Peggy Sue Got Married

Today we are starting all over again.
Everything we promised ourselves, everything we wanted to do. Today is the great day.
We are really so excited.

[photo dated 2012-12-08]

You are straightening your tie for the fifteenth time, still smoothing it.

I, on the other hand, can't figure out how to adjust the train of the dress.
“Dora, stop tugging at your dress or else you'll skin it” - from behind, the echo of my mum’s voice reaches my ears.

“Madwoman, I am maddened too,
And hate you even as I love!”
(Charles Baudelaire “Les Fleurs du mal”)

I turn around and I can see the colorful and joyful guests at their seats in the small church, which saw me grow up leading me to the Catholic sacraments.

Peter is turned worriedly toward the churchyard, grimly watching the church entrance thoughtfully.
“Come on, Peter. Don't worry, everything will be fine. Are you afraid of robbers entering the church?” - I smile at him, staring into his eyes.
He looks at me with a strange expression. He is serious, almost terrified.
“Hey, are you okay?” - I ask him.

Suddenly, a cold wind bursts into the church. Someone, with heavy footsteps, reaches our seat as the incredulous onlookers watch the scene.

Behind me, I can hear a voice that I will never forget hurl a handful of heavy words that seem forged in molten lead.

“Stop this wedding. I am Peter's wife and no other woman can be!"

Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know," released in 2011, is one of those songs that seem to come from an emotional elsewhere. You listen to it and you feel like you've always known it, as happens with certain blurred images from memory. It is a song about a separation, but without blatant anger: instead, there is a lucid, rational, almost surgical wound, expressed with restrained vocals and minimalist arrangements, based on a guitar that comes from a 1960s Brazilian record.

The song was born almost by accident, handcrafted by Gotye in his home studio, using analog instruments, bits of sound salvaged here and there, and a sensibility reminiscent of the 1980s, but devoid of gratuitous nostalgia. The intervention of Kimbra-the female vocalist who responds in the song's second act - is a theatrical coup, almost as if a second actress suddenly enters the stage in this scene, bringing the truth of another look. No longer Peggy Sue, perhaps, but someone else telling the same story from behind the scenes.

And precisely because Gotye chose not to monetize the song's viral success (forgoing millions of views on YouTube), it remains an almost selfless, fragile, and authentic piece of work about how loud a story that ends can make - even if at times it just seemed like a sweet misunderstanding.