MY #1 (SECULAR) CHRISTMAS SONG
Calling and Not Calling My Ex by Okkervil River is my favourite secular Christmas song. There is not a word of it I don’t wish I had written. Every line fits together with such unexpected and satisfying perfection it’s like a jigsaw, and the picture in the jigsaw is a very tall girl with wide-set eyes and pronounced hipbones and a pissed-off, jealous dude hunched in a duffel coat standing together in a snowfall, angry white breath escaping into the sky.
Every time I consider quoting this song it ends in disaster because the way the song is written one line tumbles into the next and then I think I like the next line even better and realise that if I want to include my favourite bit I will just have to post the lyrics to the whole song, and no one over the age of sixteen needs that.
I hope your holiday preparations are going well. I’ve been spending more time than necessary printing gift paper with octopus stamps, dancing to Slade and making compilations of holiday songs.
On some Christmas Eve some God was kind enough to set aside
Although I love you too - I’m proud of you -
God knows I’m feeling really stupid now for ever having said goodbye.
LOVE LOVE LOVE
CAROLINE J. DALE
(insisted that she’d visit; that you write)
