If You’re So Very Entertaining…

It’s been what seems like years since I’ve written anything here. That is, in part, because I’ve been busy doing things: I’ve sort of written a novel, I sort of play guitar, and I’ve sort of been writing songs. Oh, and I also work and try to get things published. I also haven’t been inspired to write anything here for quite some time.

My 1/2 of the blog isn’t really supposed to be all about music, nor is it supposed to be about new music (or music that’s new to me), but that’s where it was going for a while, and that was good. It’s been a while since a new song has kicked my ass sufficiently enough for me to want to gush about it here, though I think there is one waiting in the wings. Perhaps I will post about that later.

For this post, though, and perhaps a couple of subsequent posts, I want to write about Morrissey and The Smiths. This morning I was interviewed by a really great professor, Dr. Eoin Devereux from the University of Limerick, who is working on a project dealing with the fandom surrounding The Smiths and Morrissey. This dude knows his stuff. This dude saw The Smiths live. I must have told him at least 7 times how amazing I thought that was. Anyway…

He asked me some great questions. And of course, he asked the unfair questions which he knew were unfair, like picking a favorite album. But he also asked me which songs were particularly significant to me. Another nearly impossible question to answer, though I did, and, of course, there were about 30 other songs I meant to say. In case you’re wondering, the three that came to me immediately were “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” “Seasick, Yet Still Docked,” and “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore.” I won’t go into why those songs mean what they mean to me; those will maybe be the subjects of their own blog posts.

But I forgot the most important one. Well, what may be the most important one. It’s a song that changed my life, because it’s the first song by The Smiths I remember really attaching myself to, and it remains in my top 5 Smiths songs still (though I’m so Rob Gordon about this stuff, it’s not even funny). The song is “I Know It’s Over” from the live album, Rank. Rank is the first Smiths album I ever listened to, so it’s very special to me.

I’m sitting here, with my Saint Morrissey candle burning, playing the song over and over while I write under the twinkle lights in my bedroom. This is my therapy. Therapy by blog, I suppose. But I’m not here to talk about why the therapy is needed at this particular moment, but instead to do what I usually do when I write about a song: explain why it makes me freak out. So, Saint Morrissey, I ask you bless what I say here. (Thank you again, SarahJo, for my Christmas present.)

The song itself is an anthem of melancholy longing – Morrissey’s forte. I mean, no one can write about longing and pining and unrequited love with such sincerity and simple pain as he can. Pair that with Johnny Marr’s jangling guitar, and I’m dead. But there’s something about this live version – maybe it’s because it’s the first version I heard – that breaks me differently than their other songs. It’s a song about regret and self-loathing, but it’s also about trying to be a human being in the face of how hard it is to be an actual human being. “It takes strength to be gentle and kind.” It really, really does. There’s something so important about that line. I know I’m a super-sensitive person; I get attached to things and people very easily, so I can’t help but be affected when gentleness and kindness are shunted and replaced with cruelty. Though, I supposed indifference might be worse. I digress, however. But yes, being gentle and kind, consistently, is super hard to do. It’s all part of the human struggle, no?

As a human being, like most other human beings, I’ve experienced my fair share of unrequited love. It’s part of the process of living. We mourn the loss of things we never even had. So when Morrissey sings, “I know it’s over/ And it never really began/ But in my heart it was so real,” well, I’m undone every time. And the way he sings this on Rank, there’s just this extra layer of emotion the pours through that line because he sings it so matter-of-factly. Of course it’s over, because there was never a start; it was never going to start, and even though you know almost always know it’s never going to start, you can’t help but let the idea of maybe/perhaps/justincase/pleasepleaseplease take root in your heart. It’s a brutality we thrust on ourselves so often.

By song’s end, Morrissey sings with much more emotion, as he repeats “Mother I can feel / The soil falling over my head” until the songs end. He soars in a falsetto, and a soft mumble, and his usual croon. And it’s hypnotic. My whole being hurts when I hear it. From roughly 5:06 to 5:26 I don’t breathe.

“I Know It’s Over” is the kind of song that ruins me and repairs me. I need it to make me feel worse so that I can use it to feel better. I need the catharsis. I tweeted something earlier, and while I was thinking of “Seasick, Yet Still Docked” when I did it, I think this little sentiment applies to this song as well (and, I’m sure, to many other songs):

It’s amazing how often the one song you need to put you back together is the one song you must first let tear you apart.

— jillian (@jillian_leslie) April 17, 2014

What Little Girls Wish Daddies Knew

What Little Girls Wish Daddies Knew

Hug Your Kids, Because This:

I will try not to make a habit out of what I’m doing with this submission, namely, sharing a video (in this case a pair of them) that promises to utterly decimate our readers’ hearts.  This story I share only because it carries the potential to embolden hearts by breaking them, to enrich our love for our children, and inflame our hate of cancer. The videos contain the story of a six-year-old Australian girl named Miette, who died of an aggressive brain cancer that attacks children between ages 4-9, at her home, in her own bed. In the first video, from a local media profile, Miette still lives, and appears anything but doomed. In the second video, a raw one shot by her parents on her last morning, we see Miette in death, lifted by her titanium-hearted father from the bed where she went to sleep, and carried out of the house.

The local media profile, in life: 

The parents’ home video, in death: 

I found the death video, and this story, on Reddit, in the MorbidReality sub. I posted there my immediate aftermath, which I recopy here:

“I’m father to a 3 year old daughter. The twinkle twinkle little star moment did me in completely. I sing it with my little girl, with the same hand gestures, all the time. That poor girl, father, mother, family. It’s far too much to bear. She, so young, how to contemplate what was coming? The father, to carry her body lifeless, when so often we know he’d carried her laughing. How does he hand her over? I think I’d have died myself at the handoff. The mother, first to witness the pooling of blood along her daughter’s back as she’s lifted. Horror heaped upon horror. Please, world, cure fucking cancer!”

Here, too, is the link to Miette’s mother’s blog: http://miettesjourney.blogspot.com/

And the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/miettesjourney

Elliott Smith and Swearing: Why I Love “Bled White”

Today marks the 10th anniversary of Elliott Smith‘s suicide. When I heard he’d died, I cried. I cried for someone I never even knew. I cried because I knew I’d lost something important, as selfish as that sounds. I’m selfish about music. Sure, I share it like crazy, and I want people to love what I love because I think it will make them happy, but I also demand that the musicians I love keep producing stuff for me to obsess over just so I have something to obsess over. I cried when I heard about Elliott because the world losing his talent was tragic. But I also cried because I lost his talent. Like I said: selfish.

I loved (and still love) his music; Either/Or and XO were on constant rotation my first year of college. Those two albums, Kent’s Isola, and Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 & 2 were all I played. Poor Ann, my long-suffering best friend and roommate; I don’t know how she didn’t snap all of my CDs in half. I really played them that much. She’s an excellent human being, very patient, and she’s known me since we were three, though, so I guess she knew what she was getting into.

This Pop Phenomenology post is meant to be one of celebration, not sorrow. So enough with the sadness! I want to talk about what I love about Elliott Smith and “Bled White.”

The first exposure a lot of people had to ES’s music was when they saw Good Will Hunting, or later, when he performed on the Academy Awards. I didn’t see the movie when everyone else did, so I didn’t really listen to ES until I was hanging out with my boyfriend (side note of note: possibly ex-boyfriend at the time; we broke up and got back together a lot) in a coffee shop in my wee hometown. My friend John was working, and he had Either/Or playing over the sound system. I remember us talking about how amazing the guy’s voice was. It was his voice that killed me.

He had this breathy, delicate, sad, angelic voice. I can’t ever describe it any other way, and I’ve tried. Those are the only words my brain will allow. And as I sat and stared at the picture of ES in the CD liner, I couldn’t reconcile how a voice like that could come from a guy that looked so…hard core. I mean, he just looked like such a bad ass. Years later, when I was lucky enough to see him in concert, I still felt that strange disconnect, but he had the sweetest demeanor on stage. He was just kind of fragile-seeming. He was mesmerizing, really. He just stood there on stage and broke my heart with his sweet smile and that damn voice of his.

I chose to say something about “Bled White” because though it’s not my most favorite ES song, it contains a moment that, when I hear it, still gives me chills. I am a fan of a well-placed swear word. I can’t help it. When used correctly, swear words are powerful, wonderful things. “Bled White” does not disappoint. Right near the song’s end, at the 2:31 ES sings, “I may not seem quite right / But I’m not fucked / Not quite / Bled white.” Even now, my pulse jumps a little when I hear it. It’s the way he sings it, the way his voice runs you down with it, the way he emphasizes that most excellent of swear words that kills me. It just seems to come from nowhere. You don’t expect a voice so sweet to curse so well. I’ve played this song for people and made them listen very closely to the line. No matter who I play it for, though, I always exclaim, “Elliott Smith is the best swearer ever!” immediately after. Some of them get it, some of them look at me like I’m nuts.

So, Mr. Smith, thank you for putting your music into the world. I’m sorry you couldn’t stay. I’m sorry you couldn’t be here to give us more to love, as this selfish girl wants. Thank you for your voice, and thank you for being such a fantastic swearer.

The Pop Phenomenology of the Cry-Voice: Duologue’s “Push It”

I first heard this song months ago. Duologue released the video for “Push It” featuring the actor Robert Sheehan (Misfits, Killing Bono, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones), so, being the fan of Mr. Sheehan that I am, I watched the video (the video below is a different version). The full album, Song & Dance, was released recently, and I’ve been listening to it. It’s pretty damn great. But this song remains my favorite so far, and it’s because of a few elements that, when combined, are a formula for winning Jillian’s heart.

“Push It” has this quiet build that you can’t really help but compare to other current pop/folk-rock songs (yep, there’s a piano and some strings), but the crescendo of the music leads you to a crest that is neither jarring nor explosive; there is no moment of folk-rock fist-pumping bad-assery, and I think that makes the song special in its difference. Don’t get me wrong; I love folk-rock bad-assery and fist-pumping. I’m delighted that cellos, violins, pianos, and violas are featuring prominently in rock music; after all, these are the instruments that are most likely to make me want to curl up in a corner and cry my face off when I hear them…cry my face off in a good way, of course. But this song is bad ass in its own way because it presses ever onward; there is no fist-pump because there is no break for one because this song doesn’t give you time to rest. Indeed, the wonderful blending of guitar, piano, and violin with a synth-pop underlay creates sounds that dance around each other, that twirl and spin and blanket you in a cloud of happy-sad, all while this strong, yet mildly tremulous voice is there tamping down a little path in the cloud for you to follow. That path leads to goosebumps.

Tom Digby-Bell, the band’s singer, has what I like to call a “cry-voice,” and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s a voice that at times bears resemblance to the voice of Thom Yorke or Alex Trimble, though it occupies its own space somewhere in between. I call his a cry-voice because there are moments in the song when I am quite certain the man’s going to break down; it is in that split-second of wonder, where his voice threatens to become a whine but doesn’t; where I expect his voice to break, but it doesn’t; where hell, that note could topple over into laughter but it doesn’t, that I feel a chill move through me.

This song demands my attention as if there is some secret it wants to reveal to me. It makes me feel as though if I keep listening over and over, I will uncover the secret. With each replay the urgency engendered by the collision of those instruments with that voice grows, so that whenever I reach the 4:34 mark, when Digby-Bell hits this glorious high note, I feel both exhausted and exhilarated. It’s a moment of ecstatic revelation, of beautiful desperation, wherein I finally learn the secret but can’t articulate it. It’s like when you can’t remember something, and it’s right on the tip of your brain, and it’s driving you mad, and then you finally remember it, and you feel an intoxicating mixture of relief and fatigue from having spent so much energy on remembering. That’s how this song makes me feel. It’s painful and perfect.

“If You Believe in Me, I Can Do Anything”: Beware of Darkness and Pop Phenomenology

I’ve been listening to the debut album, Orthodox, from Beware of Darkness (they’re a band from L.A. that are simultaneously reminiscent of The Beatles, Jet, Oasis, White Stripes, and, at times, Coldplay). I’ve been lying in bed in the dark listening, I’ve been walking around Miraflores listening, I’ve been in the cab on the way to work listening, and I’ve been sitting at my desk at work listening. Needless to say, I’ve been listening the shit out of this album. The only other person I know who has this album is Walter, and he’s who told me about them in the first place (If you’re reading this Walter, thank you again, by the way).

So I’m here trying to get other people to listen to this album because it’s great. Listen and read…

Upon multiple listenings of new albums, my favorites will often shift; so far, though, that hasn’t happened with Orthodox. From the first time through, one song jumped out at me, and that song was “Amen Amen”; after I don’t know how many subsequent listenings, it’s still may favorite on the album. The song makes me feel that familiar pang of something I can never quite name.

God, it’s so frustrating that I can’t name the pang exactly! But I suppose I write Pop Phenomenology because there is that unnameable something. If I can describe it, or at least describe around it, then maybe it is a real, sharable thing.

Orthodox revolves heavily around the motifs of death and loss. There are songs about heartbreak, romantic or otherwise, but heartbreak isn’t all there is; regardless, I’m pretty sure suffering underlies every song on the album. “Amen Amen” is a love song; it is a celebration of how absolutely fantastic it is to  have someone you love love you back. That’s some kind of insane miracle, isn’t it? Being in love with someone and having that someone love you back is an insane, wonderful, perfect miracle. When you fall out of love, or someone falls out of love with you, you lose that miracle. That’s why we struggle so much with heartbreak, isn’t  it? I mean, losing a miracle is a big damn deal.

So while the song is about how awesome loving someone is, it’s also about the paralyzing fear of loss that accompanies the miracle. How many times have we been so afraid of losing someone we have managed to push them away completely? That’s not just something stupid I’ve done, right? Right? Anyone else? I’ll take your silence as tacit agreement that you’ve done it, too.

The thing is with the miracle is that it’s addictive. Loving another person is great. It’s so great, in fact, that we sometimes forget everything else. The storyteller of this song tells Elly, his beloved, that there isn’t much of a life without her, there’s no color in the world without her, he isn’t sure he’s really alive unless she’s there to remind him that he is, and that as long as she believes in him, he can do anything. In the grand scheme of romance, that’s some romantic shit right there. It’s a little screwed up, too. Nevertheless, it makes me sigh dreamily (Let’s not go into what that says about me, okay?)

The lyrics communicate love, fear, passion, and pleading. I think one of the things I love about this song is that in the span of 4:10, it conveys a major cross-section of the emotional ups and downs of being in love. That’s good songwriting. And while the song’s dominant impression is that the joy of having the miracle of love is inextricably tied up with the anxiety of losing that miracle, I can’t help but feel happy when I listen to this song. Happy and hopeful. I mean, we often have selective hearing when it comes to certain lyrics, right? “Every Breath You Take” by the Police is a pretty creepy song when you listen to the lyrics, but people have used that as their wedding song. So, I choose to be a little selective with how I hear and interpret this song.

I acknowledge that being so wrapped up in another person is not always the best thing. But my stupidly romantic and sentimental heart can’t help but hope that someday I will inspire in someone not a fear of losing me, but a surge of love and happiness because I believe in them.

“It’s Been a Long Time Since I’ve Seen You Smile”: Beirut’s “Nantes” and the Happy-choly

I was oddly resistant to Beirut at first. Well, no. It wasn’t that I was actively resistant; it was just that there was something about Zach Condon’s voice that I couldn’t connect to. I find that funny now, since it’s his voice that makes up roughly 50% of why I love Beirut. I’m not sure what clicked into place for me, but Condon’s is a voice that makes me long for places I’ve never been simply because he evokes the images and feel of them in each note he sings.

The other 50% of my love for Beirut? Well, it’s because they sound like an old-timey, French circus. They have horns and accordions! If I were to recruit anyone to do the soundtrack to the film version of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, I’d beg Beirut. I’d beg shamelessly. I’d bed proudly. They’d be perfect. Dear god, please, Beirut, please do the soundtrack.

As ever, this is all a terrible, unfair, too-quick summary of what I like about them. But if my posts on pop phenomenology have taught us anything, I seem to do all right at focusing on the particulars of particulars. And I’m focusing on the particular that is “Nantes” from the album The Flying Club Cup.

I may be equally emotionally involved with both this song and “Elephant Gun,” but I find “Nantes” to be a bit more haunting. For whatever reason, I’m a girl who loves to be haunted by stuff. I like books to ruin my life for weeks after I’ve finished them, I want to have to think about a film for an indeterminate amount of time before I can really say anything about it, and I want the feeling of a song to hang around me for days. I want it to seep into my skin, make me feel off-center, disjointed, and off-kilter. I like when a song does that to me because then I know I have to spend more time with it. Some, I’m sure, wouldn’t like a song to do these things to them; why would a person want to listen to something that affects them like that? It’s not a bad kind of off-ness that I experience when I listen to “Nantes,” though; rather, it’s my being unsettled by beauty. Who doesn’t want to get knocked on their ass by the beautiful?

I said the song is haunting. It’s haunting because Condon’s voice, the circus-y feel of the music, and the lyrics make me feel like I’ve lost something. Or someone. You know when you go through a break-up and you need to wallow? You just put on the saddest music you can find, and you curl up inside it, and you just feel everything. One of my mainstays in the need-to-be-sad song category is Morrissey’s “Seasick, Yet Still Docked.” Good god, that song rips me apart. That song makes me feel loss like nobody’s business (I may have to devote a Pop Phenomenology post to that one). Like “Seasick,” “Nantes” is a song I need to curl up in, but it isn’t a soul-ripper. Instead, it’s a place I can go to absorb all the warm, mournful, caramel-y tones of loss without getting sad about it. The song makes me happy-choly instead of truly melancholy, if happy-choly is a thing, that is.

That’s what is so amazing about “Nantes.” It’s a sad little song that doesn’t make me sad at all. Yeah, it makes my heart hurt a little, but that hurting is the reminder that I’m good. I’m okay. Also, I’m going to make happy-choly a thing. Get ready for it.

A Pop Phenomenology Knee-Jerk Post: “Do I Wanna Know?”

Okay. So, Arctic Monkeys have a new album out. It’s called AM, and I’m only on the 3rd song. That is in part because I’m having a really hard time getting past the first track, “Do I Wanna Know?” I can’t get past it because I keep replaying it. It’s a hell of a way to start an album. I was deeply affected by High Fidelity (both the movie and the book), and there’s this great scene in the record store when Rob, Barry, Dick, and their friend are having a conversation in which they’re ranking their top-five album track 1/side 1’s. I think this song has to go on my list. It’s that good. As soon as I heard it, as soon as I felt it, I knew I had to write a post about it. This is my knee-jerk reaction post to the song. It has invaded me completely, and while I don’t necessarily need to free myself of it, I do need to share my feelings about it in the vain attempt to figure out exactly how it is I do feel about it.

Right out of the gate, the song feels ominous; it’s not even close to chipper. The beat is like clapping, and the guitar repeats the same few notes over and over. It’s a song about obsession and loss and wondering, and the melody of the song, which is not a melody in the traditional pop song sense of the word, is heavy and repetitive – just like obsession. The melody pulls at you; it’s the musical equivalent of that ponderous, helpless feeling you have when you’ve lost someone, but you’re so wrapped up in the idea of them being with you that you can’t purge them from your system. It’s only made worse when they’re always around; you’re always fighting muscle memory. The song is a fight against memory.

Despite the heaviness of the song, there’s nothing slow or boring about it. The song’s tempo is paired with lyrics that, as I gestured at in the previous paragraph, convey a feeling of utter resignation. He’s resigned himself to these feelings he has for the ‘you’ to which he sings. He’s regretful, nostalgic, mournful, addicted, and even though he’s sort of ashamed for feeling all of these things, he simply must express them just in case the ‘you’ he’s singing to feels the same way about him. Even when we’re just on the verge of walking away, the ‘what if?’ holds enormous sway.

So the combination of the weighty, sad music with lyrics that are so spot-on I can’t even think straight are what pretty much reach into my chest and make it so I can’t breathe properly. The song is so honest. It’s completely unpretentious. It is a confession. It’s the kind of confession that at times in my life I’ve needed and wanted to make, but I absolutely could not piece together. I imagine these lyrics are made up of the stuff you say just before you fall on your knees and beg. And don’t tell me you haven’t felt like begging at least once. Love robs us of all pride.

The line of the song that told me I had to write a post was this:

“Cause there’s this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow and I play it on repeat until I fall asleep.”

Now, I know this is not an experience unique to me. Obviously, Alex Turner is tapping into some larger music-consciousness; I know there are people who exist who have never related a song to a person and listened to it over and over again in some strange attempt to will that person to love them, but I don’t think I really trust those people.  How can a person not have done so? Are they human? But this line. THIS LINE. It’s like Turner took every thought I ever had while I was in a state of pining for someone and put it in this song.

I could go line-by-line and explain why I think every damn word of this song is excellent, but I don’t think it would help; you just have to listen and see what it does for you. This song, speaking in a pop phenomenology sort of way, weighs on me. The chorus is especially brutal; it pushes on my chest, compresses it.  I nearly choke when I listen to this song because in the wake of the weight of it, I forget to breathe. It is an exquisite breathlessness, to be sure, and I love every second of it.

I have no doubt your experience of the song will differ from mine. But please, do experience it.

This Song Needs to Be in the World

Remember the post I did about music not too long ago? Well, there’s a song I’ve been freaking out about, and I want to share it with as many people as I can. The song is by the Wookles (formerly NoMappets). They’re a band based here in Lima (the singer, Walter Montoya, is a student at the university where I work, and is also a member of the band The Ancient Artifacts), and, as far as I know, they don’t have a recording contract. But by god, they should, if this song is any indication of their potential to kick some major pop song ass.

The first time I heard this song, I sat staring at my computer with my mouth hanging open. I seriously couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t understand how this gem wasn’t everywhere; I want it to be everywhere. I’m not kidding when I say I’ve been emailing and texting people about it. I’ve even been gesticulating wildly and talking loudly and excitedly about it to my poor coworkers. I’m forcing it on everyone I can, and I’m going to explain why I’m doing so. Here’s my pop phenomenology of the 3:15 of musical gold that is “Cold Places.”

This song is legit one of the tightest pop songs I’ve heard in a really long time. Every single element of it fits together so well (It’s even mixed beautifully.). And in true pop-excellence, it’s super peppy while the lyrics leave me feeling a little melancholy. I LOVE THAT. There’s nothing sugary here; the song engenders in me a feeling of exhilaration and loss all at once.

Part of the song’s charm, appeal, and success at being a true pop song is its simplicity. Or, rather, that it seems simple. The stuff that’s truly well done always seems to be effortless. This song seems effortless. For me, I listen to it and think it couldn’t have been any other way. Does that make sense? Like the song was meant to exist, and so it exists just as it is, effortlessly.

Oh, and let’s talk vocals. As I’ve said before, I’m a voice girl. If I don’t like the voice, I’m not in. Walter Montoya has the voice. And it’s a voice that tiptoes along the edge of crooning, but without the dramatics associated with the traditional swoopy nature of the croon. Sometimes, he even comes off as sounding a little sleepy when he sings. I think that’s great because that sleepy-soundingness is offset by the constant drive of the drums. Their opposition is the manifestation of the happiness and the sorrow inherent to the song. His sleepy, near croony voice is a smooth tenor, and the falsetto backing vocals (Are those his? They sound like his. Either way, they’re awesome.) are a perfect complement to the main vocal track.

And then there are the drums at 2:27. Rat-tat rat-tat rat-tat rat-tat rat-a-tat. Oh my god. It’s such a great way to kick back into the chorus. I’m pretty sure I yelled something profane about the excellence of that part when I first heard it…and pretty much every time I hear it.

What sealed the deal for me as far as being totally on board with this song happens from 2:24 onward. You just need to listen to it to know what I mean. It’s like all the pieces of awesome that make up the song have come together as a whole to carry you through to the end. I love every part of this track, but that final drive to the end is killer.

I actually get a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach when I listen to “Cold Places” because I know the song has to end, and I don’t want it to end. It’s the best kind of anxiety. One thing that makes any great pop song great is that it doesn’t outlast its welcome; it stays just long enough for you to want to keep hanging out with it. You want to listen to it over and over. I keep expecting to tire of this one. I haven’t yet, and I couldn’t possibly tell you how many times I’ve listened to it. I have tried to stop listening to it, only to find myself yelling “This damn song!” and pressing the back button on my iPod to listen again. Sure, I’ve listened to other stuff since I first heard this a few days ago, but I keep returning…and returning…and returning.

I adore this song. I absolutely, unequivocally, unapologetically love it. I wrote this post because I need other people to fall in love with it, too. “Cold Places” deserves our love.

Pop Phenomenology: Music and Me

Music. It’s always, always with me. Even when I was a kid, I had to have music on all the time. One of my mom’s favorite stories of me as a little girl involves me, in diapers, dancing. Another features me entertaining myself in the morning by hanging out in my crib and singing to myself. I’m sure my mother’s definition of singing in this instance wouldn’t qualify as what most people would call singing. It’s not like I was a musical prodigy that could carry a tune at 18 months like Rufus Wainwright.

I’ve been listening to Mr. Wainwright this morning. I go through these phases where I search out new music like crazy, and that inevitably leads me back to my old favorites. For instance, the new Franz Ferdinand album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, is fantastic. It’s very FF, which of course pushes me to their older stuff, which in turn pushes me to other things to which I was listening at the time I began listening to FF, which then moves me on to other songs. It’s nearly an infinite regress/progress. Different moods will call for different songs, of course, so I won’t be led to the same songs every time.

I can’t name the mood I’m in currently. It’s a transition-laden one, though, as the beginning of a new semester always brings with it an adjustment period. I’m still adjusting to life in the new apartment, and it’s strange to not have Mel and Jason here, too. But these are good adjustments. I digress, however; the point of this entry is not to talk about adjusting, necessarily, but to talk about music.

I make playlists in iTunes all the time. Usually, they are imaginings of things I want to send to other people. I don’t consider myself a terribly talented person – I’m not a musician, I don’t feel particularly creative, blah blah blah – but I do possess the talent of being able to put together a good mix. That aside, I’ve been throwing a new playlist together. It’s a kind of depository for songs that, at some point or other, I’ve been obsessed with and wanted to absolutely live inside of. There are a lot of songs I’ve obsessed/do obsess over, and I do it proudly. Luckily, I have some dear people in my life who are willing to listen to me freak out about songs. You know who you are, and I appreciate you all.

For example, there’s this one:

I’ve loved Ash for a really long time, and this song isn’t new. But god, just listen to this song. This song has so many elements that just get me every time. First, I’ve always been a sucker for voices. If the voice doesn’t do it for me, I can’t get into the song. Tim Wheeler’s voice is a voice that does it for me. Second, I love the cymbals. In the first chorus, at 1:04 in, when he sings “Brought by dark, divine intervention” you will hear 3 cymbal crashes. Those cymbals; those three hits in a row give the song a sense of urgency. Is it a crash cymbal? A splash cymbal? I should consult Scott, my favorite drummer, about that one (ETA: Scott said it’s a crash cymbal; thank you, Scott!). Those cymbals are perfection. Third, though never finally, the key change. You can hear it at approximately 4:10. A well-placed key change can make a song so much more emotionally saturated. A really well done key change in a song is like a really bad ass slow-motion sequence in a film (I’m thinking of when Max exits the elevator with his bee box in Rushmore . That scene kills me.) Anyway, combine Tim’s voice with those cymbal crashes and that key change, and you have something I will listen to on repeat forever.

I guess I don’t create things because I can’t help but understand that there are always people who can create better and more beautiful things than I ever could. But I can appreciate what they create, and I do. I absolutely do. I react physically to certain songs, and I mean beyond the urge to dance. Don’t get me wrong, I love to bop around, but certain songs, the songs that become obsessions for me, affect me differently than do other songs. I actually get an ache in my chest; it feels like falling in love and heartbreak are happening simultaneously inside me. It feels like the world is falling apart and coming together all at once. It feels like nothing will ever make sense again because that song has so disrupted my world that I can’t understand how I ever managed to get along before hearing it.