“The White Stripes belong to you now and you can do with it whatever you want.”

It is difficult to describe a world in which The White Stripes will no longer perform. It is still fresh news – the band anno -unced the split just hours ago, as I write this. Feb. 2, 2011.

We still have the music they made, the videos they performed in, the interviews they did not often give. Barring a miracle, however, we will never again see Jack and Meg White perform as The White Stripes ever again.

I’ve had the experience of seeing two of Jack’s supergroups live – The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather – and it is the sort of thing everybody ought to do at least once. Jack White performs with a sort of theatre that terrifies you and makes you want to rock out like a little kid hearing The Beatles for the first time. The best concert review I’ve ever read gets to have that title because it referred to the Dead Weather’s first public concert as “like a shootout between God and the Devil at the OK-Corral.”

When it comes to Jack and Meg, however, all I have ever seen is YouTube videos and “Under the Great White Northern Lights,” a sort of White Stripes documentary. They carry that same shootout spirit; us against them, fighting off the world with some thunderous tunes.

There’s a song by Son House, “Grinnin’ in your face,” that Jack White lists as his favorite tune. It’s a song about ignoring the people getting you down, about acknowledging the fact that “You know they’ll jump you up and down / They’ll carry you all ‘round and ‘round / just as soon as your back is turned / they’ll be trying to crush you down” — a song about taking these people on, with off-time claps or a guitar chord.

And so that’s what The White Stripes has been about and always will be about. It’s not so much the James Dean “rebel without a cause” type of thing — more of a “things might not be so great right now, but nobody’s gonna keep me down!” attitude. You don’t listen to the White Stripes because you want to hear acoustically perfect, high quality audio; you listen to the White Stripes because you want to rock out.

But this isn’t your garden variety rocking out. Watch any live video of a White Stripes performance (I recommend the version of “Icky Thump” posted on the band’s official YouTube page), and you can see that this is something different. It isn’t that people haven’t rocked out like this before. But Jack White seems like he isn’t so much playing as he’s fighting; Meg attacks her drums like they’re muggers in a dark alley. This is music to exorcise your demons. More than that, though, the White Stripes are fun. You can dance, drive fast, head-bang, collapse onto your couch, make dinner and yes, even study while listening to this band. They’re just … well, until now, they were the one band I would have done just about anything to see live.

I mean – you know, if they came back or something, I’d still want to go see them live. The point is that it’s unlikely.

I disagree with those who said this split was inevitable. Meg and Jack could have gone on making music together until their dying day. And it’s not inconceivable that they’ll play together again, in some other form; their press release said nothing about creative differences or the usual signs of a band torn apart by argument.

The White Stripes had just run its course and now it is time to do other things. The quote at the beginning of this article is from that very same press release (which you can find at thirdmanrecords.com), and it’s the perfect end to a beautiful thing: here you go, music lovers, remember us as you experienced our music, and better yet, make some music of your own.

Godspeed, Jack and Meg. I can’t wait to hear what comes next.