Just spent a deep smile-inducing afternoon sharing time with a friend. It has been so good to connect over a shared love for music and expressing this through our voices and our instruments. Music isn’t something I’ve written about much in this space but it is so much a part of my everyday. I suppose I don’t write about it regularly because it’s more often a medium through which I think and experience rather than being the object of my thought or my experiences. But to share music is like sharing a good home-cooked meal – it’s inviting the other into a part of your world and giving something of yourself in a vulnerable way. As my friend and I partook of the one song our voices united, weaving notes like aromas. It was refreshing to do so. It makes me sad that music has become a money-fetching item to be produced on mass for greedy sods in plastic castles. Music should not be merchandise. Yes it’s something to share, but sharing means giving generously and of yourself. I like the fact that so much good music is so readily available to all through the radio and the net these days. It just makes me sad that it’s so controlled by people who don’t know anything about it, people who don’t care anything about it, people who are only interested in the way it fills their bank accounts. I hold to the belief that as music is a timeless creation, it will survive this age and be carried on amongst those who have ears to hear its authentic heartbeat.
Earlier this week I made my way into the city to a particularly lovely book/music store with a voucher in hand to spend at my pleasure. The voucher was from my last birthday, which was no short time ago, but I’d been saving it for a rainy day.
Well, I’m not entirely sure how long I was there, it was certainly over a couple of hours of sifting through a multitude of books, pouring over large glossy photographic records and dipping into contemporary culture critiques. I considered acquiring a book that told the escapist tale of travelling along the Mediterranean coast with the smell of crushed olives underfoot. How I would love to escape at this very moment. But no, sense got the better of me and I left that one on the shelf next to the story of a blind man racing around the world in so many days. Although the photography books were more than satisfactory for my eager eyes, they exceeded the value of my voucher and had to be closed and placed back on the shelf.
It was then that I passed the music section and a face caught my eye. Although I believe this woman has the voice of the soul of a people I have never really given her the time of day. Not since my favourite aunt’s wedding where my eleven year old self fell in love with everything about this one song she sang and returned several times to the jukebox where I ensured it was played numerous times throughout the night. We all love a jukebox hog. So just in case you were wondering the song was Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor. I think Sinead has produced some much finer work since. But back to the story, her face caught my eye on a promotional board and I decided to have a quick listen to her new album Theology. From this brief snippet of listening I decided it would be a worthy use of my voucher and I went home with the double CD in my possession.
I am more than happy with my rediscovery of Sinead. I know this intense feminine figure is not every individual’s cup of tea, but damn she’s blown me away with this album. It’s been a long time since I’ve found such a raw and honest look at the world through the musical medium. Antony’s I am a bird now rocked me in a similar fashion with its sadness and human frailty. Theology gives an image of God that I can thoroughly embrace. It shows God in the way that I understand this being of immense purity to be. She renders God as a God of the defeated, the broken, the lonely. A God who cries over those that have missed the point of this life.
You know the soul and you know what makes it go…
I wanna make something so lovely for you,
Cos’ I promised that’s what I’d do for you;
With the Bible I stole, I know you forgave my soul,
because such was my need on a chronic Christmas eve;
And I think we’re agreed that it should’ve been free,
and you sang to me…
“They dress the wounds of my poor people as though they’re nothing,
Saying ‘peace, peace,’ when there’s no peace.”
I love this.
To create.
Why do I want to create? What is it that runs through my veins and drops vibrant rhythms and wells pools of colour. Burgundy, indigo, ochre. Electric. It’s more than just cells and plasma. Sometimes I get so frustrated because I feel I’m unable to unleash the things that drive my spirit in a significant way.
I suppose it is purpose I’m looking for. To use my faculties to mould something new. I don’t believe I’m here for a humdrum existence. I don’t believe any of us are here for such things. It just happens that we let ourselves believe the lie that brilliance is an exception. The ‘brilliance’ that does end up on the pedestal is nothing but a farce anyway. Life isn’t supposed to be lived within a plaster cast. Even if the cast is covered with distracting little notes and pictures. It’s for running. It’s for heavy breathing. The stuff that saturates the lungs in oxygen.
I don’t want to get lost to the hospital institution of Western ways. The lunatics of normality. The straightjackets of inconspicuous submission. To strive for such things is lost time.
I want to create…
I really miss a friend of mine. She and I share music like we share dessert. We love the same stuff and we devour it even when our stomachs are telling us we’ve had enough. Lemon meringue pie. Salmonella Dub. Tiramisu. Most Def. Affogatos. Antony. Martha. Nick. Jill. Tex. Joan… The list goes on. Yeah we share them and love them. But she’s a few hundred kilometres away and I miss her laugh and her humour and her company. Some people play such a unique role in your life and when they’re missing it sucks.
Why am I writing this? Well today I had to listen to some music that grated against every consuming fibre within me. Lyrics like “karma karma karma chamelion, you come and go…” just do not fit with me. It made me realise how much I appreciate sharing the splendour of voice and instrument with a like-minded being.
This takes me back to a few months ago when we sat listening to the smooth hoops and echoes of voice in the womb-like back room of Bennett’s Lane. As the smoky words weaved themselves among the resonating notes of the double bass, my eyes fell on the light shining through my generous glass of cab sauv. A deep saturated red sitting against the lustrous blue lights. I love the peace of moments like these. I adore sharing these little pieces of my life. Music and friends make me a rich girl indeed.
I went to see Rice perform last night.
I know I’ve really been moved by something when I walk away and don’t want to talk about it. When I know that words are useless in relaying the experience. It was one of those happenings last night. I just needed space from others to digest the words, the gut-wrenching chords, the lilting harmonies, the understanding, the beauty, the sadness.
A fellow devotee and I had gone out to have a couple of beers before the gig and had ended up in a place of deep conversation on life and our spot within it all. It’s good stuff when you can talk with another and know there sits an underlying honesty between you, when things are not forced or conjured to fit the moment. What I also loved about this was that so much of what we had covered in our discussion was later touched on by Damien as he set about sharing his craft with us.
The gig was within the old Palais Theatre where the audience is seated on antique plush leather chairs. Down on the St Kilda beach this venue exudes the grandeur of a bygone era. I couldn’t imagine the music that Rice creates being thrown out to the mega audience of one of our arenas. He is an artisan, from another age, a craftsman. And his music belongs in a place that honours that and avoids the plasticity of now. He invites one to participate within his enigmatic spectacle.
The moments disappeared into my past like that. Wish you could’ve been there with me.
