“I’m in the Checkout Line of my Life”
Copeland’s Blushing came out in February of my senior year of college. It was a rough time. I really just wanted to leave that place, and spent most of my time listening to music in the library, overeating alone in the dining hall, or just laying in bed. Blushing provided a marvelous escape. I still cannot really describe what that album does for me. As someone never particularly interested in romantic or sexual fantasies, I’m still a bit confused as to why it has such a draw for me. Most of the songs on the album are basically love songs. However, I think the lyrics of “Pope,” the first song, really resonated with me. “Would you be my love, until I can prove that this world is not real?” There was something very otherworldly and escapist about the romance portrayed in the album, and I guess I kind of viewed the object of the singer’s romantic desire as sort of a womb-like feeling of warmth and enclosure and safety, rather than a particular person. Though this pseudo-Freudian interpretation is surely quite a stretch, there is also a lot in the lyrics about just resting in a moment, knowing that it will fade but kind of embracing the otherworldly quality of a romance while it lasts. Romance and relationships aside, there was a lot to this feeling that resonated with me when I would wake up before dawn and fall back asleep to this album. There’s something incomparably beautiful and comforting about that period of adjusting the blankets to get warm again and then effortlessly falling back into sleep for that last hour or less before the sun rises.
There’s a similar feeling to Glaswing’s I’m in the Checkout Line of my Life. In fact, I’m not sure I can really pinpoint the differences between Blushing and this new solo ep. The first track sounds a bit more like You Are my Sunshine-era Copeland, and a few others have a bit more of a soul/r&b sound than we’ve heard from Copeland, but nothing drastically different from Blushing. I really just wanted to write about the line, “I’m in the checkout line of my life.” I don’t know what it means, really, but it has a similar escapist feeling to what I mentioned earlier, but not really in the “this world is not real” sort of way. It’s more like, “I’ve done what I needed to do in this life, and I’m on my way out.” That sounds a bit suicidal actually. It could also mean, “I’ve found what I came for, and now I’m going to go and live my life with it” (or should I say her). Yet, ultimately, the desire is once again just to stay in the moment:
“I’m stuck here in a silent stare
Sway with me now in the tide
Our favorite song in the air
Keep me right here in the rise”
I guess I mostly just love the music, and the snippets of lyrics that catch my ear contribute to my idea of what the music is meant to communicate. One thing I haven’t mentioned about the music is how heavily the vocals are edited, often autotuned and harmonized in a way reminiscent of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek,” though less choral-sounding and more…robot-like. This obviously contributes to the otherworldly atmosphere, but somehow it just feels like it’s encasing my brain in a warm embrace, or some sentimental shit.
Sometimes we experience these moments that seem like they’re everything, like nothing else in the world matters. And maybe that’s true?
I guess I know it’s not true, but I’ll still pursue those moments and escape into them whenever I can, at least until I have to leave the checkout line and head back into the world.
