Murphy still plans to keep producing and staying creatively active through his own label, DFA Records, but his decision to retire at a career-point where many other musicians might keep shamelessly touring well into their senior years demonstrates a restraint and respect for ephemerality that is often the too-bitter pill of the music industry.
When I turned 25 last month, I found myself becoming increasingly anxious and aware of time. Suddenly, I was older than half of the artists I listen to, and starting to feel like I had not only disappointed myself in terms of accomplishments (or lack thereof), but that I had missed the window of establishing creative success altogether.
In Murphy's lyrics, he shrewdly demonstrates his own cognizance of the fact that youth is fleeting and creative validation often illusory. In his 2002 breakout hit, "Losing My Edge", off of his eponymous debut album, he neurotically explains how he is being displaced by the younger, hipper generation while making hilariously outlandish claims to attempt to prove his credibility, "I've never been wrong/I used to work in the record store/I had everything before anyone".
The song was more about Murphy's own self-deprecation and neuroses than satire. But for all of us who have ever engaged in indie-penis measuring contests and various levels of "mainstream" condemnation - it still stings a little. But, as Murphy stated, "this is what you do when you know things. Knowing things, knowledge, or like your attachment to them or your self-association with other bands or with books or whatever is usually like this, often this weird amulet that protects you. Like, you're, like, no, I am serious. Look at my library. Listen to this. Like, I'm going to list all the books I've read, and now you know I'm a serious person."
When you are a creative person competing with the struggle for authenticity against the unconquerable current of time, it can feel like you are striving to inhabit a space that does not even exist.
Murphy masterfully navigated these waters with a conscious effort to stay away from "the scene" and therefore above the fray. It indicates a sort of wisdom that seems implausible for any 20-something musician having achieved the same sort of critical acclaim and commercial success. If you "hit it big" before turning 25, the landscape of ass-kissers and endless nightlife inevitably unfolding before you is both irresistible and potentially your own irrevocable downfall. But being post-25 and still trying to catch your "big break" quickly becomes the living pipe dream.
Jennifer Egan has been receiving considerable praise for her 2010 novel, "A Visit From the Goon Squad" which follows the lives of characters connected to the music industry and the people around them, over the course of several decades. In most cases, the passing of years is cruel to the characters who either never attain the success that seemed so indicative during their youth, or their aspirations do come to fruition only to be met with nagging feelings of disillusionment followed by incendiary downward spirals. Characters are left wondering where their lives switched from "A to B" - from relentless ambition to a cavity of regrets, and the tiredness of middle age.
For those of us who perceive ourselves to be on the ascent of our creative careers, it is not a comforting image.
Murphy, despite his lyrical fixation with the intangible nature of both time and veritable "coolness", has always toiled over music about the physicality of the present. Anyone who has ever listened to "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" on a treadmill knows the feeling of being possessed by his quintessential forwardly-lurching basslines and repetitively pulsing percussion. It's music that is about being.
Perhaps at age 40, Murphy has realized that life is about putting away the measuring stick and giving in to the tangible moment. Those of us still blinded by our own determinations are just frantically fighting to stake our place atop an untenable sand-dune.
