52. "Music can noble hints impart."

Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
--Joseph Addison

Here's a random trivia fact about me: I'm one of those weird breeds of music obsessees, in that when a song inextricably lodges itself into my psyche, I will invariably play that song on continuous repeat for at least a good hundred times or more.

It happens every couple of months. Somehow, a song can manage to connect with and speak to me in some loftier realm of abstract understanding (a realm to which music is the seemingly lone access point for me), and I simply won't be able to listen to it enough.

It happened again this week.

"So Far Around the Bend," a new song by one of my favorite bands of late--The National--was leaked to the internet as part of a month-long promotion for what looks to be a fantastic new benefit compilation, Dark Was the Night.

I discovered it on Tuesday, which was--for all intents and purposes--a very trying day for me on a personal level. I was doing work at a nearby coffeeshop when I downloaded the track. And listened. And listened. And listened some more.

Musically, it's a bouncy, upbeat track with lush, sentimental instrumentation--a bit of a departure for the Brooklyn band, perhaps--but still very understated and full of yearning, two common elements in The National's work that have indelibly drawn me to the band.

And then the bridge of the song enters. A carefree, almost rapturous refrain: "And there's no leaving New York."

Given the context of the lyrics, the line could possibly be meant as a bit of a downer (as in, the protagonist who's "so far around the bend" is never gonna get to leave NYC). But given the glorious exuberance of the instrumentation at that moment, I can't imagine that line representing anything but a certain lovestruck giddiness. That particular line grabbed me and compelled me to listen to the song again and again.

And after repeated listens (even an hour or so later, now in the car and fighting traffic on the 405), it nailed me: a bit of moral clarity that the song's music and lyric, together, had unearthed in me. It was as if I were living out a scene in a cheesy Hallmark Channel movie, a moment in which the main character of the film finally comes to a profound realization of his true love:

I belong in New York City.

It's something I've known pretty much since I left for LA at the end of 2006, but more and more, I've grown to feel sort of resigned to the fact that I'll be in LA indefinitely.

But hearing the song--and the line that forms the emotional core of it--brought out in me the strong emotions I have for the City that Never Sleeps: wonder, joy, love, inspiration. Sentiments long-since buried under the layers of complacency and stagnancy I've built up from living in LA for two years now.

I need to be back in New York. I don't know when that will be, but I've been re-inspired to make it happen sooner rather than later.

(And hopefully, I can inspire some of my friends to make the move with me; I love NYC, but I've grown quite attached to some of the folks I share life with here in LA.)

What a prescient song. So far around the bend, indeed.

And for what it's worth, it's Sunday and I still haven't stopped listening to it on perpetual repeat.