Posts tagged with "music"

Weekend By Bus

Thumbnail: Greyhound station

Leaving by bus, in the rain and in the dark, is some­thing spe­cial.

The per­fect album to put on is Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós, with songs like Starálfur and Olsen Olsen, but espe­cial­ly Sven-G-Englar and Ný Batteri. Sounds are dis­tract­ing all around with the peo­ple talk­ing, the bat­ter­ing of rain­drops on the wind­shield, the thud-thump of the uneven high­way road, but they grad­u­al­ly fade to a lethar­gic pulse. The unrec­og­niz­able tim­bres of each dis­tin­guish­able instru­ment take over.

This is the moment. The exact pur­pose of the song. The notes are pure, amor­phous colours in the dark­ness, a dul­cet damper for the out­side world.

Soon the rhythm of the pass­ing city lights will become more and more sparse, and all that will be left in the win­dows are the reflec­tions of those with their over­head lights on, read­ing books or keep­ing eye-con­tact.

It’s been ten months since the last time you did this.

How has so much hap­pened since then?

Music Is The Only Thing

I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing until next Monday, but I can’t seem to get away from this.

With the falling tem­per­a­tures come late morn­ings. Stepping out­side ear­li­er, the sky was still dimmed with the street lamps on from the pre­vi­ous night. It felt like the sun had already set, and it was only going to get dark­er. I was in the mood for some jazz, so I fid­get­ed on my iPod until I found a Duke Ellington col­lec­tion. Unfortunately, most of it is com­prised of big band swing songs, fast mov­ing, major keys, a sound that did­n’t quite match the mood. I set­tled on Going Up, a calm pro­gres­sive jazz piece fea­tur­ing brush­es instead of drum sticks, har­mon mutes in the trum­pets, and Les Spann on flute. Four years of pri­vate lessons, with four dif­fer­ent bands in high-school, have made me appre­ci­ate the pol­ished, round­ness of his sound. He trav­els chro­mat­i­cal­ly with utter smooth­ness on the wood­wind, and unlike on the piano, which the fin­gers can move across in one sweep­ing motion, each note is played with a seem­ing­ly ran­dom com­bi­na­tion of fin­gers. In his head, he’s four bars ahead of his fin­gers, allow­ing his into­na­tion remain pre­cise with each pur­pose­ful note.

Sometimes it feels like music is the only thing that can bring out my emo­tions again. Most of them have been replaced by sim­ple deter­mi­na­tion. Everything is busi­ness busi­ness busi­ness because the world is cold cold cold.

I’m going home for the Thanksgiving long-week­end. A much need­ed break that I’ve been plan­ning for a while now. Funny that I still call it home when it’s a five hour dri­ve away, and I own my own house in this city. Home isn’t where you grew up, it isn’t where you live now, home is where the par­ents are.

With A More Pretentious Title Than Last?

The new Coheed And Cambria sin­gle (song starts play­ing after the Flash intro) com­plete­ly knocks me off my feet. I sus­pect that the new album will be dark­er, mood­i­er, and even bet­ter pro­duced than their last. I’m not the only one who’s remind­ed of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, with the chro­mat­ic chord pro­gres­sion and orches­tral back­ing, but the sim­i­lar­i­ties end there.

Can’t wait until September.

It's A Rainy, Overcast Saturday Morning

I’m only awake now because I’m too used to wak­ing up at half past six on work­days. A mug of Hong Kong milk tea (made with con­densed milk for extra creami­ness) has always been my week­end com­fort food, but I ran out of loose leaves a few weeks ago. Usually, I sit at my desk and write after break­fast, fin­ish­ing off the tea from break­fast, but instead I’ll be going to my music for inspi­ra­tion.

I’ve run into a string of good music late­ly, or maybe I’ve just been hear­ing things in a dif­fer­ent way. None of my playlists seem rel­e­vant again. More details when I have more time.

It’s good to be sober.

Resonance

(This took four months to write)

I was kick­ing back on the couch with ____
with the lights out and the music on.

Wut wut.

Anyway, we were stoned out of our skulls and it was Naked As We Came by Iron And Wine. We sat there, lis­ten­ing to the dul­cet notes of a lone gui­tar lead into Sam Beam’s sug­ary voice, soon to be gen­tly round­ed off by his sis­ter, Sara, as the har­mo­ny. A sum­mer-morn­ing-dur­ing-har­vest song, or danc­ing in the mid­dle of a cool rain­fall.

She says ‘If I leave before you dar­ling
don’t you waste me in the ground’
I lay smil­ing like our sleep­ing chil­dren
one of us will die inside these arms

Eyes wide open
naked as we came
one will spread our
ash­es round the yard

And we sat there, lis­ten­ing, remark­ing to each oth­er about how mor­bid it all was, yet so beau­ti­ful.

How two peo­ple can be so inti­mate with each oth­er as to be com­fort­able enough to casu­al­ly talk about the dis­pos­al of remains. They were plan­ning it like an ado­les­cent cou­ple decid­ing the num­ber of garages or chil­dren they’re going to have.

Even John was moved, but how could he not be? One of them would die but there was solice in the fact that it would be in the embrace of the oth­er, as if nei­ther one would want to die any oth­er way, doing any­thing else.

And it felt like, for the first time in my life, John could under­stand a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent side of me.