Sometimes, as a writer, you sit down to pen a new poem, article or story, and you write for ten minutes (or in this case, an hour or so) only to discover later that you have written something completely different from what you set out to accomplish.
This is an eternal and inevitable frustration that comes with the writing territory, though. So you think that as a writer, I would be used to it by now, but no. It still tends to catch me off guard and at the most inconvenient of times. This week, I sat down on Tuesday to churn out (what I pretentiously thought) would be a poignant and witty review of fun.’s newest album, Some Nights. After all, I had promised to do so. Alas, I stumbled around for a bit, jotted down some notes, and eventually decided that it would be better just to lump an album review into a concert coverage piece for when they come play at the Blue Moose in a few weeks.
But then I was left with an empty slate, fucked for ideas and shooting blanks with every story I started. And then this one just sort of… came out. So I hope you enjoy the rambling musings of a music lover, and maybe through some fateful turn of events, this will be just what the doctor ordered for your weekend.
At heart, I am a narrative writer. I am obsessed with the stories that lie within every moment and every detail of life, no matter how big or small. Music, as I’ve mentioned before, is a beautiful synthesis of lyrical and narrative moments, captured within the essence of harmony, melody, language, tone, audience, etc. Every aspect of a given piece of music has its own part to play in creating a unique and personal experience for the listener. That experience can be more or less effected by music, and more often than not, the relationship is more symbiotic than it is coercive.
Recently, I have found myself in an admittedly anxious emotional quandary. Just a few months from now, I will be uprooting myself once again and moving to a new city. Sure, the prospect of a fresh start is hopeful and imaginative, but any mark of starting somewhere new indicates a simultaneous cutting-off of the old place–for all purposes, that new start is an ending as much as it is a beginning. Much in the same way as music interacts with its listeners, the details of that relationship are fuzzy and subject to any number of perspectives.
The music I’m sharing with you this week comes from my reflection on that idea of how endings and beginnings relate. It is, in a sense, a playlist of moments, compiled as I’ve had time to sit and listen, to reminisce and remember, as well as ponder and wonder about what the future holds. It’s in times such as these that I find myself sinking deeply into the layers of music, discovering the simple humanity that comes from an artist’s need to share what he/she is thinking. This is not by any means a comprehensive playlist, nor is it necessarily representative of the only kinds of music that have the raw emotive power I speak of. Rather, it is simply a personal playlist, shared from me to you, in an attempt to connect us all as part of the larger musical audience that is found in the universality of basic Humanity.
Enjoy.
Staff