Imogen Heap's "Half Life"

Imogen Heap released her new album, Ellipse, last week and it's great. It lacks the spunk and musical hooks of Speak for Yourself (with the exception of "Bad Body Double" and "2-1"), but one track, "Half Life," hit a chord with me. A few listens through, I sold the song short, assuming it was just another pretty, piano-driven track--a type of song Heap is prone to crafting. But it's one of the most beautiful tracks she's ever written or produced, instantly melancholy but never schmaltzy. There is an opening lyric that hit me like a brick wall a few hours ago and altered the course of my emotions today entirely:

The stickler is you've played not one beat wrong
You never promised me anything
Even sat me down, warned me just how they fall
And I knew the odds were I'd never win

Just as my sad self begins to reorient to the US, albeit bitterly, this lyric came in and crushed all superficial progress. I've experience these events more often recently, a perfect day shattered by a lyric, or a thought, a text (or lack of one), an image. And of course all the people I care about suddenly want to know what's wrong; I tell them, "I'm in a bad mood."

But I'm actually just a little heartbroken. I'm heartbroken because, like an animal making their march from barn to slaughter house, I've seen the greener grass--and it's the difference between life and death. That is, a happy life and an expected life.