Points of Entries

I have Henry Flynt to blame for this.

When it comes to waking, I normally am not one who takes cues. Perhaps this is the same reason I almost never remember my dreams, but I have a perhaps irrationally consistent "plan" to never wake up in the morning if I have not had enough sleep. Were I to awaken in the early morning, on most occasions, with ideas for a piece of music or some other such thing, I will refrain from doing so and just curse that I am awake at such an inappropriate time.

So, here I am making use of such (formerly viewed as) innapropriateness, and am following (as opposed to ignoring) an inborne cue to wake up and follow this through.

The other day I became interested again in the music of Delia Derbyshire, someone I had forgotten for close to ten years. I came across her music originally at some point when I was first getting into electronic music, but I only did so with a passing interest, as if I only needed to know of it, or glimpse it and move on. I did the same thing with all of the early electronic music pioneers. I had a collection that included many different individuals ranging from Iannis Xenakis to Clara Rockmore.

I found it most intriguing for what seems like a brief time only, as I do not recall anything about any of those sounds and music that I heard.

How and why do we listen to something when we do (and really listen and pay attention)? I have no exact answer. However, in looking back to my changing tastes and interests, I see again and again, a meeting which never really takes place. Or, in other words, I expect something else and am estranged from it.

When I first heard John Fahey (and be on the lookout platform with your telescope for I shall have a post in the near future dedicated to him), I have no idea how or why, on a CD version of his 1985 album "Rain Forests, Oceans and Other Themes" I was just baffled. It sounded strange and unappealing to my ears at the time. It took four of five years of distancing from him in order to encounter him again. This time, it was when his final album "Red Cross" was just being released. It still sounded strange, but beautifully so, and captivating. What had I listened to in that time period of several years that made it all of a sudden click?

Upon first hearing "The Shape of Jazz to Come" by Ornette Coleman, I was underwhelmed. When I first heard the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat," I thought, "So what, that's it?" I had expectations that my ears were instantly going to curdle and I would ultimately have some sort of incurable fit. All music termed "Experimental" or "Free" sounded tame to me initially. Fortuntely, I moved beyond that sort of unusual expectation and just started listening closer, and doing just more tha skimming the top.

When that started happening, things started to click, and I was able to approach them again with a more realistic and practical outlook.

This all begins with: Fugazi, Modest Mouse and Aphex Twin. All of those, at the moment when  I first heard them, I was put off. They were all strange. Dissonant in ways. Somehow I kept trying to listen to them again, as if I couldn't help it. Why was I persistent in doing so? Were I to have just moved on, my listening habits may well have been entirely different than they are today. I may have made a living out of this so-called 'skimming' behavior.

Perhaps this is all a common experience; it is interesting to me keep in mind these re-assessments.

After years of developed interest in so-called "Country" and "Jazz" music, both of which at some point in my life I was determined to dislike, I still am unable to make the plunge into "Western Classical Music," and I still have that determination to never do so, and hope it never happens (I put these genres in quotes, because frankly, I don't think they or any kind of music exist, and yes, I am making fun of them).

That being said, I do like the duet between Papagena and Papageno in Mozart's "Magic Flute," which occurs after Papageno is about to commit suicide, and they each start singing, "Pop, pop, pop, Papageno" "Pop, pop, pop, Papagena." There are birds fluttering about. Now that's good.

But, I'm still on the outside of all that. Maybe I shall write something in ten years, perhaps of how I learned to love Mahler? Although, that is sort of already starting to happen by way of an unusual Russian LP I found of a sound documentation of the making of Alexander Sokurov's film "Whispering Pages," which features the music of Mahler mixed with ambient sounds of water and birds and talking.

Perhaps that is all I need to do: listen to classical records in the forest, or underwater.

That will be my point of entry.

Delia Derbyshire

The Magic Flute (Papagena and Papageno's duet from Ingmar Bergman's film)

Gustav Mahler (As heard in Alexander Sokurov's "Mother and Son")

 

 

Comments

[Mogambo]

Whoa, interesting.... i've had a similarly ambiguous relationship with some of the music i love. I think a lot of us between about 14 and 40 have had a bit of "i will NEVER like any country/jazz" because of them being "parental" music styles, perceived as reactionary in thecase of country and for jazz either pretentious or just too old...

But that wasn't what i was gonna comment on (oops!). I was noticing while i read that i have a similar but different reaction. When I first heard certain pieces (Ornette's "Free Jazz" & Steve Reich's "Desert Music" spring to mind) i listened carefully once, then set them aside after deciding that i basically liked them a lot, but because they were complex and involving and not what i usually listened to, they required more attention than i was prepared to spare them at the time.

It took me six months and a couple other Ornette albums to click with Free Jazz, which is now an old fave, but "The Desert Music" went for years without me playing it once... perhaps seven years, until last month, when i pulled out the old CD and put it on to find that it had somehow also become an old favourite. Now it's integrated into the household, always close to the top of the stack, a fave while me and the daughter cook when she comes for the weekend, and to occupy my ears and mind if i'm gonna spend hours collaging or cross-hatching...

I also still have resistance to classical music... but i've warmed in recent years just because of how much i loved Nodame Cantabile. Embarrassing maybe but hell, when a the music and the story are inseparable like that, it's hard to appreciate one and not the other.

Amused by your rejection of genres.... i reference genres all the time, but i don't believe in them at all. It's more a semantic marker for my reaction to music.

Anyways enough rambling, sorry to have gone on so long but i was stimulted there. I wanna go listen to something i'm not familiar enough with... well, maybe later, i'm currently rocking out to Melon Kinenbi!

[Zacharius Hay]

Thanks for writing; I was thinking as I was reading your response, Mogambo, that I should write something about "Music I never listen to (or rarely)" that I keep holding onto for some reason. I think also that there is something great about only listening to something rarely. I often think, in general, perhaps it would be better to not repeatedly listen to anything, but instead, play it once a year or just a few times; none of that leaving it on the turntable\cd player permanently. I think if you listen to something rarely you're more likely to pay attention and hear something you otherwise may miss.

As far as classical music, I have been really enjoying Camille Saint-Saens 'Carnival of the Animals."

Jordan; I am trying to put your message together and am somewhat unable, but I like it that way. More please.

[Kevan]

Thanks Zach... I'm always interested in what you have to say and I am always baffled at myself for not having asked you more about music in the desert. Music does catch up with you in some strange way.... much like what we read you could say, like your posts even. So thanks. My hope is to find some stories within music that speak to us and help us create our own stories to share. I'm in France currently teaching English to high-schoolers and I'm trying to think if they would really get what the music is saying. One student told me that when the French listen to music sung in English (which is most of what they hear on the radio), they don't understand any of the lyrics, and they almost prefer it that way since it's like "La Magie"- magic. I'm baffled at this too.... cause there are some amazing stories told through music, (think Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young etc.) and even the Grateful Dead- which you seem not to like so much. So I'm wondering if you have ever written about the words of music and/or if they are purely separate for you? thanks Zach.

[Katya Oddio]

Matt LeMay and WFMU DJ Jason Sigal discuss this same topic on this show. http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/37990