I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.
Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.
Often I don’t know what the song means until it’s finished. Sometimes months later. I don’t think that’s bad. It implies that I don’t know what I’m doing but-I think if you’re able to follow your instincts, then that’s knowing what you’re doing.
Living “in” a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don’t always know what narrative it is, because I’m living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story.
Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can’t conceive of it being an isolated thing. It’s whom you were with, how old you were, and what was happening that day.
Performers try harder.
In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they’re singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that.
Musicians sort of knew this already – that the emotional center is not the technical center, that funky grooves are not square, and what sounds like a simple beat can either be sensuous or simply a metronomic timekeeper, depending on the player.
The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos.
You might say that the universe plays the blues.
I wanted to find a reason not to be cynical – to have some faith even when nothing around me seemed to justify it.
There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told.
People probably heard a greater quantity of music, and a greater variety, on these devices than they would ever hear in person in their lifetimes.
There’s always room for Jell-O.
I also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives are filled with performances that have been so woven into our daily routine that the artificial and performative aspect has slipped into invisibility.
It was the best show I’d ever seen; it was so tight and choreographed that it seemed to be from another planet, a planet where everyone was incredible.
What do we need music to do? How do we visit the land in our head and the place in our heart that music is so good at taking us to?
The classical players who think all popular music is simple tend not to hear the nuances involved, so naturally they can’t play very well in that style. Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that’s when the details take on larger meanings.
It was a uniform that signified that one was a kind of downtown aesthete; not necessarily nihilistic, but a monk in the bohemian order.
If they liked a tune, they wanted to hear it again – now! The vibe was more like CBGB than your typical contemporary opera house.