Simple Math

by editor Michele Catalano

Summer sounds of the suburbs: the slight hum of air conditioners, sprinklers sputtering on and off, a lone lawnmower dares to cut the 7 a.m. silence. 

I inhaled. I hate summer, hate its heat and humidity and the way it drags on forever; but I admit to loving bits and pieces of it. The early mornings, before the temperature crawls above 80, when the birds are having breakfast and the sun is just a hint in the sky; those moments sustain me. 

I inhaled again. The air smelled of lawn clippings and chlorine. I put in my earbuds and started walking. 

It was June 2011, and life held promise for me. I put on Manchester Orchestra’s new album, Simple Math. For several years, this album would remind me of summer, of peacefulness, of hope. There’s a great run of songs on this album, and I’d walk, usually from “Pensacola” to “Pale Black Eye,” taking in the sun, the flowers, the peacefulness that comes from being the only one out in the morning. I associated Simple Math with contentment. 

The album stayed with me, a beacon on cold winter nights when I wanted to be warmed by memories of temperate days.  It was my walking album; it was my driving album. Simple Math was a part of the fabric of my life. 

Then the fabric unraveled. 

As my life circumstances changed over the next few years, so did my relationship with Simple Math, especially the title song. Listening to it made me feel this incredible yearning that wasn’t there three years earlier. It felt as if a weight had shifted. What was once a summery morning to me was now a dark winter’s night. 

Simple Math was as much a beacon as it was before, just in a completely different way. I was pulled to it now because of the darkness that pervaded it, a darkness pulled from my own life. The album was pliable, moldable. As I changed, it changed with me, forcing me to stare down lyrical meanings that should have been obvious to me years ago. 

What if we’ve been trying to get to where we’ve always been?

What if I was wrong, and started trying to fix it?

What if you believed me?

Everything is brilliant

Those words stung. They hurt. They made me face truths that had been dangling on the surface; truths I’d been ignoring but had suddenly become bigger than life. I started listening to the title song while running. Its cadence doesn’t really lend itself to running, but I made do, because I needed to hear these words loud, inside my head. I needed to turn the volume up, turn the speed up, and come face to face with the demons that had been swirling around—demons that were only brought out because of this song, this album.

What if we’ve been trying to kill the noise and silence

I thought about this line a lot, applying it to my life, as I do with so many lyrics. Sometimes it’s a stretch, sometimes the words just hit. The noise and silence were sometimes one and the same; silence so deep and damaging it became a noise in my head. 

“Simple Math” became a mantra of sorts as I tried to work things out in my head. It could never go back to being the song it was when I first heard it. It would always have a deeper meaning now. a darker feel, a more desperate yearning, for a simpler life, for a better life, for the life I had the first time I listened to the song.

What if I was wrong and you had never questioned it?

What if it was true, that all we thought was right, was wrong?

Simple math, the truth cannot be fractioned

I imply I’ve got to get it back then

Life was full of “what ifs” then. What if he listened to me? What if he talked to me? What if we didn’t lose touch with what we had? What if all we thought was right was wrong? 

The song haunted me after he left. It stayed in my head, where it no longer brought visions of idyllic summer mornings, but of cold evenings alone. I would think about how we had it all in our grip, and one of us let loose the hold they had. I was unsure of which one of us that was.

Three years after he left, I found out things I wasn’t meant to find out. It set me back, caused me to spiral a bit. In that spiral, I knew what I needed. I took out Simple Math. Put on side 2, song 2. “Simple Math” is a song ostensibly about infidelity. I knew this, but never associated that toward my situation. Until now. I listened to it five times in a row after I made that discovery. All the old feelings came back; not the summer feeling, but the one in which I question everything, mostly myself. If anything, I now knew who lost their grip. It wasn’t me.

Simple math, the truth cannot be fractioned

I imply I’ve got to get it back then

For the third time, the song and album turned for me. I became determined to get back to where it felt sunny and warm, to where the words did not harm me. I had to make peace with “Simple Math” all over again. I would not lose this album or this song. I’ve been through too much with it; it’s been through too much with me. I will get those summer days back. It’s just simple math.

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