Pavement - Stop Breathin’
There are about half a liter of whiskey’s worth of break-up songs forthcoming.
Got struck by the first volley
Of the war in the court.
Never held my serve.
It’s widely believed that “Stop Breathin’” is about tennis and the Civil War. What’s less-known about the song is that tennis and the Civil War are fucking boring. Therefore, the song’s obviously about a fiery, sexy break-up.
It could be said, rather, that the song is about tennis and the Civil War, but that these metaphors are thinly veiled metaphors for breaking-up. The first stanza is about not holding service, about the narrator’s serve being broken. Broken—breaking—breaking up. Further, breaking up is like getting hit with a mortar shell.
Send ‘em wide. Give ‘em my best.
This ammunition never rests.
No one serves coffee. No one wakes up.
In this verse we see the essential antimony of breaking-up: That, relating to the first stanza’s reference to being shelled, ie, perishing in the break-up, here we see that the artillery has actually missed—just as the serve—“wide.” This is the narrator’s “best.” The narrator sends his regards by attempting to shell—serve—and missing—sending it wide. When he does put the serve in play, he’s struck by the return volley giving up the point. He’s throwing the match and the war and the break-up. His serve isn’t “coffee,” ie, it isn’t hot, dark, and exciting. “No one wakes up—“an obvious Folgers reference; it also refers to the massive death-toll in the war/break-up. Over half of the men serving in the Civil War died just as at least half of those involved in the break-up are sure to perish.
Stop breathin’.
Stop breathin’.
Breathin’ for me, now.
Write it on a postcard:
Dad, they broke me.
Dad, they broke me.
What seems at first as a hushing ejaculation to the crowd—or a somewhat war cry-exhortation to die—turns out to be something of a whimperish passive-aggressive cry for help cum excoriation. “[Stop] breathin’ for me now,” supposed ex-lover. On the one hand, “stop breathin’,” ie, die or at least stop making such noise. On the other hand, “for me, now,” which signals clearly that the narrator is both being killed (in the slangy sense of losing badly and also in the literal sense of raining demise upon) by the subject of the song and is also killing (or perceiving that he is killing) the subject; he wants her to stop breathing for him—opening the door to her breathing for someone else.
And this is the paradoxical nature of break-up writ large across at least three metaphors but said so elegantly by the chef-d’oeuvre break-up song, “No Children”: “I hope I lie and tell everyone you were a good wife.” During a break-up, the principles want simultaneously both the absolute destruction of and the ultimate moving on (ie, getting the fuck out of here) of the break-up-subject. So, stop breathing for me—die or get thee to someone else.
I can see the lines open shutters
And the leaves flocked on a grid.
That’s what they made my hero say.
Punchdrunk and blind but sworn to say otherwise. Sometimes you should really anticipate the break-up (or precipitate or better yet, preanticipitate the break-up) and get all your shit back first. Because otherwise it’s going to be slashed and burning on the front lawn. New set! Love serving love!
Nothing gets me off so completely;
But when you put it down,
Ten feet down in the ground.
Call it response, negative home.
It’s quite possible that the narrator is actually a she. Or that the narrator is a he who enjoys being penetrated. Of course, since we’re hell-bent and damn set on carrying through this reading, it seems apparent that the stanza refers to
- Being killed on serve—ie, hitting the ball so hard that it’s as if it has penetrated the court “down / teen feet down in the ground;”
- Being shelled, ie, the same but with a mortar;
- Getting effed in the a.
All of which seem to turn on or “get off” the narrator. (Funny how so-called euphemisms are generally prepositional phrases, but the most important part—coming—is a sort of wholly-complete gerund that implies movement but doesn’t take a preposition. It is the perfect word for what it describes: movement-while-staying-in-place. Ecstasy being etymologically about being out-of-body—but out where?)
The narrator draws out and builds on the ambiguity of the activity by (distancing, here) telling the listener to call it a “response, negative home,” which takes the agency of the action off of the narrator—ie, it’s just a “response.” He then goes on to elucidate further the entire situation, describing appositionally the “response” as a “negative home.” I think what he means to say is “get fucked,” but rather, he turns his response (paradoxically [oxymoronically?]) inward by creation the concept of the “negative home.” Clearly the concept is meant to evoke Freud’s concept of the uncanny, but it also creates in the mind a kind of metastasis of paradox that requires the listener to conceive of a home that’s simultaneously not a home. A non-home that retains the trace of home. It’s all redolent of yesterday’s newspaper, which was used as a blanket by the homeless busker down by the red line tube stop up the street from where you used to live. The sudoku killed time. (Jk, wtf is sudoku?)
Stop breathin’.
Stop breathin’.
Breathin’ for me, now.
Write it on a postcard:
Dad, they broke me.
Dad, they broke me.
So what have we learned? Well, tennis is the great, bourgeoisie sport cum metaphor of the twentieth century. Coupled with Lacoste and the cult of Roger Federer (incl. David Foster Wallce), it covers basically the entire spectrum of sad, shitty life. Take a song like “Stop Breathin’.” The omitted “g” makes it seem all slangy and shit. But tennis is a broke-ass stuck-up sport. Fuck that shit. We think that Malkmus et alia are pulling everyone’s leg, here. The Civil War and the US Open and epic break-ups—all in one song? Yeah, OK. Give us a “Range Life” or “Gold Soundz” any day. These esoteric conceits generally always fail because if the subject is smart enough to unpack it all, then s(he)’s probably smart enough to see through the bullshit. The poetry that Donne wrote—we’re sure—is much different than the game he spat. So, to quote the possibly spurious explanation behind the definitely spurious-stuff-writer James Frey’s tattoo: “Fuck the bullshit it’s time to throw down.”
