Posted on:Words

No one ever said believing is easy

A few weeks ago a friend reminded me of an argument we’d had at university that had sprung from a statement I’d made about human capacity for flight. I’d read something about how at this present evolutionary pit-stop we only use a teeny percentage of our brains. I had reasoned that somewhere else in the grey mush may lay the ability to take to the skies, no plane required. My friend had a field day. Part of me still wants to believe it, a little to ruffle his feathers but mainly because it’s just so much more fun. Imagine! ‘What if…?’s are where the magic lives. The unknowable is richer and the maybes more beautiful that any static certainty.

It’s my last day in New York today. I’ve been here almost a couple of weeks and a little of that fabled American dreaming has got to me but I’m grateful for the reminder. It’s too easy to be cynical sometimes, almost a reflex to sneer, and really difficult to dream when the weight of everyday presses down.

What’s more, believing that anything is possible is simply shit scary: the odds that the evidence will stack against us, let us down, are high. But the opposite is grimmer: a life of mapped out monotony, of never trying to strive for anything because it probably won’t go the way we want it to. Well, yeah, it might not but then, guess what, we might discover a different way that spins us off on a whole new tangent. That feels alive.

So, yeah, while the screen dream skyline of NYC has definitely perked me up, it was the music I went to see (Mount Kimbie, The xx, Warpaint, Teengirl Fantasy, Gatekeeper, Blondes, the Roulette group) and musicians I spoke to (FaltyDL, Meredith Monk and Blondes) that really got me excited again, got me believing again. What they share – what all artists share – is the daring to imagine their own worlds, to build something beautiful out of uncertainty and invite us in. It’s in these maybe-places I want to live.

Posted on:Words

Once upon a time

The way we communicate is changing, has changed, will always change. Language evolves, channels emerge, technologies revolutionise.

One thing remains static, however: the equation of efficiency with ‘better’ communication. Dominant modes of communication in the western world have propelled exchange into the realms of response. Because technologies allow for ‘instant’ communication, we expect and desire it.

Yet when we focus on speed, we lose sight of reflection. By aiming for efficiency, we refuse ourselves the opportunity for consideration, germination, rumination, and marination. All those good words that suggest and demand slowness.

When all we’re doing is responding in the most efficient way, we are not fully engaging in or committing to the richness of communication.

Posted on:Words

Dance the night away

I don’t believe in balance. It’s a fallacy. A pretty yet damaging ideal. To subscribe to balance would be to iron out the vital, invigorating flux and flow between transcending the everyday and living in the moment. We need both.

I mention this because I went to see Blondes last week. And then I went again on Tuesday. They had a big affect on me because they made me think of – no, feel – a time when transcendence was ingrained into our daily lives. When achieving transcendence through music – and movement to music – held an essential role in connecting, commemorating and celebrating stages in our ever-turning lifecycle. And yes, you could argue that music still holds a transcending role at important life events yet the reverence with which we regard it is greatly diminished.

Modern society at best marginalises, and at worst outcasts and outlaws, transcendence. Callings, careers, vocations, and past-times that focus on feeling over function are discouraged and invalidated. In our limiting capitalist society, freedom is defined through accumulation yet true transcendence don’t cost a thing. Just dance. Mind and body as one. That’s what Blondes made me feel. Dancing to their music felt like giving thanks. It wasn’t just a Tuesday night anymore, it was a celebration of life. Transcendence of the everyday and living in the moment as one.

Posted on:Words

Remember this

Sitting by the open window in my living room, arms raised up above the back of my chair, shoulder muscles stretching deliciously, a soft breeze stroking my face, I think: remember this. Record this sensation. This moment right here, now; save it. And I will remember sitting by a window in the sunshine but it won’t be this window, on this day. It will be a remembered idea of sitting by a window, a layering of memories of many open windows over many summers. Sensation can be recalled yet not truly remembered. It is wholly connected to the body and of the moment. That said, more than anything else, music can take you closest to remembering a sensation. A recreated sensation perhaps. Lose yourself in a song you hold dear for reasons pertaining to a person, a moment or an event in a your life and you can almost almost taste that time again. Music enables the body to remember. Remember?

Posted on:Words

Slow down

The internet can sometimes feel suffocating. That is no grand statement, merely a watered down echo of a billion similar utterances before it. While the breadth and depth of this virtual world of ours can tower, it’s the pace that really gets to me. The urgency is seductive for a little while but it’s like trying to chase tornados: sooner or later you’re going to be swept up with the swirling picket fences and braying farm animals.

That’s why Connan Mockasin‘s 10-minute masterpiece ‘Forever Dolphin Love’ is the most vital track of this new decade so far. It doesn’t even really get going until 4 minutes in. 4 minutes! That’s a whole minute longer than the supposedly perfect pop song. This is a song that unravels in its own time. That demands you match your pulse to its. That has a sensory impact far beyond the aural. It manifests like heavily scented smoke rings; sinking, soothing, slowing. It’s a lullaby to the pleasure principal; a Pied Piper-esque call to luxuriate in a physical, rather than virtual, here and now. Tune in, lean back, stretch out. What’s the rush, after all?

Posted on:Words

I Am Love

How much of our identity is who we are for other people? This question was in my head as I left the Ritzy having just watched I Am Love yesterday evening, stepping out into gauzy, near-dusk light, the sky the most startling deep blue, one shade away from nightfall. It was like a layer of the screen depiction of the ripe Italian countryside had been laid on top of Brixton’s newly gentrified streets. If that sounds sensationalist and melodramatic in this constrained little collection of pixels, arranged into patterns that attempt to convey shared meaning, I’m okay with that. It feels good to feel, even when it takes on a supposedly negative form. To wake up, to see the world from a slightly different angle, to remember there are those different angles. A million angles. A million corners to turn around and find yourself somewhere new. I am rambling. And getting corny. Again.

But back to identity. After a little reflection, I realised that that question in my head approached identity as if it were something static. I don’t really believe that. To believe that would be to give up. To accept. To stop exploring. To shut off new experiences on the basis of past ones. I refuse to climb into a box and stay there for the sake of an easy life. What’s alive about an easy life? What’s exhilarating about order? What’s joyful about being born, filing in line and replicating the same kind of life, over and over?

That kind of social tidiness is a Tory’s wet dream. And my nightmare.

“Someday” by Ce Ce Rogers just started playing on shuffle. Bloody Apple. Second guessing my emotions again. And getting them right.

Posted on:Words

When I am with you

Sometimes a song isn’t enough. Nor an album. Not to change a mood, budge the blues, shift your mindset. A good mixtape on the other hand can do all of those things. The one I keep returning to over and over is Darkstar’s end-of-year one for xxjfg (scroll down and listen to it here). I can be tired, fed up, frustrated, stressed, whatever, but it always, without fail, cuts through all the crap. The anticipation is blissful; the familiar fall strangely comforting. Every single track plays its perfect part. The slo-mo drop into Instra:Mental ‘Watching You’, Charles Dodge’s childlike computerised interludes, Mux Mool’s screwed edits of dancefloor classics and the teasing build to the sheer, sheer joy of ‘Aidy’s Girl Is A Computer’. Everything falls away. They could have left it there but I love it that they didn’t. Lee Fields howls out his heartbreak, a French child sings a peculiar lullaby, and then silence. Calm. The days are ahead.

Posted on:Words

On the go

There’s a shop on Brixton Hill that sells old furniture. Cupboards with peeling paint, nested tables, office chairs, the odd washing machine. Every day two men carry everything out on the street, line it up, lay it out. Every night they take it back in, stack it high, and roll down the shutters. We all do things like this. Maybe not exactly like this. But repeated actions. Day in and day out. The same, again. The things we do to make a life. There’s joy to be found in repetition. In refining, in perfecting, in pattern, in the rhythm. Of course, the flip is livelier, disruption burns brighter, out-of-the-ordinary more seductive than the everyday. In music the two come together: the sounds, the melody, the beat, the voice. One the foil for the other, harmonies so much sweeter the less sweet they are. Fractured textures framing translucent melodies packing sucker punches.

What I’m listening to on the bus at the moment:

LoneLady ‘Marble’
Pantha Du Prince ‘Lay In A Shimmer’
Tanlines ‘Saw’
Primary 1 ‘Sometime Wannabe’
Peggy Sue ‘Yo Mama’
Yuck ‘Get Away’
Perfume Genius ‘Mr Petersen’
Lonely Galaxy ‘So Low (Instrumental)’
Remember Remember ‘The Dancing’
Masks ‘Forever Dancing’
Pictureplane ‘Goth Star’
Egyptian Hip Hop ‘Round Pot’
Kyle Hall ‘Fuse N Me’
Kingdom ‘You’

Posted on:Words

Moments

So much of modern life is about goals. Plans. Aims. Ambitions. What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? Where are you going? A daily existence focused on arrivals, end results, climbing up. But the real pleasure, the true joy of life is transient. All those clichés about the little things, smelling the roses, living for the moment. They’re all true. And that’s the power of music. Each song, each perfect composition, each finite arrangement of beats, chords, sounds, pauses, and words (or no words) allow you to simply be in that moment. Whatever it makes you feel, however it makes you see things, listening in that moment slams the breaks on time for the duration of the song. And actually, forever – because what you’re left with is a memory. An imprint on your mind, an ache in your heart, and a stir in your soul. And all those memories dot-to-dot, infusing the next moment with greater resonance.  Of course, it’s not just music that makes moments but it’s through music that those moments are elevated, venerated, and remembered, gifting us with the opportunity to return and re-return to relive them.

Posted on:Words

Some songs I like

I admit I am quite excitable but 2010 is already sounding very exciting. So much new music from new artists. So many new albums from bands I already love. And then there are all the rediscoveries. I recently got into Ghostape, an amazing Swiss producer who makes these really simple but thoroughly exciting a cappella ‘n’ beats jams. They just kind of sneak up and get you. Really good.

Back to the rediscovery. I was being lazy, doing a search for ‘ghost’ on my iTunes so I could listen to Ghostape. And what it threw up was one of my favourite songs of all time, one I’d somehow managed to neglect over the last few months: Japan ‘Ghosts’. Oh man. What a song. All that space. All that pain. All that beauty.

Anyway, it made me want to put together a little playlist. Some of the artists have new music out this year. Can’t wait. Click the green link to open the playlist in your Spotify player: Twenty Ten