Chasing tails

Glen’s written a lovely and amazing theory-nerd post about Snow Patrol, which has me thinking about something I’ve been meaning to write about Grey’s Anatomy as Ur text for the workaholic Gen X anti-adult. It has something to do with proffering Floppy George as the pin-up boy for queer love because he refuses to subscribe to the Love vs. Work binary that each character had to choose between by the end of the series. Sleeping with his friend and flatmate even though he knew she didn’t ‘love’ him, then refusing to reciprocate when his new ‘lover’ confesses her love, George commits two of the ultimate hetero crimes: in the first, not caring that he isn’t The One; in the second, not being able to stick to the ‘normal’ time frame for working out whether he is ‘in love’. Hence the other person - the person who has successfully resolved her confusion and decided that she is ‘in love’; hence the person who is actually the socially sanctioned identity - ironically becomes the object of shame and humiliation (although this is precisely because this is the only occasion that she is likely to feel such feelings in the process of pursuing her culturally approved sexuality).

Using Lauren Berlant’s terms - from an essay I’ve been raving to some of you about already, and that Greg and I are republishing in The Affect Reader - we could say that George refuses to translate any of his feelings into the conventional affective scenarios of ‘the love plot’. The love plot runs a little bit like the detective genre, in that searching for clarity, naming and revelation are the end points. Desire = confusion = the loss of a stable sense of self, which feels unbearable, despite being the very sign that we ‘are in love’s domain’. Conquering this agony of unintelligibility requires speedy interrogation and appropriate labelling so that equilibrium (i.e. life as normal, i.e. life when love isn’t queer) can return. The label, of course, is love.

Grey’s Anatomy shows that Love and Work are hard to sustain with equal intensity in our culture because we don’t have better words for ‘vocation’, ‘passion’, ‘commitment’, ‘loyalty’, ‘family’ or ‘life project’, to name just a few. But George is a character who troubles the boundaries. As Michael Warner might argue, he tests our understanding ‘of how private life can be made publicly relevant,’ pointing to the possibility of ‘new privacies, new individuals, new bodies, new intimacies and new citizenships’.

I’ve been listening to Snow Patrol a lot lately too. They went down well at an unforgiving hour at Splendour in the Grass (like at the Ratatat gig this week, I like watching a crowd see a band I’ve not yet discovered, sort of as a way of working out whether I’m likely to dig them myself). But Channel 7’s mauling of Chasing Cars after the series final of Grey’s Anatomy almost ruined some of the resonance that song has for me, especially since hearing it swelling in the background one afternoon, punctuating a nice moment at the pub with someone I’m pretty in to. I like the TV show, clearly, but the combination of show and band demographic only confirms for me that this isn’t ‘post-hyphen rock’ (even though Glen’s phrase is very cool) but actually Saturn Return Rock. Like Youth Group was for coming-of-age drama in last season’s O.C., Snow Patrol is soundtrack material for ‘Secret Life of Us’ TV (did anyone else notice The Verve making a comeback on Rage last weekend? Just when Ten has been flogging ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ as the promo track for Tripping Over?).

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of this. We all need ‘rhymes to get through a break up’, as the Hilltop Hoods say. And who couldn’t identify with the schizophrenia of ‘Make This Go On Forever’ (also from Snow Patrol’s ‘Eyes Open’): ‘we should spend some time apart for both our sakes’ within a few lines of ‘please just save me from this darkness’, etc etc. If ever a band could write songs to salve the minutia of the hetero love plot, Snow Patrol is it. Which may explain why my favourite song of theirs is from the earlier album, ‘The Last Straw’, and has the equally excellent title, ‘Run’.

I’ll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You’ve been the only thing that’s right
In all I’ve done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we’ll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we’ll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can’t raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be right beside you dear

Slower slower
We don’t have time for that
All I want is to find an easier way
To get out of our little heads

Have heart my dear
We’re bound to be afraid
Even if it’s just for a few days
Making up for all this mess

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be right beside you dear