Seriously cleansing. I'm having to stop myself selling all my records because something deep down, worm-like in my brain is whispering like Gysin:
And voices like that are so seductive - I can almost sympathise with the maggoty-haired loons at the bus stop, almost empathise with those that have nothing - almost, they're all still hopeless, hapless scumuppets but I can see how a final tweak in my neuronal chains could send me into the abyss.
Or at least send me to the edge, just to look over and smile while the vertigo wears off.
Still, this skin-shedding (it's my identity going out to Japanese ebayers and Belgium noise purists, some of these records I've only ever kept because one day someone might see them and be impressed at my eclecticism) has also got me thinking about what would happen if you could only ever listen to a record once, if you had to internalise it immediately, in real-time, before it faded away forever.
Wouldn't you listen more? Could you shake the need to make the sound familiar? So much of what I listen to isn't for the shock of the new but for the clawed-back time that the sound seems to compress. So much of the music that I love and will always love is for the arousal of memory, the activation of schemas, the celebration of things that will never come back. Even new music is listened to at first for something it evokes rather than as a thing in itself which has made me wonder if I shouldn't instead suck on some more Salvia and lie back in total silence in order to let the old memories drain away...
But that may be a step too far, for now I've decided on the new musical strategy of listening to the same song over and over again until I know every pulse and sqeak, every hum and breath. Most girls I know have been doing this for years and it doesn't seem to have done them any harm. Tonight's track then, randomly selected from i-Tunes is this:
I've heard it around 20 times as I write this and intend to hear it for at least 30 times more before sleep. I don't particularly like this song, can't even remember hearing it before but I'm starting to like it more, the thrust of repetition making it my friend.
The girl will be my soulmate before I'm done. Her voice already reminds me of someone I know...
The way it ends in thin drawn-out winds and eddies seems somehow appropriate.
So...
With around 50 cds and records now shed it feels so much lighter in here, making me concentrate more on what I actually like, making me listen more intently while I work on my new chemistry project, currently a bubbling mass of fractional distillators and hastily assembled gas pipes that reminds me oddly of the video they made for The Who's I Can See For Miles on that show where they made crap videos for songs that didn't have videos...
Yes, I'm creating a drug that- No, I can't tell you yet. Watch this Space.
Almost forgot: a big thanks to Kek KidShirt for The Wooden Wand and Vanishing Voice Cd; excellent stuff which reminds me of almost nothing.
1 comment:
Been selling on e-bay myself recently too - having another purge of the cd collection (although the hoarder mentality still forces me to rip and store them as MP3s before sending the nasty solids on their way.
By contrast, buying up more vinyl on a weekly basis. Silly, isn't it...
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