Listen to the music: And when I’m dead

19 10 2015

Listen to the music is dead; long live Listen to the music.

Okay, so I had this idea to listen to all of my alt-blues-jazz-pop-punk (i.e., whatever wasn’t classical) cds from A to Z. I hadn’t really been listening to enough music, and thought this project would get me back to garden.

It worked, for a bit. And then it didn’t. And then it kinda did, and then it really didn’t.

If I wasn’t in the mood to listen to the next cd in rotation, I didn’t listen to anything at all. I’d occasionally pop in a rogue disc, but mostly, my player went unplayed.

For awhile I thought I’d lost my music mojo: All that had moved me no longer did. I mean, that was kinda the point of starting the project, to reconnect to something which had for all of my life mattered to me.

But it wasn’t true. Music did still move me. I’d occasionally listen to my Mp3 player on the train and BAM, I was right back in it. Or I’d hear a stray song and maybe bounce around, maybe mouth the words, maybe sit as still as still can be.

In other words, I have no earthly idea why I stopped listening to the music in the first place, and whatever my previous sense of Needing-to-see-this-through, well, sometimes persistence is its own obstacle.

I am trying to listen to more of my own music. It’s a connection for me—tho’ to what, I couldn’t tell you—and helps to quiet my distractions.

Maybe I’ll get more writing done; maybe I won’t get anything more done than I would, otherwise. Regardless, I’ll  bounce around, maybe mouth the words, maybe sit as still as still can be.

~~~

Some of what I’ve listened to recently: Hem, Jayhawks, Rickie Lee Jones, Katell Keineg.

I’ll never get married, but if I get married, I’ll dance to this at my wedding:

And this one, well, I like the undertone of menace:

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We are circling like sparrows

20 10 2011

YouTube commenter lemontarsier nailed this one: Exquisite music; truly terrible video.

Anyway.

Jtte. asked me (in her inimitable, directive way) today what I thought would happen with the various Occupy movements: Tell me, what do you think. . . .

It will probably fail.

No!

I’m not saying it will fail, but I think the odds are against it.

But this could! lead somewhere.

Yes, it could. There’s a chance, a small chance, that this could work. Before, there was no chance, now there is; that matters.

Yes! [pause] But this is such a conservative country.

Wellll. . . .

No! If you have liberal students from the university leading protests, that is a mark of a conservative country. If you people who are protesting because they lost their houses to foreclosure, it is a conservative country. They don’t want to change anything, not really, they just want to fit in.

Okay, I see your point.

This man, this Murdoch? Murdoch, yes, he was giving a speech to teachers, and this African-American man stood up and started to yell, and shoom! the police came and took him away. And then a teacher, a woman, at another table, stood up, and another woman and another woman, six teachers, African-American, white, Latino, they stood up and they were dragged away, and you know what the rest of those teachers did? Do you? They clapped.

They don’t want to be disturbed.

Exactly! They should be supporting their fellow teachers and what are they doing?! They’re siding with the police!

[n.b.: Jtte.’s father is a Marxist and a retired teacher in Puerto Rico]

What kind of working class do we have in this country? No, they are too comfortable.

They have escape routes besides revolution, so they escape rather than revolt.

Exactly! . . .

[And then we went on to discuss class struggle, social movements, reform, radicalism, culture, legislation, gay rights, women’s rights, and then, inevitably, the Catholic Church and authority, by which time nothing we were discussing had anything to do with OWS.]

[Anyway, while I do think the occupy movements will dissipate, maybe they won’t. Maybe this opening grows larger, maybe something happens.]

[Exquisite song, in any case.]