Today for no apparent I remembered crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan-bound, sometime in the early '00s when Suicide came on, scoring that brief, iconic journey like no other song could. For the four minutes it played, I felt elevated—less from the bridge's span over the East River than from the song's echo-y, eerie mood, its odd propulsion, and its lyrics of doom and violence. Martin Rev and Alan Vega were singing about the late-70s, a couple of decades and a cultural continent behind me, but the vibe was,—is—timeless, as Manhattan loomed before before and Brooklyn behind me, the river beneath me and its relentless currents a reminder that songs are like rivers: you never hear the great ones the same way twice, and whatever waves lapped to the shores in a different era lap today's shores too.
Whole country's doing a fix It's doomsday doomsday Riding around, riding high Riding around with my babe Speeding on down the skyway
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