In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with birds.

Lately we’ve finally gotten around to uploading all of our old compact disks onto iTunes.

It’s kind of torturous, trying to remember whatever possessed us to like bands such as _____ or _____ or even _______. We ended up throwing a bunch into the garbage after deciding that there was really no circumstance under which we could ever envision wanting to hear them again.

A few have been more rewarding, though.

When we listened to Warehouse, Hüsker Dü’s final record, we couldn’t help but remember our senior year in college, when we were obsessed with it.

Especially the last two songs, which we used to literally play for hours on repeat while we tried to grind out a paper on whatever.

It was like an addiction, but let’s be frank: there are worse things to be addicted to than the last two songs of Warehouse!

We used to drive our downstairs neighbor crazy, and then act insulted when she asked us to turn it down at three in the morning. That’s probably why we’re getting all this sonic payback in Washington Heights!

That was also the year that our friend’s brother visited us at college.

He was from Minneapolis, and told us that “everyone” knew that Bob Mould and Grant Hart were gay (but not Greg Norton, who ironically enough “looked” gay). He was like, “yeah, they even played at some AIDS benefit.”

Proof! We couldn’t believe it! (Even though we had scrutinized their lyrics for clues, imagining that this was the unstated reason we loved their music so much.)

It would be easy to say that those songs gave us hope or courage, but — given that we were still years away from coming out — that would probably be a stretch.

But we were comforted by these most brutal expressions of longing and anger.

When we listen to Warehouse now, we no longer have any inclination to play it over and over again.

The music has not changed, but we have.

What’s bittersweet about this is the understanding that no music — not even Hüsker Dü — can deliver us the way it used to.

And we are left craving nothing so much as silence and sleep.