(The) Harvey Danger Database

The Same as Being in Love

Recorded

Release history

Credits

Lyrics

When you base
Your whole identity
On reaction against somebody,
It’s the same as being in—

I tend to forget when I drink
I’m doing it again, I think—
A hand to hold
an ego to flatter
’cause you were the wineskin
I was the bladder

Time passes, events fall away
(I don’t think they’ll hurry)
Hurry up, I’m blacking out
high on the vapor
’cause I was the typo
You were the liquid paper

Talk it over, talk it—
overtalk it
The answer’s still the same:
It’s discontent, humiliation
’cause you were the theme and I was the variation

Try to take a less dramatic course of action
This attraction-introspection-diction predilection
is breaking my heart again
breaking my heart again…1

  1. Footnote #31 in the KJV CD liner notes: So [said the doctor], now vee may perhaps to begin, yes? This is the last line of Philip Roth’s 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint. The same quotation also appears on the back cover of Sean Nelson’s HD lyrics book You Be the Pity, I’ll Be the Fear.) ↩

Quotes

ECS: To me what that song illustrates is that life is ridiculous, but it’s also all you have.

— The Rocket,

SCN: “The Same as Being in Love” began life as the the middle section of a never-released song called “You Look So Happy” (the word “love” is intact on that version; still don’t understand that choice) and the back half of a medley whose front half became “Thrilling Conversation”; for all that, I feel that the song is a perfect, concise statement of the incremental stages of heartbreak, culminating in the line that feels the most like something I would write that I ever wrote—attraction-introspection-diction predilection is a lot of showy rhubarb in one sense, but it also defines the emotional tumult of my adolescence and twenties; looking back through the binoculars of my 30s, I feel deep conflict about the times chronicled on the first two HD records, and the ideas we all had about everything, but at least when I listen back, I can hear with absolute certainly that we meant it all, and that’s worth a lot.10A

Notes

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