Help a brother out
MUSIC-RELATED QUESTIONS FOR YOU
1.) Do you commonly experience, or have you ever experienced, a Strong Emotional Reaction as a result of listening to music? By Strong Emotional Reaction, I mean a couple of different things. I don't think, for example, that raising your hand in the "Metal!" sign because of some excitement the music causes in you. But if that's how you interpret Strong Emotional Reaction, then that's cool, and it's data I can use. But a better guiding criteria would be to define a Strong Emotional Reaction as either a) outright crying, b) a throat-lump, or c) the "Desperado Effect", which is when, upon hearing a certain song or kind of music, you stare into space regardless of company or circumstance, much like that one boyfriend of Elaine's on Seinfeld who, every time he hears the Eagles's "Desperado", shushes Elaine and has to just listen.
2.) What music makes you experience this Strong Emotional Reaction, however you define an S.E.R.? Could you describe the music briefly? How fast or slow does it tend to be? What about the lyrics, if there are any? What instruments are involved?
3.) Anecdotes are highly sought after. What experiences with music and being moved by it do you remember? I've shared a couple of my own on this site in recent weeks, especially regarding the Sufjan Stevens song "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us" and Andrew Bird's "Tables and Chairs", but I'm interested in what music has and does have a similar effect on all of you. Does a certain Sinatra song grab you by the shirt collar? There's a country ballad that just seems to have your name all over it, isn't there?
WHY I ASK THESE QUESTIONS
I'm working on something of an essay about contemporary attitudes toward music, begun on the trip back to the city in the first few days of this new year. I began it as a reflection on how unmoving most religious music is now, but now I think it'll be a little more philosophical and a little more wide-ranging. One of the things that remains to be interrogated is the kind of music that Jon liked to listen to over the last few years of life, dark stuff that included Disturbed and Rammstein. There was a Rammstein CD that lay on the floor of the basement weight room that I never listened to but often I'd check out the liner notes between sets of lifting like a third of the weight Jon was typically lifting. These were some bleak photos; Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" has nothing on the way these band members were done up to resemble post-apocalyptic, L.A. 2029 denizens of an alien Abu Ghraib. It's pretty clear, of course, that such depictions feed the self-styled auto-mythologizing certain bands like to perpetuate about themselves; the "darker" they make themselves appear, the more allure they (think they) have. See Marilyn Manson, who's a canny businessman. Anyway. There's an intersection between invented appearances / intentions and actual musical content and ramifications that I think I'll have to explore in this essay I've got going.
So, your contributions would help address this issue about music and its ability to help or hurt us, and why it has this power, and how that power works. If you've never commented on this site before, please, I hope you'll feel free to chip in today. Or email me directly using the link at the upper right of the page. There is no obligation to buy, and your satisfaction is guaranteed. As are replies.
*
RECENTLY ACQUIRED:
o Cat Power, The Greatest. The title cut astounds, with Chan Marshall singing that once she wanted to be the greatest, and in the background Chan Marshall keens in a terribly sad and high falsetto "greatest, greatest, greatest", which each new "greatest" becomes less off-key until the third "greatest" hits the proper note. It's a song that demonstrates instantly how considered and crafted the record's going to be.
o Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit
o Janis Joplin, Pearl (Deluxe Edition)
o Shawn Amos, Thank You Shirl-ee May
o Silver Jews, Tanglewood Numbers
o Sigur Ros, Takk... (which I already had, but you can't have enough of this record)
o ATB, Seven Years 1998-2005
o Paul McCartney, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. This one is a real grower. You hear a lot about singer-songwriters like Elliott Smith or twee indie pop bands like the Apples in Stereo having a "Beatles-y" sense of melody, and while those comparisons hold, you listen to McCartney and can't help but hear how original the fellow's melodic sense always was and still is. This record might not surprise anybody w/r/t lyrics, melody, instrumentation, etc., but I suspect that that's because we've grown accustomed to McCartney's craftsmanship. It's a little like having a weekly porterhouse steak, with a nice region of medium rareness in the center, and forgetting how accomplished a feat an excellent medium-rare porterhouse really is. You need to slow down and think to yourself, "Hey, I'm enjoying an excellent medium-rare porterhouse. I'm pretty lucky to have this right now." That's how I think of Paul McCartney, anyway.
o Brian Eno, Another Day on Earth.
o Calexico and Iron & Wine, In the Reins. Same deal with the Sigur Ros.
o Roseanne Cash, Black Cadillac. Roseanne's Johnny's daughter. Here's hoping this record applies to certain recent parallels in our own lives, right?
*
A STEP I'VE TAKEN TO KEEP A CERTAIN FACT IN MIND
I carry around this little 3x5 pad of paper with a spiral binding in my back pocket. A pen is stored horizontally in this spiral binding, so the whole thing makes a sort of T-shape with a very wide vertical component. On this pad I write numbers, names of bands, Good Ground ideas, images and seed ideas for poems; it's a great habit I think more people could benefit from getting into. Anyway, I wrote the words "My brother Jon is dead" on a page of this pad two days ago, and left the pad open to this page when I replaced the pad in my pocket, so whenever I'd go to reach for the pad I'd see the words, framed in the center of the page like this:
That's actually how my father told me, that Saturday night, with that same cadence. "Your brother Jon [little pause] is dead." The enjambment represents that little pause. Very clear to me, now, I mean, my complete handle on how that sounded and sounds is impressive. Where were you when JFK etc., I suppose. And having taken this step hasn't produced paroxysms of grief or anything - not that I'd expected it to. But when I'm out of the house and my mind's often otherwise occupied, this step, these 5 words, they put the thought and the fact in its proper place at the forefront of all thought. They have a kind of mantra or koan-like effect. No larger point to make in this little asterisked section. Just sharing.
*
Fiesta Wednesday (homemade tacos and Coronas) with Betsy Barrett, Denise, Dan "The Man" Callahan - you gonna stand for that, Dan Graham? - and J. was a fun ol' time. A highlight for me personally was going through the alphabet according to sexual / scatological references. It all started with someone calling someone an "A-hole," then as a sort of kneejerk reaction, that person riposted with the "B-hole," which I don't think we defined. Anyway, from there it was onto the "C-hole", the C of which stands for a pretty common, awful word, and "D-hole" (even easier), and on through the other 22 letters. Try it at home!
*
The older I get, the more I want to talk about what I have done rather than what I plan on doing; focusing on what I have done seems to better foster an attitude of accomplishment and action rather than hoped-for accomplishment and potential action. Wow, the coffee this morning is hitting me now, and I feel completely jacked into this computer, chair, desk, stereo, and Belle & Sebastian CD. Very much part of a circuit of in- and out-put. Anyway, despite this new fondness I have for eschewing to-do lists in favor of already-done lists, I want to say that I'm very excited about sledding down Westcott Reservoir this morning with J., and I'm talking shovels and huge ramps, I'm talking innertubes, I'm talking sunshine as it produces a variety of incandescent effects on a huge white hill, I'm talking gravity-assisted downward flight at grades of 30 degrees and more.
1.) Do you commonly experience, or have you ever experienced, a Strong Emotional Reaction as a result of listening to music? By Strong Emotional Reaction, I mean a couple of different things. I don't think, for example, that raising your hand in the "Metal!" sign because of some excitement the music causes in you. But if that's how you interpret Strong Emotional Reaction, then that's cool, and it's data I can use. But a better guiding criteria would be to define a Strong Emotional Reaction as either a) outright crying, b) a throat-lump, or c) the "Desperado Effect", which is when, upon hearing a certain song or kind of music, you stare into space regardless of company or circumstance, much like that one boyfriend of Elaine's on Seinfeld who, every time he hears the Eagles's "Desperado", shushes Elaine and has to just listen.
2.) What music makes you experience this Strong Emotional Reaction, however you define an S.E.R.? Could you describe the music briefly? How fast or slow does it tend to be? What about the lyrics, if there are any? What instruments are involved?
3.) Anecdotes are highly sought after. What experiences with music and being moved by it do you remember? I've shared a couple of my own on this site in recent weeks, especially regarding the Sufjan Stevens song "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us" and Andrew Bird's "Tables and Chairs", but I'm interested in what music has and does have a similar effect on all of you. Does a certain Sinatra song grab you by the shirt collar? There's a country ballad that just seems to have your name all over it, isn't there?
WHY I ASK THESE QUESTIONS
I'm working on something of an essay about contemporary attitudes toward music, begun on the trip back to the city in the first few days of this new year. I began it as a reflection on how unmoving most religious music is now, but now I think it'll be a little more philosophical and a little more wide-ranging. One of the things that remains to be interrogated is the kind of music that Jon liked to listen to over the last few years of life, dark stuff that included Disturbed and Rammstein. There was a Rammstein CD that lay on the floor of the basement weight room that I never listened to but often I'd check out the liner notes between sets of lifting like a third of the weight Jon was typically lifting. These were some bleak photos; Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" has nothing on the way these band members were done up to resemble post-apocalyptic, L.A. 2029 denizens of an alien Abu Ghraib. It's pretty clear, of course, that such depictions feed the self-styled auto-mythologizing certain bands like to perpetuate about themselves; the "darker" they make themselves appear, the more allure they (think they) have. See Marilyn Manson, who's a canny businessman. Anyway. There's an intersection between invented appearances / intentions and actual musical content and ramifications that I think I'll have to explore in this essay I've got going.
So, your contributions would help address this issue about music and its ability to help or hurt us, and why it has this power, and how that power works. If you've never commented on this site before, please, I hope you'll feel free to chip in today. Or email me directly using the link at the upper right of the page. There is no obligation to buy, and your satisfaction is guaranteed. As are replies.
*
RECENTLY ACQUIRED:
o Cat Power, The Greatest. The title cut astounds, with Chan Marshall singing that once she wanted to be the greatest, and in the background Chan Marshall keens in a terribly sad and high falsetto "greatest, greatest, greatest", which each new "greatest" becomes less off-key until the third "greatest" hits the proper note. It's a song that demonstrates instantly how considered and crafted the record's going to be.
o Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit
o Janis Joplin, Pearl (Deluxe Edition)
o Shawn Amos, Thank You Shirl-ee May
o Silver Jews, Tanglewood Numbers
o Sigur Ros, Takk... (which I already had, but you can't have enough of this record)
o ATB, Seven Years 1998-2005
o Paul McCartney, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. This one is a real grower. You hear a lot about singer-songwriters like Elliott Smith or twee indie pop bands like the Apples in Stereo having a "Beatles-y" sense of melody, and while those comparisons hold, you listen to McCartney and can't help but hear how original the fellow's melodic sense always was and still is. This record might not surprise anybody w/r/t lyrics, melody, instrumentation, etc., but I suspect that that's because we've grown accustomed to McCartney's craftsmanship. It's a little like having a weekly porterhouse steak, with a nice region of medium rareness in the center, and forgetting how accomplished a feat an excellent medium-rare porterhouse really is. You need to slow down and think to yourself, "Hey, I'm enjoying an excellent medium-rare porterhouse. I'm pretty lucky to have this right now." That's how I think of Paul McCartney, anyway.
o Brian Eno, Another Day on Earth.
o Calexico and Iron & Wine, In the Reins. Same deal with the Sigur Ros.
o Roseanne Cash, Black Cadillac. Roseanne's Johnny's daughter. Here's hoping this record applies to certain recent parallels in our own lives, right?
*
A STEP I'VE TAKEN TO KEEP A CERTAIN FACT IN MIND
I carry around this little 3x5 pad of paper with a spiral binding in my back pocket. A pen is stored horizontally in this spiral binding, so the whole thing makes a sort of T-shape with a very wide vertical component. On this pad I write numbers, names of bands, Good Ground ideas, images and seed ideas for poems; it's a great habit I think more people could benefit from getting into. Anyway, I wrote the words "My brother Jon is dead" on a page of this pad two days ago, and left the pad open to this page when I replaced the pad in my pocket, so whenever I'd go to reach for the pad I'd see the words, framed in the center of the page like this:
My brother Jon
is dead.
is dead.
That's actually how my father told me, that Saturday night, with that same cadence. "Your brother Jon [little pause] is dead." The enjambment represents that little pause. Very clear to me, now, I mean, my complete handle on how that sounded and sounds is impressive. Where were you when JFK etc., I suppose. And having taken this step hasn't produced paroxysms of grief or anything - not that I'd expected it to. But when I'm out of the house and my mind's often otherwise occupied, this step, these 5 words, they put the thought and the fact in its proper place at the forefront of all thought. They have a kind of mantra or koan-like effect. No larger point to make in this little asterisked section. Just sharing.
*
Fiesta Wednesday (homemade tacos and Coronas) with Betsy Barrett, Denise, Dan "The Man" Callahan - you gonna stand for that, Dan Graham? - and J. was a fun ol' time. A highlight for me personally was going through the alphabet according to sexual / scatological references. It all started with someone calling someone an "A-hole," then as a sort of kneejerk reaction, that person riposted with the "B-hole," which I don't think we defined. Anyway, from there it was onto the "C-hole", the C of which stands for a pretty common, awful word, and "D-hole" (even easier), and on through the other 22 letters. Try it at home!
*
The older I get, the more I want to talk about what I have done rather than what I plan on doing; focusing on what I have done seems to better foster an attitude of accomplishment and action rather than hoped-for accomplishment and potential action. Wow, the coffee this morning is hitting me now, and I feel completely jacked into this computer, chair, desk, stereo, and Belle & Sebastian CD. Very much part of a circuit of in- and out-put. Anyway, despite this new fondness I have for eschewing to-do lists in favor of already-done lists, I want to say that I'm very excited about sledding down Westcott Reservoir this morning with J., and I'm talking shovels and huge ramps, I'm talking innertubes, I'm talking sunshine as it produces a variety of incandescent effects on a huge white hill, I'm talking gravity-assisted downward flight at grades of 30 degrees and more.
posted by Wil at
9:03 PM
1 Comments:
Will,
When the coroner called me and verified who I was, he stated that he had some bad news. He stated "your son Jonathan, is dead". Those words, that day, the thoughts of what he did, are forever in my memory and in an endless loop that replays over and over again every minute I am awake. When I called you that night, those words replayed again as I informed you. They were not kind or forgiving in consideration of the recipient and I am sorry for that. Dad...
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Anonymous, at 4:38 PM
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