https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCSpyMJRnNQ

“Your Belgian Things” pictures loss as something that someone can actually take away rather than the ghost of something else.

Track: “Your Belgian Things”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

I think it’s somewhat fair to say “Your Belgian Things” is the love song from We Shall All Be Healed. As with many other “love songs” that John Darnielle has written, that needs some explaining. The entire album is about doing drugs and the experiences that brings you, but “Your Belgian Things” focuses on the experiences it takes from you.

At a show in 2012, Darnielle said that the things being referenced are “opaque, unreadable symbols to everybody else.” What he means, as I take it, isn’t so much that the specific things like the actual trunks and suitcases of items are mysterious, but that the things you hold onto are your things alone. When you think of dark moments in your life there are probably unreadable symbols of your own. I still remember a specific red lighter and a specific tiny MP3 player from decades ago on a particular night where I’d have identified with this song directly, but also the loss of odds and ends that only upset me when I realized I couldn’t find them later from times I wanted to stay within.

These things being physical or not doesn’t really matter. I’m sure they’re not even intended to be, though I do like the summation of these feelings as something a moving company could come grab and take away. It does feel that way, sometimes. The love here is in the distance, way too far to even say it’s in the background, but there’s enough to know there’s a loss being experienced.