It’s been five years since Blonde came out, and five years since I left home. That was the day I drove 750 miles south with a trailer and my boxes of freshly cut shorts. My mom walked me out to the empty street under a bright and menacing morning sky. Goodbye, I love you, and pretty soon I was shrinking on the horizon to the echoing caverns of “Nikes.”
The first time I heard Blonde, Missouri’s fields rumpled into hills as I cruised under the Arch into desolate Illinois. It played again as I passed my first Appalachian truck ramps, the U-Haul trailer pressing hard on my bumper as my best friend slept soundly at my side. I played that record for months after I’d arrived: while I built my bed, set up my shelves, took my walks through thick summer mists.
I’ve played a song from Blonde at least once a week for the past five years. The album feels beamed to me from outer space, a message from some cosmic power. In structure, it spikes like an EKG, with masterpieces like “Self Control” and “Nights” split by snippets like “Good Guy.” I love the placement of “Be Yourself” as track four, typically a make-or-break slot, where you lose your audience or strap them in for more. Instead of a hit, Frank places a voicemail—his mother’s call urging him to stay safe and sober, a beguiling monologue worthy of acting auditions. Every choice on this record is bewildering and every listen endlessly rewarding.
Augusts have been hard for me ever since—the baking sun, the ticking clock, the bottlenecks of lost possibilities. Blonde is always here for me. It’s an album for leaving, for those who have left. It’s a sonic companion to “Goodbye to All That”: hallucinatory flashes; too long at the Fair; staying up until your phone has died.
“It is perfectly understandable, when you are feeling a bit lost and directionless, to want to avoid those anchored firmly in place,” I read in Gawker’s “Ask a Fuck Up” this week. “You assume they will view your lack of attachments as a failure, but in truth some probably envy the chance to start over so unencumbered.”
The piece reminded me of a pivotal lyric in Frank’s “White Ferrari”: “I’m sure we’re taller in another dimension.” Even as I stack my regrets, Blonde reminds me why there’s reason to leave—to reach Babylon, or Bethlehem, or just that dimension where we stand a little taller.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again—
If your feet are nimble and light
You can get there by candlelight.
It’s been five years since Blonde came out, and five years since I left home. That was the day I drove 750 miles south with a trailer and my boxes of freshly cut shorts.