(The) Harvey Danger Database

SCN: I have an enormous sense of pride in certain things that I’ve done. Maybe “pride” isn’t the right word, but I feel an enormous sense of accomplishment. And that line in particular, You’re so tangible/like a nitroglycerine tablet/under my tongue—I think it’s a good little image.^SS

SCN: When Jeff and I started getting together to write more regularly in 2003, he gave me a really gentle, really simple instrumental (same chords as “Purple Rain,” I think) and asked if I thought we could do anything with it; “Diminishing Returns,” its melody completely revised, fit perfectly; all that was missing was a bridge, which came along when Aaron joined us, and that fantastic little Granddaddyesque outro; I never meant for the lyrics to mark a theme song for the band, but I have come to think of the song as just that—an admission that the pleasure of making music the way we do far outweighs the external vicissitudes that define it as a way of making money, a way of getting famous, a way of being cool, a way of being lame, or whatever; the song says that in my mind, we—Jeff, Aaron, and I, and also Evan and also Michael—are bound together by something far stronger than a career: We’re bound by a musical interdependence that I can hear on every song on every album we ever made, the very definition of a whole being bigger than the sum of its parts. But also a whole being intimately familiar with the contributions of its parts, so the whole becomes more beautiful when seen from within. If you look at it right.^10A

SCN: Some people, they know what they want to be when they grow up, and they set their course, and go in that direction. And they are probably lucky. But then there are others of us who [have] a bunch of things we would like to do, and we want to give all those things a chance, and if one of them bears more fruit, or is more promising, or rings more true, then you go in that direction—but you’re sort of keeping your options open. And in that sense, you are having it both ways: there’s something you want, but you’re not limiting the possibilities of other things happening for you. That’s a pretty good way to go… for a while. You eventually have to make choices, otherwise you will never actually finish anything. It’s a trap that I’ve gotten into, and I know lots of people who have. in the absence of an actual direction, defaulted to staying still. That is a very bad feeling, because then you feel like you have no options. That’s a place I know a lot of people have wound up.

I think it’s a really lovely song, and it’s melancholy but it’s not crushingly sad. It’s a little album-closer. And it’s especially meaningful for us in the band, because we had it both ways, in that we weren’t really trying to be rock stars, or a famous professional rock band, or anything like that—we were just some guys who wanted to play music, and were not really part of the industry—and then, of course, we were undoubtedly part of the industry, because that’s what we were doing with our lives. But we somehow—by not admitting that that was what was happening—we sort of inoculated ourselves against the charges of trying too hard and failing. If we failed, well, it’s certainly not our fault because we weren’t even doing it in the first place, so I guess the joke’s on you! That’s a childish way of thinking, and we’re all guilty of it, and I was guiltiest.^AD