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Devendra Banhart | Rejoicing in the Hands
Synergy Magazine | by Antero Garcia
Eulogy of Existence: A Brief and Fleeting Triptych
5 star review
I am a homeless vessel. My feet traverse the sea of Los Angeles unsteadily. I sleep in the doorways of the offices you embody and I dream in the cracks of grime that un-ambitiously fog my mind. This is not idealized romance but there is a solace in the nether regions you avoid. You kick change in my hand and slap stereotypes to my sun-scorched cheeks; you need me as an excuse for your level of normality.
I notice my skin sagging, my eyelids drooping, and I feel alive knowing my body decays. … I mutter incantations Banhart has whispered to me in his folk song delivery and curiously plucked guitar. "Love, it would be much better, Love it would be much better." I mutter it until I believe it.  Â
2: "Now let's have another glass of wine… this is the water in which we
wade…"
I used to dream of stability, but now I find it between the
guitar strums and the quivering voice that whispers the history I have known
all along. There is kinship in the voice that echoes my personal mythology.
"We have a choice, we choose rejoice," Banhart mumbles. And we do.
I am happy.
In the rain I stomp on the floor the occasionally vaudevillian liveliness of
the record bouncing back and fourth between my ears. I recollect a past that
is nothing like this and revel in the ineptitude that brings me to present.
This is a puzzle for me to unravel.
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3: "A Real Good Time"
And now it's time to break the fourth wall. It's time to bring you into this
vision as well. We are all homeless vessels, which Devendra Barnheart sings
of. This is not a solitary identification I find with his achingly sad
compositions. This is "us": you, me, Barnhart, the forgotten world—in
opposition with the familiar.
Listen, and maybe you'll remember too. These are not the words of our past.
the words of our future and they are found in the lo-fi recording of
callused fingers and callused voice: "Time good time, a good time, a real
good time, a real good"
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And everybody now: