The Fine Art Of Falling Apart – the song – was released June 5th, 2001 on Loser Anthems.
Many years later, in 2006, Matthew Good told me the song was about Temple, the girl in High School he was friend-zoned by and that he followed up North when she moved, because he was obsessed about her. A story I have heard since we met in 1998. A story he has told many people. Something I even discussed with Jonathan Simkin (604 Records) while sitting in his office late one Summer night in 2006.
I know that story.
I know that has been MG’s go to answer for decades, every song is about Temple.
So he says.
However, I can’t help but note that the song was released in 2001, a year after the events of what happened between him and I and K – that ended in our major drama from May to July of 2000.
Isn’t it quite possible to believe, there may have been some influence?
(Note: I do think people take influence from personal events and incorporate them into their artwork.)
Buzz Buzz
My nickname is The Bee. I am The Bee. I am B.
It always has been, it always shall be.
I sign off of emails as B. I have had multiple internet user names using Bee in some form or other. I was Bee Love. All my old and new artwork is always signed B. Like these ones I have shared on my barbaradoduk.com site, showing my Max artwork signed B way back in 1992.
People called me B – still do. I have correspondence showing people call me B. Or Bee. I have endless correspondence and texts showing that has been how people referred to me and still do to this day in fact. I could go on and on here but there is zero doubt I am The Bee.
Now – whether or not I am The Bee in these lyrics… I can speculate.
69 Dudes
When I met Matthew in 1998, I owned a townhouse at that time (from 1997-2003) on Burnaby Mountain. 9069 Moorside. You can look it up. It was in a place called Forest Grove and it was literally on the edge of the woods, on a mountain side. It was beautiful to drive to. (Red dot below.)
I am a recluse, I have High Functioning Social Anxiety and I have always called my homes, my caves of solitude. I love bats and Batman. Bats are my spirit animals. I have Fu Bats in my car and home. I have bat tattoos that I have had since 1993 on my ankles.
69 Dudes – a Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure reference – I mean I had to buy the place when I saw the address. My address was a sex joke. LOL!
Picture below is from 1998, features my big bro and his vroom vroom, as my grandma and mom walking down my stairs. My red Sunbird in the car port.
The car I lost the keys for on March 18, 1999. You know, another song with lyrics that could be questioned as being inspired by real life events. And no I don’t think it makes me special.
Tripoli – from Audio of Being – was released October 2001 – mutilate the day from me?
In case you didn’t read anything else in this site – spoiler, when everything went down between me and Matt and K in 2000 – K cut himself with a knife – in front of me. It created a trauma bond between us.
I like my clematis vine climbing in this photo. I have planted one at every home I have owned. And I have owned 3 townhouses over the years of my life – and Matt Good has been to each of them. That’s a lot of life time.
Disguised As A Bee
I would drive into the city – to be with Matt during our times back in 1999 – 2000. He did occasionally come to my townhouse – during the recording days of Beautiful Midnight – but once he was single, after his break up with Kiley in the summer of 1999 – that slowed and stopped. I then after, always had to go to him.
So I do find a lot of the meaning in the song lyrics. I don’t feel special. But as a writer and poet myself, I know how real life events can influence the creative process. That is all.
Even if it isn’t reference to that, it sure feels like it is. Given the nature of the events of 2000. The horrible things we said to one another when it was over. The Kiss Off Email Letter Matthew emailed me. Both of us perfections and horrors in our minds.
Matt telling me and K in that letter – to go cut up ourselves with knifes… The vitriol voice messages in July 2000. There is so much there, in these lyrics – to me.
A time of darkness
*
There lived a girl in a cave in the woods
Disguised as a bee
At night she would fly into the city
Sting the cars
And sting the cost
And she would hover over me
Whispering
The Fine Art of Falling Apart by Matthew Good
My Life as A Circus Clown
In October 2021, I found myself sitting in Matthew Good’s little den, on the back of his townhouse – inherited from his parents. Sat near the fireplace, with the back door open to his mother’s garden… which he stumbled out to piss in, at one point.
We spent hours of conversation, about our kids playing soccer, about music, about the insanity of the MeToo era, about vaccines and Covid, hours of cigarettes, talk of Halloween, and a FaceTime call from his son, and laughter at how odd it was that here we sat – near 25 years after our paths first crossed. After a lot of Maker’s Mark by him and wine by me, and a bit of weed, the smoke of my exhale still lingering – once again, I asked him…
Was there any influence? I mean I get it, maybe the original idea was sparked by Temple and the deep wound she profoundly had on his young teenage soul… but The Bee?
Not just in this one song but in a few others too – certainly there seemed to be influence.
But no, he crumbled hunched down in his seat and said, no, that it was all about Temple.
Really?
I shrugged. Eh.
So B it. I wasn’t that special. Like a chump I believed we meant something to one another all those years. I mean literally weeks before this conversation, in October 2021, he had told me I was a light to him. But okay. So the events of 2000 has no influence, that’s his stance.
But the Knife man? The knife man dreams of missing? You seriously going to tell me, that isn’t a reference to K and those event of 2000? Tripoli – mutilate the day from me. There is so much I could unpack, but I suppose I could be totally wrong.
Uh huh. Sure – no influence at all.
B The Devil’s Advocate
Just to be fair – yes I could be way off base.
The song title The Fine Art of Falling Apart could have been snagged from Soft Cell. An 1980s band with a big hit everyone knows named Tainted Love. The Art of Falling Apart is the second full-length album by the English synth-pop duo Soft Cell. But Matt has never mentioned this influence, as far as I know. Certainly not to me.
For further reference, I am a literature person. In the history of literature The Bee has often been used as symbolic way of talking about women. The bee as a species being made up of good and evil. The bee being a symbol of a being able to cross between Earth and the Afterlife. It is partly why I took it on as a nick name all those years ago in my teens. I love poetry, always have, I even write terrible poetry. I have since I was a child. I have also read poetry and historic lit since then.
In the ancient Homeric Hymns, there is a reference to The Bee Maidens. They were women, that had the lower body and wings like a bee. They lived in Corycian Cave. It is a sacred place, which in legend housed the Corycian nymphs. The Bee Maidens had the power of divination and only spoke truth, they are described in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, and the food of the gods is identified as honey.
In the legend The Bee Maidens helped Apollo become a man.
Anyway, you can look it up.
Incidentally, in 2007 I created events for Women Only called B’s Honey Nights. I have been creating women only spaces for a long time. I have some very fond memories of these nights with my girlfriends, and getting to meet more women to expand my hive. I made this graphic for it.
Finally, you know if the lyrics were inspired by The Bee Maidens of the ancient hymns, wouldn’t that have been something Matt would have easily said also, instead of his go-to Temple explanation? Again – I have never seen this referenced anywhere before by him. So I have my speculations on the inspiration of The Bee in these lyrics at that time in 2000-2001.
Whatever – it is what it is. A curiosity.
Buzz Buzz.
Uploaded October 22, 2023