:: anne in the attic ::

Create Your Own Countdown

:: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 ::

Man, has it been over a month? Okay. So I guess I'm having a hard time juggling everything right now. There is so much I want to do that I'm paralyzed (I coined the term "option paralysis" several years ago to describe this type of situation). Not only do I want to be immersed in the art in my head so that I can manifest it somehow physically, be it music or photos or video, but I also want to be relaxing and enjoying how beautiful the summer is around here. I have thought lately, about the seasons: I don't know how many more I'm going to see. My mortality is peeking around corners at me-- not quite staring me in the face, not YET-- and this feeling is pervading everything on the docket these days. There's a sense of urgency to my creations, and I know better than to let that seep in and ruin the work itself.

So things feel pretty busy, especially because I've opted to work some overtime while it stays light later. It's only the illusion of time, though. I have been tricking myself that way for a couple of weeks and now I'm a bit sleep-deprived. And I STILL haven't accomplished what I'd hoped by this time. I can't explain, really. But I have been making some wonderful music videos in my head.

In the time between happenings and commitments, I find myself haunted by a body of musical work by an 80's-pop-band-turned-to-heroin, called Talk Talk. [To hear a bit in streaming audio format, there's a MySpace page devoted to this era of the band's work, even though the band is long defunct. Listen to "New Grass" for one of the most evocative and innovative straight-up-yet-wildly-syncopated 3/4 time signatures you'll ever hear, a fine example of their work in this time period. And then of course "I Believe in You," one of my personal favorites, will come back to you in quiet moments, rising inside you first as a small kernel of joy, heightening awareness until you realize you're full of the world around you and it is good, so very good in its bittersweetness.] Their first albums were upbeat and synthed in the classic 80's way. And then Mark Hollis went another direction entirely. The studio sessions were closed and exclusive, and the two albums that dropped at the height of this creativity ("Spirit of Eden" & "Laughing Stock") are two of the most soul-binding, amazing, understated, exploratory albums that will ever-so-gently rip your heart out that I have ever heard. They're spiritual without invoking the institution of "God." They're highly sophisticated compositions without losing the flights of spontaneity and freedom of expression. And yes, I said "haunted." Because they will haunt you. They will make you look inside of yourself and all around you, they will make you question and posit, bury and exhume, clench and release, wonder and know. They're like nothing else I have ever heard, on the fringes of other genres, yet keeping a few secrets as to the exact identity of what you're hearing: a mystery. A call, an echo. A haunting.

One writer from the online review page, Unsung, said of "Laughing Stock": "The only problem I’ve found with this record over the years is what to follow it with. Nothing seems appropriate except silence."

:: Anne 7:17 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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