Forgetery

Album: Club Meds (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Dan Mangan was inspired to write this tune from an experience he had while tripping on mushrooms. In our interview with the singer-songwriter, he described what he felt while in the altered state. "It was this intense moment of feeling utterly gracefully and peacefully connected to everything and in a place of egoless existence of just being peacefully bewildered and pleased by all existing things, and that's a really great place to be," he said.

    "You think to yourself, 'Oh my God, I'm just on cloud nine here. This is amazing. I'm just going to feel like this all of the time. I just figured out life. All I have to do is feel like this all of the time.'

    But it's like a slippery fish in your hand. It's in your hand, but the second you squeeze your hand to hold onto it tight, it slips out and it's gone. The song is about that: 'What I'm wishing would linger seems to leave me.'

    The title came from my great aunt Marguerite. She used to say, 'My memory is totally shot, but my forgetery is bang on.' I thought that was so clever so I took it for the chorus of the song, and that's the idea: We're bound to forget and that's okay.

    I think that's part of the process of being okay with existing. It's coming to a place where you understand that there's going to be ups and downs and that you have to be okay with the downs too and embrace them just as much because they will teach you something.

    So the song is about all of those things. It's about the regret of forgetting the beauty and also the importance of going through that cycle of ups and downs over and over again and how that's all part of our process."
  • This tune originally appeared on Mangan's fourth album Clubs Meds, but a stripped-down acoustic version is on his 2016 Unmake EP featuring Tegan Quin from Tegan and Sara.

    Mangan wrote about his experience collaborating with Quin in a newsletter to his fans: "Working with Tegan was a real pleasure because I love her voice and I've always admired how her and Sara have managed being ultra-prolific and creative megastars while remaining wonderfully human and intensely engaged with their audience. I enjoy how her layers of harmonies just take over the choruses of this song - I really think it sends the song in a totally different direction."

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