|
| Recent Journal Entries |
|
|
 |
Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
Singing Telegrams With each new daily musical discovery I make, my gratitude for music triples. Yesterday I came across will.i.am and while everyone else knew of him, I was busy loving Amp Fiddler, who lots of other people don't seem to know. There you go. While itunes may well be a commercial endeavour, it's also an amazing exploratory tool where music is concerned. That and CBC [when they're not busy talking through an original John Williams composition], without which, Canadian musicians would suffer even more than they already do in terms of finding their native audience. Word of mouth, among music lovers, is also huge. Listen to this! Have you heard this new...?
I can't actually remember a time in my life when music of all kinds didn't guide my path, define it, and connect me to others who shared this or that time. Grade nine: the heart's ears remember immediately. And from the memory of dancing to Cher as a toddler to the heavy reliance upon music for literary inspiration and guidance as I type, to smiling as various songs remind me of various people, trips taken, hard nights, lost connections, exalted mornings: nothing hits it like music does. Crosses time and joins it, honours the past and the present simultaneously, instills hope for the future. Nothing in creative endeavour captures the human experience so deeply. You don't have to be able to read, you don't have to know the difference between acrylic and oil or Wilder and Cameron: all you need to possess is the most tenuous grasp of joy, rage, lust, loneliness and the other sly dozen human emotions and variations on them. The hard day's night, the unexpected change in love, the up-all-night-afraid passages that life brings to us all, if we are honest.
Sometimes it smacks you across the back of your heart without warning. Nostalgia either tastes like your favourite minty gum or as unwelcome as bile. You're in your car driving someplace; you're buying a coffee for co-workers: there comes the Lennon, the Springsteen, the cheesy girly pop from a lost time ago. How tones can swoop, soar or slice: music's tonal swordsmanship is notorious. Combined with olfactory memory, well, you haven't a hope, some days. The night you danced, the morning you thought you'd never recover from the shock of loss. Music was there for you, cathartic and reliable in ways that no other medium could be. The excellent run, the new regimen, the cathartic re-arrangement of furniture and dreams as you listen to Stevie or Stevie or whatever floats your aural boat. The resume of tunes left by people you may or may not "know" anymore. Introductions, farewells. Silences filled by music: imagined conversations carried by notes and beats.
I've been listening to a slightly strange blend of fado, Polish pop and hip-hop these days. No idea why. Making a mix for a re-located friend, yes. Also to Die Calaveras, which you'll hear more about again, and not just from me. Large numbers of my friends are turning 40 this year: perhaps I'm tuned in [pun intended] to the various frequencies of past and present. Going back and forth to Toronto, where snatches of music of all kinds fly out of stores in neighbourhoods and cafes and alleys, a thing I never noticed till I moved to a more homogenous [white] and rural locale. Ginger, garlic, wafts of music from all around the globe. Madonna's oldest hits can transport me to a certain living room of long ago, when we had NO idea, as we danced and shrieked, who could possibly live to be FORTY. Canton pop and Indian tracks and so on: walking, I was mindful of how some individuals bring more musical education to your life than others.
I rely on music every day when I sit down to write and I suspect that most humans rely on it more times a day than they realize. Which makes it all the more clear why downloading music for free is just plain wrong, and why even if it costs you 99 cents, you should be honourable. Better yet, stay tuned into the pleasure of going to hear music LIVE and in person, where the musician's own girlfriend/boyfriend/best friend may very well hand-sell you the pleasure in "old school" cd format. Oh god, don't start me on mixed tapes and older pleasures...
Listening to: Bruce Springsteen, Nina Hagen, Cannonball Adderley, Chocolate Genius, Lucinda Williams, Mariza, Kommunards, Treasa Levasseur, Lenny Kravitz, Benny Goodman, Amp Fiddler, will.i.am, Lavelle White, and for you as you turn 40: Madonna, The Smiths, 10, 000 Maniacs, Nirvana, and ?
|
