243. Song No. 3,656: “From the Right Angle,” Dawes
Stories Don’t End, 2013

You have found me on the other side of a loser’s winning streak
Where my thoughts all wander further than they should
Let me sing to you my solitude, let me pay for your next drink
Let me defend these hearts which are so rarely understood…

This. This is when I love Dawes the most: the declarative intro instrumentals; an infrequently considered perspective; lyrics best sung full-throatedly from a place you left a lifetime ago but still feels achingly, tangibly within reach every time you hear them.

“From the Right Angle” is truly one of my favorite Dawes songs, despite bearing the same message that countless broken hearts reinforced like death by a thousand cuts: Sometimes you fall in love with the idea of and maybe even hidden but forever untapped potential of a person rather than the flawed series of strung-together coping mechanisms they really are, which is fair to absolutely no one. It’s a shitty, gut-punch of a feeling that you have to roll with a couple-three times before learning how to verbalize that specific kind of heartache that’s so all-consuming it takes the ego down with it, and it’s maddening that it sounds so fucking good and cool and noble here, a well-composed and presumably well-practiced one side of a conversation with some poor soul who’s declared their love to the 100-percent wrong person after confusing them for their stage persona and songwriting.

And, like… obviously, a magazine editor and a touring musician have little in common, but I so poignantly understand so much of this song for all the blanket idiosyncrasies creative types are known for. I get absolutely blowing right past everything someone tells you about themselves to determinedly superimpose your insistence about the person you ~*just know in your heart*~ that they are truly are over what reality vehemently contradicts; I get having to gently but in no uncertain terms break it to someone that you’re nothing like the ideal they’ve misdirected all their energy into summoning from practically nothing rather than actually doing the work of getting to know anything meaningful about you.

More importantly, though, I completely understand crafting your life around the things you might actually need to address with a mental-health professional instead of blithely just working around until you’re either sick of your own bullshit or too dead to care. No one commits to a print-media career for the glory or riches or cake workdays: We willingly submit to a job we only half-jokingly liken to a bad habit at best and abusive relationship at worse that repays our 60-hour work weeks and bathroom-stall-contained anxiety attacks and prodigious drinking problems and shitty, shitty pay with more grueling conditions and thankless days because anything less doesn’t even come close to scratching the itch of an honest-to-god calling that’s the only life you want and better on its worst days than any other field on their best ones, all of which both cultivate and indicate a personality and temperament that most people understandably don’t want in a life partner. It is so often the curse of those who deal in non-linear processes to bring a part of ourselves to life in our media of choice.

Some of us get real lucky and marry within the herd, which I can confidently say is the best possible outcome. Most, however, don’t, damning them to a seemingly endless cycle of singing their solitude to another misguidedly lovesick creature, breaking the reality of that suboptimal self to another broken heart that made the grave mistake of equating a poet’s soul with the answer to their problems.

It’s so hard explaining to someone who thinks they just want to be let in that getting too close only looks good from the right angle, and for a brief moment at that; it’s even harder conjuring the courage to plumb your own murky depths to get to that point of understanding what kind of boundaries and life you need to be the most fulfilled version of you while minimizing the unintentionally doled-out wreckage of how others choose to perceive you. It’s a shame that the “It’s not you, it’s me” ethos has become a tired and maligned trope, but an entire song that spends its four-minute narrative dedicated to taking it back for the sake of laid-bare honesty goes a long in reclaiming its potential for a sincere confession’s uniquely intimate connection.