Since this blog has no essential purpose of direction, as of yet, I've decided to take my first stab at writing something on here...
I think the original idea of this whole thing was to create a sort of calendar of events for ourselves and for our friends to add to, you know, shows, art openings, all of your average "bullshit" bullshit.
The more I try to come up with ideas as to how to format or even begin to write a blog like that, the less it makes sense to me.
So, maybe we're not throwing that whole idea to the wind entirely.
Maybe I'm just not in the mood today.
In spite of all of this:
Tonight I was deeply physically and emotionally affected by a song I've heard a hundred times or more. I was completely caught off-guard by a melody I could hum on command, but by lyrics I realized I'd never really pieced together.
The song was "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel, but it wasn't the recording from the album of the same title, it was a recording from the last show the band ever played (Auckland, New Zealand, 2001).
I found it here... Neutral Milk Hotel - Final Live Show
It's almost painful to listen to this recording.
It takes place two years after Jeff Mangum went into a reclusive state after his nervous breakdown which he speaks with surprisingly frank openness about between songs of the set---the audience's still, quiet, lack of a reaction adds an air of discomfort to the whole performance... even as Mangum tries to reassure them that it's not a problem for him to talk about it, you can tell there is a new wall placed between himself and the audience that he's playing to that is not easily torn down.
I sat, reading every word of lyrics to each song in the set (mostly because I had nothing better to do) hoping to gain some perspective into Mangum's tragically disoriented mind and to decipher some words I've always missed through layers of fuzz or the distractions of my own surroundings.
It's strange what an accessory music can become--how we move about our lives with a wash of song in background--because, even including in the live setting, it's really only interacting with one of our senses. Live music is not the visual representation of the idea behind the music being played, it's only a physical appearance of it's own creator. Music with any kind of truth or profound meaning behind it can only be taken in when you allow it to enter your visual sense, as well (because we obviously can't taste, smell, or touch the music... though touch would be pretty incredible). You have to let the sound fully encompass you, turn the volume loud enough that the sound is a full envelope around your body... that's the only way to REALLY get it.
I'm not saying anything I'm sure you didn't already know, I'm just giving more perspective as to where my mind was when I heard this song.
Look at that...
Back on subject.
Might as well throw in the lyrics so you don't have to look them up yourself to follow along.
"What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me, me
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me
What a curious life we have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anne's ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees, trees
Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
Now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winters clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name
What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round' the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all"
The finite life we live is so perfectly illustrated in these words.
It's like someone else's dream.
It's here and it's gone.
It's full of these tiny significant insignificances, these little moments that become fractured pieces of memory getting smaller and more distant with each day we grow older and farther away from them.
It's beautiful, tragic, and terrifying all at once.
I would go on, but I'm just assuming no one read this far.
Expect more existential ramblings in the near future.
I'll try to keep them all tied in with some medium of entertainment as to avoid just soap-boxing the endless array of unanswerable questions that life presents me...
