Listening in the Past Tense

Listening from a distance, listening from some far away place and time. You never thought you would be here now, that so much time would ever pass, but it has; it was some other you who felt so much about those old songs. 

Watch Them Glow

This is going to be one of those posts that probably means nothing to anyone but me, but that's all right. Maybe one day someone will stumble across it and recognize what I'm going to describe, and will be relieved that someone else knows what it's like. Even if they don't...well, it doesn't really matter, I suppose, because it's also about trying to convert a feeling into imagery. 

So, please. . . bear with me. 

It was the end of April, and my collaborator and companion (in the Doctor Who sense, as I've come to think of us) had come down to go to Psych Fest. He wore a 13th Floor Elevators shirt and a blue metallic plaid jacket, I wore a psychedelic dress and enormous shoes. It was sunny but not hot, the crowd was amiable, the bands were good, and aside from the lock jamming on the bathroom door and having to be rescued by a bunch of hippies (high fives, y'all!) everything went off without a hitch. 

I don't recall feeling haunted. It wasn't a very haunted sort of day. Everything felt very warm and present in the sunshine, I didn't even have that feeling like I've had in the past, as if part of me had been left behind somewhere. No, there wasn't a trace of any haunting, as far as I could tell. 

It was only a couple of days later that things turned strange. 

At the very beginning of May, each having gone our separate ways home, we set about sorting through the photos and videos we'd taken with an eye toward future projects. We'd got some really good stuff, although the audio capabilities of my little point 'n' shoot camera couldn't really handle the sound at a rock show. Monsieur Pseud (as I like to call him) sent me one he'd taken with his phone, panning the crowd while the Raveonettes played in the background. Nothing unusual about it, really, not technically. It was a perfectly serviceable video and an accurate representation of the scene. I remembered him filming it even, while I lounged on a tree stump drinking Dr Pepper. No, what was unusual was my reaction to it. 

It hit me like a ton of bricks, that feeling of being haunted. It was like deja vu, but not deja vu of the actual event. It felt like the memory of something that had happened many years ago, a record of something of grave importance that had been missed and had only just now returned. What the hey? It didn't make sense, but that was the only way to describe it. The closest term to the feeling, besides haunted, might be hiraeth.

I needed a second, third, fourth opinion. Naturally, I dragged each of my family members in to watch it, asking if they noticed anything odd. Anything about the picture, atmosphere, the music, the mood? Did it make them feel some sort of way? Nope - aside from saying they might feel a bit anxious in such a packed setting, to their eyes it was exactly what it appeared to be, a typical rock fest crowd. It was just me who was being weird. 

Well, okay. There was no obvious explanation. And there still isn't, for the way it gives me a shiver every time. Just an ordinary video. As proof, I present it here, courtesy of Mr. Pseud. A crowd watching the Raveonettes tear it up as the sun is going down. 

But, surely you know by now that these things don't let me go so easily. I couldn't explain it; I could barely describe it. However, if I'm going to call myself an artist, I should at least be able to make something that looks like it made me feel. Perhaps it would help me understand. I got down to work.

My video editing skills are rudimentary at best, and I learned as much from what didn't work as what did. Not that it's perfect, mind you, but my husband, bless him, said it's about as good a visualization of deja vu as he's ever seen. Here is the finished product:

There you have it. Not how the clip looks to me, but how it feels. As if everything is doubled, every person accompanied by their own shade. Like some other, parallel world is close by, just over our shoulders and out of sight. And maybe it is. Who knows?  

Maybe part of collaboration is learning to see through someone else's eyes. Collective eyes of a sort. Again, who knows? Maybe I really am just weird. 

Whatever the case, it's yet another mystery to explore. 

Late Nights and Dark Mornings

Have a little music while I think about what to post next.

This New Year's Eve Post Is Brought To You By ...

My silhouette drinking from a plastic cup at the Levitation festival. Cheers. It's been a hell of a year. 

Out Of Place

In the midst of an upwelling of synchronicities (an upwelling? An unveiling? A swirl? A surge? By what mechanism do synchronicities reveal themselves? ) I came across these snippets of video I'd taken in December 2018, to prove to myself that the event described in this post really happened, so much was my disbelief at the time.

2018 seems like another world now, every day seems like another world, honestly, but as we again creep toward that secretive place that is autumn, the song is still appropriate, will probably always be appropriate, as long as I'm fated to look for the things I can't see. 

Cosmic Dancer

Being that today is the anniversary of Marc Bolan's death, I was reminded of this odd little T.Rex related synchronicity between my friend Heinrich and me, circa 2004.

For reasons unknown, I'd had the song Cosmic Dancer stuck in my head all day. It's not exactly a radio staple, and it was more than 30 years old by then, but nevertheless there it was.

Later that day, Heinrich came by and we went for a walk. Suddenly he burst out singing Cosmic Dancer - and what's more it was the exact line that had kept running through my mind. I asked him about it and he said "oh, I was listening to that album this morning. Isn't it great?"

It was just a small thing, but a coincidence so vanishingly unlikely that it reminds me that such things may truly be cosmic after all.


image credit: NASA

Ebony Eyes

September third, oh so many years ago. My cousin and me, after my sister's wedding, running and sliding around the polished floors of the reception hall while this song was playing. We've never forgotten it.

Our formal dresses were as tacky as the decor in this video. Such were the ways of the 70's.

Heart Shaped Box

My son, who is 16, was listening to Nirvana's Uplugged In New York on the way to school the other morning. I thought to myself, it must be coming around to the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death soon. 24 years ago. How time flies.

I knew it not because of my memory - which is good for this sort of thing, yes - but because of the feeling in the air, the deathly smell of Spring.

It's understood that Spring is the season of rebirth, but those of us who tangle with despair know the other side of it - that beneath all the new green is the sickening smell of decay. There are terrible things down in the leaf mould and humus, things that don't bear thinking about if you know what's good for you. It makes sense to me that suicides increase when the growing season begins.

My son wonders what it was like back then, when Nirvana were the big music act and grunge was the thing. I tell him, there was a reason we liked our music so aggressively, appealingly* glum. It was relevant. It was the mood of the time.

Case in point - on the day Cobain died, I was visiting my neighbor Kathy and her brother Darren at their parents house, up at the lake. They were house-sitting while their folks were away, and for my part I was just glad to be out of town. The change of season had done nothing to ease the damp chill of my apartment or the dark pall inside it. There was a lot wrong in my life - Kathy knew this, I think, that's why she'd invited me - and I desperately needed a break.

Diary entry, April 5, 1994

Pain is measured in dols
Triptych - a three panel painting
Gold - Au
Paroxysm - a fit
Sibilant - hissing
Apocryphal - mythical
Alfred Nobel invented a number of explosives

A creepy, creepy day. Cold and humid and dark. I woke in the night and thought "winter is coming" and was filled with dread, as if it really were Autumn and it would all be to do again. The eeriness I feel is so big it's beyond describing.

....

Of course, on the the 5th of April, none of us knew that Cobain was dead. We only knew he was missing. There was some concern though, and there were updates on the TV news. Only a month before, he'd been in a coma, and things had seemed iffy for a while. I commented to Darren (no doubt sounding more callous than I'd meant) that if Cobain had passed away, he might be considered a legend, like Morrison or Joplin or Hendrix had been. I wasn't thinking about it so coldly, really. I was just pondering the strangeness of such a scene, in which one went from being a "troubled rock star" in the here and now to being something quite different in memory.

A few days later, I was back in my dismal apartment when the news broke that Cobain's body had been found. While I hadn't necessarily been convinced before that moment he hadn't just been hiding out somewhere, suddenly it seemed obvious that he could have met no other fate. Suddenly, it seemed that the anguish in his voice had contained a certain foreknowledge of doom.

But then, a downward spiral is always easy to see in retrospect.

I had no personal attachment to the band besides owning their albums; I hadn't even seen them live. Still, that day I felt something shift. It was subtle and nameless, but it was there. The song Heart Shaped Box played on the radio again and again, not that it had ever been away for long.

By then the weather was hot, as humid as steaming wool. I went for a walk among the warren of streets on the other side of Main. The leaves and grass were unfurling in a grotesque display of fecundity and the scent of decay was overwhelming. "The day was bright and shiny like a mirror" I wrote in my journal later, "but the underside of the mirror is death."

Indeed, half hidden under the overgrown shrubbery on Market street, I'd come upon a dead rooster in the gutter; his iridescent feathers shining blue and green. It seemed telling somehow that no one had bothered to retrieve the broken corpse. A terrible knowledge gnawed at my unconscious, and to this day I'm afraid to walk down that street. I have the uncanny feeling I might meet my own ghost.

This is how it was back in those days; It's hardly even symbolic. It was the mood of the time. Anguish and apathy buzzed like fat flies in the sodden heat. Hidden things festered out of sight. For a long time, a raw nerve had been thrumming in the background of the country.**We all felt it, we all knew it was there, but Kurt Cobain had helped give it voice.

How much all this would mean to my son, I don't know. It would be nice if it didn't have to mean anything. It would be nice if his generation had no need to deal with raw nerves and corruption and things hidden out of sight. But it seems that this will not be the case.

This Spring, the landscape has burst into greenery like I haven't seen since then. Pollen blows in waves, water drips from weeds. I feel shaky, remembering the dead rooster and my own ghost left on the side of the road. I'm middle-aged now. I tell myself I've been around, there's no need to be afraid. It's only Spring. It always passes, if you wait long enough.

I tell myself this, and hope this year that it's true.
I keep watch and wait for Summer to come.

*We were depressed as fuck, but we still grew up listening to Abba and The Knack.
**For further reference re: my claim that something had been wrong in the background for a long time, see the article Kids In The Dark by David Breskin. The relevant point to me here is not the Satanic Panic angle or even so much the murder itself, but that a whole community of teenagers kept silent. 

Blue Lamp

Some months ago, I mentioned dreaming it was 1987 again. The dream ended, but the feeling somehow remains. There was nothing especially memorable about that year, yet the memories flit around unreasonably, like moths battering a window pane.

In those days, my cousin Anna was a huge fan of Stevie Nicks. So much so that she'd go around wearing her mother's antique lace table cloth and a pair of enormous boots. One of Anna's favorite songs was called Blue Lamp. This may seem strange to relate to 1987, as the song was released on the Heavy Metal soundtrack in '81, but of course we weren't allowed to see the film back then. Our brothers had the soundtrack, though (of course they did) and Anna's Stevie Nicks obsession gave the song a prominent place that year.

Now it's more than 30 years later, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, I've had the song stuck in my head for weeks. The lyrics have a poetic, mystical bent  - slightly tinged with anger - of the kind especially appealing to young girls.

"There was no message to be found anywhere in sight
Inside or out
I had looked everywhere but the only lamp left on in the house
Was a blue light"

While this lyric may evoke loneliness for some, to me it was always a comforting image. Perhaps because I thought - and still do - that the blue light was actually the message. I like this idea, that a light may be a message as much as any written word.

According to Nicks herself, the blue lamp is a real object, a Tiffany lamp that was gift from her mother.

Stevie Nicks and The Blue Lamp

In the song, the lamp is a concrete object, but has also become a symbol. As Nicks has described it, "a light at the end of the tunnel" as well as her mother's love.

While I can't relate to the idea of having a loving parent any better than I could in 1987, I can certainly relate to the idea of light as a symbol of hope, a sense of not being alone. Back then I was just beginning to come to terms with my chronic sense of solitude.

"Downstairs the big old house is mine
Upstairs where the stars still laugh and they shine"

While I honestly can't say what Nicks meant by this line, I know what it meant to me. The image of an empty house and shining stars meant freedom. I imagined being completely on my own, moving about under my own power. I could seek out any adventure. I would no longer need permission. And the stars would keep me company.

"And the light that shines through the shining night
Is the lamp that I carried from my mother's home
And the light that burns through the window pane
And the love remains"

The act of carrying a lamp becomes something bigger, weightier. A legacy or heritage, perhaps. Maybe a transfer of feminine power, or love itself.

I intuited this much in 1987, even if I didn't quite have the words for it. I still don't have the words for it, to tell you the truth. But there must be a reason the song is stuck in my mind after all these years. These things don't happen without reason.

There is still a lesson to be learned somewhere.

The Hidden Cameras

Follow These Eyes

The weather is warming and this music sounds about right.