To My Mel, How I Long for Your Arrival

It's early morning: well before 7:00 am.  There are three trains you're likely to know in NYC.  Really old, old, and no longer new.  I'm standing on the no longer new train, reaching for a rail between two, or maybe three people.  I smell coffee, people I don't know, the toothpaste left in my mouth, and the unmistakable aroma of Fall rain in the underground New York City MTA.  Headphones on, new book out, I clutch what I need for my day in my messenger bag very close to me.



"I'll Look Around" shuffles on in through my ears and seems to reach my fingertips and my shins in the same way.  The train no longer sways, but moves with the deep blue melancholy which I am hearing.  Suddenly, the train communters' quiet is as in-coincidental as the whiteness of a painter's canvass.  The train moves fast, but sways slowly, conspiring with Madeline Peyroux.  She brings to new life an old time blue.

Everyone knows the quiet, though we've not heard it like this before.  Everyone feels the tune that comes with the blue sway.  The moment fleets, but leaves its imprint nonetheless.  I see the scene is a musical staff dripping blue watercolor notes.  For that little moment, the quiet is but confirmation.

We confirm the scene of falling blue and melancholy movement that comes from the same place.  This "not so new" train of strangers just misses her all together: the one we all know is just too far from us for now.  We wait for a moment, quietly together, before we go about our day.  It's okay, we remind ourselves; It's just for the time being.

She'll be here before we know it.

On art and cheese

Close your eyes. Now imagine, without conversation or context, you must utilize a craft or skill to connect yourself to an audience with an idea or feeling.

To me, this is art.

When I consider the purity of art, I think of a spectrum of cheese (because I like cheese). On one side: "easy" cheese- in a can or a powder. This is made for the consumer; an odd collaboration of all things false and far from their source, in fact classified as a "cheese like product." On the other side of this axis, I imagine some french goat cheese, which, to the rare connoisseur is a fine delicacy, but to the average joe americano, not something to swallow- but arguably, more authentically cheese.

When I consider the integrity of the art, that is; the integrity of the artist, I think of a spectrum of ownership that is the business of art. I understand that artists should eat. But there is a palatable difference in a work of true art and a work of production. This is not to say that production and popularity have no place in art (@Warhol). But at least leave us to guess of you, as an artist are in it for the money or the love (or both) (@Lady Gaga and John Mayer).

With this in mind, I'd like to play out the number one hits of Australia and the United States during mid-August of this year. Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know and LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett and GoonRock - Party Rock Anthem.

Listen here and here

What happened to today is that I happened across Gotye's song and found myself moved.  When I saw that it was a number one hit, I thought to myself- "Damn, Australia has cooler number one hits than we do."

I don't value pretention.  Though I struggle with it when contemporary popular music feels more like an "art-like product" than something that moves me.  Forgive me, but I don't remember the last American number one hit that moved me.  Perhaps I'm nostalgic or jaded or something- But also, perhaps our popular music sucks ass. Is LMFAO an actual band, a group, a single artist?  ITS A PRODUCT- ALMOST PURELY.  Their video is a production of mindlessness.  It's not easy cheese, but rather, and quite literally- this is best analogy I can truthfully afford- easy cheese picked up from the ground, shmeared back into some sort of play-dough spaghetti machine and shit out again.  Don't we ever get sick of this?

It is my contention that art is risky, and business is calculated.  The people in power weigh in on both sides and somehow manage to find themselves a business person or an artist- the best of either is some combination of both.

If you buy or appreciate music in any way, you should find yourself somewhere between Rob Gordon:

And someone squirting your predictable cheese-like-product in some parking lot somewhere.












I'm not concerned with which one identifies.  I just think if you are one or the other, than you ought to admit your love, because the makers of things know what they are doing.  They are either weighing in on your risk-less consumerism- or your love for reckless abandon.


Who doesn't love a nice squirt of cheese, or being the first to know about something cool?

~Cheers.

I have two "followers"

I have two "followers."

:)

It was just about a year ago since the last time that I wrote here.  I remember that I hopped on a plane to be with my family in a time of loss. I put together some thoughts to help me let go and move forward into the school year.

Some time later, I wrote this song and I want to share it with those who also loved my Papa.




I'm ready to write more.  In fact I see it as an important part of reflection and growth.  We'll see where it goes.

Yours,
Michael