I remember with some trepidation and self-consciousness my very first attempts to read and make sense of French – taking everything so literally at first, taking my time with grasping idiom. It’s always a series of baby steps when transforming your brain to take in and process new languages. To really feel them and live them, you must, to paraphrase the late Derek Walcott, you must change your life. I did not change my life, and thus I’m still no expert, but better recognize the fluidity of language in a way that my grammatical and rigid approach to English never allows for.
One window (or ‘windae’, were we Scots) to crawl through to find meaning in disembodied, lifeless translation drudgery was music. As soon as I realized, as a teenager who wanted nothing more than to run away from my hometown (tout de suite), that much of my favorite music was inspired by literary greatness, I could at least immerse myself in those other worlds. Imagine, though, that somehow in the intervening years, I had completely forgotten the connection between “Les yeux des pauvres” (Baudelaire) and the almost word-for-word treatment by The Cure in “How Beautiful You Are”.
I don’t know if you can imagine how much it was like opening a window to the past, almost like time travel, to be reminded of this and to return in my mind to that time in 1988-9 when this song so deeply moved me to tears and led me to Baudelaire. And how, now in present day, having the memory reawakened when someone sent me the Baudelaire describing it as: “unutterably sad commentary on relationships and the human condition. I love it”, I am moved to find someone else is as deeply affected by the same feelings.
Music heard with you
at home or in the car
or even while strolling
didn’t always sound as pristine
as piano tuners might wish –
it was sometimes mixed with voices
full of fear and pain,
and then that music
was more than music,
it was our living and our dying.
For the first time in my life, I have no butter in the house. I usually have a small stockpile because I’m always preparing to bake. But I haven’t baked since Christmas, which must be the longest bake-drought of my adult life. If I were to get into it, I am sure the drive would return, but now isn’t the time. Sometimes I wonder about shifts like this – are they phases, or are they permanent changes in our make-up? Are lemon cakes and Anzac biscuits a part of the past?
While in the now (or ‘the noo’ to be all Scot about it), the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies does not waft through the air, I am surrounded by sunlight, poetry and music. All ache and exultation.
from Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner
What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that. The slow beam
Opened me up. Walls walked through me
Like resonant waves. I thought that maybe
If you aren’t too busy, we could spend our lives
Parting in stations, promising to write War and Peace, this time with feeling
As bullets leave their luminous traces across
Wait, I wasn’t finished. I was going to say
Breakwaters echo long lines of cloud
Oh, what could be more beautiful than “I thought that maybe/If you aren’t too busy, we could spend our lives/Parting in stations, promising to write/War and Peace, this time with feeling”?
Maybe the soundtrack du jour: Ruby Haunt’s “Crave”. It sounds just like something I would have fallen in love with in high school but sounds immediate at the same time. It pulls my heartstrings.
“Listen to the girl, who waits by your side, in a simple world, no need to ask why, nothing’s gonna change, the people pass by, you feel no pain, as she starts to cry. Craving, craving some comfort. You can’t explain, the things on your mind, you’re on your way, you won’t rewind. It’s over with, no need to lie, you’re just a myth, but you know it’s fine. Craving, craving some comfort.”
If only life were like living in a bubble of poetry, literature, music, going to gigs, walking through the fields and forests, last-minute adventures, linguistic parades and endless conversations.
Some days require wrapping not just your ears but your whole being in music. Meaning that such days require more than one song for the soundtrack du jour.
Today’s gems (loud, in headphones) even though there’s a whole lot more:
Catacombs – Vorderhaus “Have I the right to want you/to say I love when I don’t see you?”
Soundtrack du jour – a blast from the past – The Dø, “Stay (Just a Little Bit More)”. Years ago in the throes of several most ill-advised entanglements I came across this song, and it seemed so perfect. I ran across it again while looking at old journal entries on the mostly defunct LiveJournal platform. It’s still just as perfect as it was back in 2010.
“He was a bore, a true chore and I still wonder why I ever
Wanted to see him more
I know it’s useless to complain all these years after, well
Thanks for asking now I’m fine
I should have muffled my obsession but I was all too pure
And so blindly sure
That he’d always have the satisfying hug I needed
Stay just a little bit more
Don’t let my heart turn sore
Stay just a little bit more
Don’t let my heart turn sore
He was kind, polite and divine in public
Tender as a sleepy child
But when we got slightly more intimate
It wasn’t that bright
Yes he was kind, polite, sound and sublime
In theory
But in practice believe me
There was a nasty fire burning
Stay just a little bit more
Don’t let my heart turn sore
Stay just a little bit more
Don’t let my heart turn sore
‘And when my curves came into play
Oh what a hopeless tumbling down when
His desire was stuck in plaster
I was young but I believed in no tales’
So in the desert of the bed I looked hard for an oasis
But all I could find was a dead camel in pieces
And I got so scared I tried to lure him back to bed
And I whispered stay just a little more
But now I’m grateful to the camel
Cos all the lazy boy could do was run
Then I knew for sure
That he would never be the satisfying shag I needed”
I never intended for this springtime playlist to grow to such massive proportions. It’s just that I was exposed to so much music – so much sound – so much joy – so much pain in the last few months, and this is the result. My experience and memory filtered into an auditory blueprint. Effortlessly. It’s long – so long – but I did not feel like censoring or making choices because I do that all the rest of the time in my life. You don’t have to listen or like this compilation of 110 bloody songs (although on the burned discs I’ve mailed by post, it looks like maybe only 109 of them actually worked – sorry)… but I am sharing all of it anyway because it’s just what I do.
I never imagine that very much happens or changes in my life, but then when I have an opportunity to reflect, I realize that major things have happened almost weekly over the course of the last six months…. I won’t go into the minutiae of that. I will only say that, as ever, nothing is settled. I am spending a lot of time thinking, reading and writing… and it’s all I feel like doing. It makes for a bit of an insular life that yields very little to tell/share (other than ‘insights’ or takeaways from the things I read and listen to…).
The postal versions (to those for whom I have postal addresses) are going out in the mail this week.
To move on you must move through… Love to all of you.
Random Gum: Moving on Again – How to live with a phantom: Spring into action 2017
(Almost) complete playlist on Spotify.
01. Ed Harcourt – Born in the 70s
Thanks to MP & chats on generational issues. “But can you count on me?/I might let you down/In a world that is so sensational/No you can count on me/I’m living for the now/Up against the older generation’s wall”
02. The Shacks – This Strange Effect…and I like the way you kiss me, don’t know if I should/but this feeling is love and I know that’s why I feel good…
03. The Associates – Love Hangover…I don’t need no cure…
Thanks to William
04. Psychic Twin – Hopeless…And I remain hopelessly alone in the heart/Like I’ve always been from the start…
05. Bubblegum Lemonade – As Dead as Disco…I’m San Francisco; you are New York…
Thanks to some random Glaswegian Twitter guy
06. Girl Ray – Trouble…I don’t want to win anymore, Cause honey, winning it just make me feel sore…
Trouble always finds me. Slight 70s sound; good lead-in tone and theme wise to “The Lonely Man”
07. The Incredible Hulk TV theme song – The Lonely Man
For SD
08. Howard Jones – Things Can Only Get Better
Planned to include this (thinking 2017 could only be better after 2016 – wrong so far!) and then realized dear Bethany also put it on a recent mix she sent – and even gave the mix this title.
09. Bill Ryder-Jones – You Can’t Hide a Light with the Dark…The way you fall apart/I still adore it…
“The light’s on in your backroom/Are you with him/Are you with him/The lights off and it’s darkness/You’re so heartless”
10. Maud Lübeck – Mon amourenboîte
Thanks to Laurent
11. Palehound – Cinnamon…Mellow, cringing ugly fellows/Mixing water into gin/And chasing it with cinnamon…
12. Minor Victories – Breaking My Light…Will these shadows lift/They’ve been breaking my light…
Thanks and love to MP, who once or twice helped lift some shadows
13. Rabbit is Rich – Kick Your Ass
More thanks to the incomparable William, king of Christmas cards and cool music mixes
14. Andrew Bird – Tin Foil…What is moving will be still/What has gathered will disperse…
“Evil Knievel shot up from dead grass/And I loved him better each time that he crashed”
15. Maria Andersson – The Girl Who Loved Islands
Probably just because I am nothing if not an island girl at heart
16. Bill Pritchard – Mother Tongue…They lived in separate countries, as we watched their future unfurl…
“What’s that you mean?/I don’t think I caught your tone/Say that again in your mother tongue”
17. Max Shrager – Thoughts of You…to hold onto my thoughts of you…
18. The War on Drugs – Red Eyes
Always a driving song… don’t drive as much as I used to but still need songs for the road
19. Boy & Bear – Southern Sun…You see I’m not gonna wait till the end of me/’Cause I got the burning fire in bed of my soul…
20. Crystal Stilts – The Dazzled…It can’t be saved. It’s already lost, it thrives on my resistance/We are bound and marching to an ever static distance…
21. Vetiver – Can’t You Tell…Look ahead where our future hides/But the world waits wide-eyed…
22. Trailer Trash Tracys – You Wish You Were Red…Oh my darling, you’re a dying red star…
23. Steve Mason – The Letter…could it be that you don’t know me any more?…
Was supposed to see this dude twice within a week (Gothenburg and Oslo). Canceled. It was not how I had imagined anyway, so just as well that none of it happened.
24. Cass McCombs – There Can Be Only One
“Like a master’s baptism of fire/I know you have your ways/And two masters at once, no man can acquire/You set my heart ablaze”
25. Japanese Breakfast – The Woman that Loves You…You should try to do as little harm as you can to the woman that loves you…
26. Neko Case, kd lang, Laura Veirs – Down I-5…Driving down I-5/I don’t ever want to die/Cause I’d no more get to see/All this beauty passing by me…
How many fruitless trips down I-5 have I taken? “You know you’re living if you’ve sinned”
27. Thelma – If You Let It…lines are crossed of will and fear/it is ringing loud and clear…
“Feel the limits you put/on yourself and those around you/you deserve more, you deserve more”. Here’s to seizing more.
28. Chelsea Wolfe – Appalachia…like black diamonds, ash and light/like the mines and anthracite…
29. Timber Timbre – Velvet Gloves & Spit
30. Totally Mild – Christa…It doesn’t matter what you do/It only matters who you do it with…
31. Childish Gambino – Me and Your Mama
For Naomi, who did not realize Donald Glover was Childish Gambino.
32. Houndstooth – Canary Island…it’s never been quite right/always taking things to dark inside/a restless mind is hard please/most of the time…
“Oh to be the dust that covers/everything”
33. Hefner – Half a Life…Life without my sweetheart is only half a life…
34. Stereolab – Ping Pong
Socialism in song… hitting the musical ball back and forth with MP
35. Beachbuggy – Japanese Radio Ad
More Japanese noise and more love to MP 36. AdriAnne Lenker – Jonathan…listen up, I’m a wreck I’m a mess, this is not the effect/Of a loss or a vex, this is you…
“Let me be the honest home where you can rest/Your tired mind”
37. Tinariwen – Cler Achel
A very Al Jazeera documentary-loving, Henry-Rollins-style travels kind of music
38. Chelsea Wolfe – Flatlands…I want flatlands/will you go there with me…
“When it’s said in the dark and you know it’s always there/when it’s dead in our heart but your mind is unafraid/when it’s said in the dark and you know it’s never coming back/when it’s there in your heart in your mind you set it free”
39. Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker – I Never Learned French
Where have all my French connections gone? 40. Cats on Fire – It’s Clear Your Former Lover
Funnish Finns. “Now, it’s possible he may have been the one who loved you the most/I don’t want to compete and I don’t like the smell of his ghost”
41. The Horrors – Still Life (Connan Mockasin remix)…Slow down/give it time…
Preferred this remix to the original; sitting in a shopping mall parking lot waiting for a friend, listening and absorbing the message: “Don’t hurry, give it time. Things are the way they have to be.”
42. Baxter Dury – Other Men’s Girls
43.Morgan Delt – Some Sunsick Day…After the blast levels our town/We can relax and watch it come down…
“After we start over again/We’ll start to feel safe in our skin/Maybe we’ll be wrinkled and grey/Or maybe we’ll get new plastic faces/We’ll finally find what we need”
44. Vashti Bunyan – Love Song
Thanks to, love for MP
45. Space Needle – Before I Lose My Style…I tried to be it all/when I left you behind…
46. Galaxie 500 – Snowstorm
Thoughts of MP and an almost-snowless winter
47. Itasca – No Consequence
With love for Annette – plenty of consequences.
48. The Limiñanas – Down Underground
49. Jenny Hval – Conceptual Romance…I want to give up but I can tell/My heartbreak is too sentimental for you…
This song is everything. ”A sexual holding pattern/Stuck in erotic self-oscillation/This landmine of a heart/The only one I’ve ever had/I’ve ever had”; “So I lose my gaze to keep you/Creating a curve for the eyes/A rejected body/And losing it is constant, but such a lonely place/What can I say?/I don’t know who I am, but/I’m working on it…”
50. Psychic Ills – Mind Daze…I’m doing fine/when I’m out of my mind…
51. Suuns – 2020
52. Minor Victories – Give Up the Ghost…When you act like I’m nothing to you/Make me feel like I’ve been replaced/I could tear you apart/Leave a brand-new scar… 53. Amber Arcades – Constant’s Dream …It’s not different we’re just getting used to it/But we’ve always known what to expect…
“Our bodies are full and nobody is trying/It’s not like we don’t want to, we’re just not desiring”
54. Still Parade – Walk in the Park
Poetry, Wanstead Park and Denise Levertov’s ark-of-the-ache-of-it connection: “Wanstead drew me over and over into its basic poetry”. For MP
55. Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker – Something Familiar
56. Twin Limb – Don’t Even Think
57. Nice as Fuck – Door…All the shit that we talk is a smokescreen/It’s a waste of your time/A waste of my being…
58. Family Friends – Look the Other Way…I think there’s some things you forgot from when we used to talk a lot…
59. Chastity Belt – Seattle Party…Your life is so raw/You’ve been through so much…
60. Pixie Geldof – Wild Things Grow
Not anything I ever anticipated including despite lifelong weird obsession with Bob Geldof; thanks to Travis, this finds its way here 61. Lee Hazlewood – Hey Cowboy
Love to Naomi
62. Matt Duncan – 1000 Boys…This record’s skipping on a sigh… (but not an Eliot sigh…)
“That I’m smitten with my worries and my doubts/No lovelorn prince would ever dare to sing about” 63. Shintaro Sakamoto – In a Phantom Mood
Japan time!
64. Allo Darlin’ – Kiss Your Lips…Then I kissed your lips and for a moment it was heavenly/Because you found me, baby/Baby I found you…
65. Weyes Blood – Seven Words…I want you mostly in the morning/when my soul is weak from dreaming…
66. Julia Jacklin – Pool Party…Said you’re sorry you were drinking through the day then/Only stopped to let your lungs take the hit/Said I won’t blame you now but you lost my love somehow/Then you jumped right in…
I sort of misjudged this song when I first heard it – kinda fitting when I really listened
67. The Innocence Mission – Bright as Yellow…And I do not want to be a rose/I do not wish to be pale pink/But flower scarlet, flower gold/And have no thorns to distance me…
68. I Break Horses – Winter Beats…When your heart in winter beats/Don’t let that cold blood freeze/Cause frozen love will bleed…
Represent the home team (Sweden!) and other people’s Spotify playlists
69. Kim Jung Mi – Haenim
I read about “Korean folk” music, which is like 60s folk rock and nothing to do with traditional Korean music. And you can hear that when you listen to this interesting, if odd, song.
70. Vivian Girls – Where Do You Run To…It’s alright just leave the light on, I will never ask you why/Once you’ve gone remains the question baby/Where do you go? Where do you go? Why do you leave me all alone?…
71. Sam Patch – St. Sebastian
Another one of those whose sound I like…
72. Amber Arcades – Right Now…But we could go right now/We could have another life…
“I made my mind up long ago/The road is long and slow/So many things to leave behind/But everyone can live their lie/I’m not even sure that I don’t like mine”
73. “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” – from Orphee et Eurydice, Gluck, Donald Runnicles & Orchestra of San Francisco; Dawn Upshaw, Alison Hagley, Jennifer Larmore
74. Wasuremono – Cuddling
As the dear Scots say, to mean ‘cuddling’, “coorie in” 75. Spain – Nobody Has to Know…Girl we’ve fallen so in love/It was just a year ago/And you’ve kept it to yourself…
76. Blake Mills – Don’t Tell Our Friends About Me…I was wrong to turn honesty against you/And sure, some of them could use a good talk…
Seems like a timely kind of song, with thoughts of trying to keep secrets about people “fucking up”
77. King Creosote – And the Racket They Made…And your words chased round and round in my head/Last night…
To the peaceful days that started the year and the endless discography of King Creosote, which droned on all morning and throughout our entire absence when wandering through the cold countryside. “And the tide shrinks back into its womb/And I hope the empty shells and bones of your stories/Will litter and clutter the shores/And I hope that when I find them/I’ll remember how they danced/And the racket they made/When they were alive”
78. William Onyeabor – Ride on Baby…You don’t know why you love me so much, baby…
RIP William, king of Nigerian funk… reminds me of a weird time in my professional career working with insufferable hipsters who spent much of their lives in downward facing dog pose (since they had to be posing somehow…)
79. Glen Campbell – Guess I’m Dumb…The way I act don’t seem like me/I’m not on top like I used to be…
Acknowledging when you’re not on your A-game…
80. Nick Garrie – Can I Stay With You
Calm in the eye of the storm; love for MP
81. Cigarettes After Sex – K.…I remember when I first noticed that you liked me back/We were sitting down in a restaurant waiting for the check/We had made love earlier that day with no strings attached/But I could tell that something had changed how you looked at me then…
What a beautiful song… its combination of beauty and hope kinda makes me feel melancholy.
82. Bubblegum Lemonade – This is the New Normal
Hoping that the world we live in right now is not the new normal…
83. Tenniscoats – Hikoki
Thinking of back when my mom expanded her vocabulary to include the Japanese neko and hikooki
84. Spinning Coin – Albany…When the weather comes/It comes in measures/When the pain comes/Instead of pleasure…
“I don’t know I thought I knew you but I was wrong/I was impressed by your love for complexity”
85. Wolf Alice – Bros…Are you wild like me/Raised by wolves and other beasts…
86. The Duke Spirit – Serenade…slow you remind me/how to be silent/and your story leaves me wanting/and the way I feel is changing…
87. Desperate Journalist – Distance…oh your heart/a hurricane…
How much I want to create distance. “I’ve lost you” – yes, you have. 88. Surface to Air Missive – Time Being…I don’t know where you are now/but it’s someone else for all I know…
The guilt of unanswered/unreciprocated missives. Bigger than surface
89. Billy Bragg – Upfield
“I’ve got a socialism of the heart.” Nothing describes me better at this stage in life
90. Los Campesinos! – You! Me! Dancing!
Thanks to MP and his mad, made-up music ‘game’/DJing a Friday night from afar, as ever
91. Slowdive – Star Roving
To made-up middle-of-night games pitting songs against each other and admissions of never cottoning to Slowdive back in the old days
92. Minor Victories – Scattered Ashes (Song for Richard)
93. Cat’s Eyes – Drag…Oh you’ve been dragging me down…
94. Grouper – Headache…why does love keep letting me down?…
95. Antonio Carlos & Jocafi – Você Abusou
Something from the Cerys on 6 BBC Sunday radio, listened at someone’s suggestion
96. Dirty Projectors – Up in Hudson
Love and thanks to Andreas. The sound here is not mine, but the lyrics… dear, dear heavens
97. Tasseomancy – Dead Can Dance & Neil Young…fade into folk song…
Enjoyed getting lost in the sound…
98. Valerie June – Astral Plane
Thanks to Travis
99. Princess Chelsea – The Cigarette Duet
Thanks to dear Gabe and of course love for New Zealand
100. Super Furry Animals – Hermann Loves Pauline
Gute Nacht, mein Liebling, Roscoe
101. The Proper Ornaments – Memories…memories will go/slowly float away/but I can see your face/from here…
102. The Saxophones – New Tradition
“But I haven’t shown you my best part; it’s too hard, and I’m quick to judge”
103. Sibelius – In the Stream of Life (Rautavaara) 104. Robyn Hitchcock – Goodnight Oslo
105. Spell – Stone is Very Very Cold…my hand may tremble now and then/but my heart can never break again…
106. Julie Byrne – Follow My Voice…To me, this city’s hell/But I know you call it home/I was made for the green/Made to be alone…
“I’ve been called heartbreaker/For doing justice to my own/I, too, been a fault-finder/But that life is broke/How I love you/You’re the one my heart chose/And so I will be here”
107. Ultra Vivid Scene with Kim Deal – Special One
Watching the video on a hotel room bed in Oslo, nearing the end of the five-day bubble, memories of high school for me, an intro to something new for him
108. Sheryl Crow – The Book…I didn’t know by giving my hand/that I would be written down, sliced around, passed down, among strangers’ hands…
A mainstream thing you won’t know, a lot like Friends, but still has its place in pop culture. And this song has always struck me – writers as “voyeur, the worst kind of thief” of such personal details; always be on the defensive. “I read your book/and I find it strange/that I know that girl, I know her world/a little too well”
109. Steve Mason – Hardly Go Through…I’ve never cried over someone I hardly know/But I can feel it/Can you feel it?…
“In my head I hear a voice, they say/You made the wrong choice/And you don’t need me, you’ll never need me”
110. Blondie – Fade Away and Radiate…Electric faces seem to merge/Hidden voices mock your words…
The musical definition of my earliest childhood, still resonating as I burnish in middle age. Isn’t that what memory, intellect, age and living do? Haha. One can hope. “Ooh baby I hear you spend night time/Wrapped like candy in a blue, blue neon glow”
I have one more hour in which I am allowed to mope.
Therefore, I give you … Sam Phillips’s “I Can’t Stop Crying”. All at once a jagged, near-power-pop painful reminder of spring/summer 1989, a reminder of the wandering-through-Reykjavik spring of 2008 (my final months in Iceland) and a trigger for the current waves of disturbance in otherwise calm waters.
“I saw black and you saw red
Crawled to separate corners
the line went dead I closed my heart up tore your love
for me to shreds
Tangled wires, love can’t breathe
pulling tighter to my ruthless need
Don’t look down I want you unconsolably
I can’t stop crying Stubborn distance closes in with your assistance bitterly begin To build a wall of silence cutting soul in two Cloudy water in my eyes I’m ashamed of words with secret knives In dream I scream but you can’t Hear me calling you
I know that this heartache is
A speck in the sky of love
But it’s all I feel around me”
This popped up in a couple of Neil Finn feeds online today, and I realized I had not listened to him, Crowded House or Split Enz in a long time. This song…
“I don’t want to say “I love you”
That would give away too much.
It’s hip to be detached and precious,
The only thing you feel is vicious.
I don’t want to say “I want you”
Even though I want you so much.
It’s wrapped up in conversation,
It’s whispered in a hush.
Though I’m frightened by the word,
Think it’s time I made it heard.
No more empty self-possession,
Visions swept under the mat.
It’s no New Year’s resolution,
It’s more than that.
Now I wake up happy
Warm in lover’s embrace.
No one else can touch us
While we’re in this place.
So I’ll sing it to the world
This simple message to my girl.
No more empty self possession,
Visions swept under the mat.
It’s no New Year’s resolution,
It’s more than that.
Though I’m frightened by the word,
Think it’s time I made it heard.
So I’ll sing it to the world
This simple message to my girl.
No more empty self possession,
Visions swept under the mat.
It’s no New Year’s resolution,
It’s more than that.
Oh there’s nothing quite as real
As the touch of your sweet hands.
I can’t spend the rest of my life
Buried in the sand”
-“Message to my Girl” – Split Enz (1984, as if you couldn’t hear that already…)
Thinking of waiting in the car for Lóa, getting lost in the sound of this on a cold, Swedish evening just before Christmas, but now finding the lyrics more striking. Take a breath. Don’t hurry. It’s rocky, unpredictable terrain but doesn’t mean you turn around and go home.
It was 1990, and I was in the full throes of my short-lived but passionate anglophilia. I tried to remake my suburban American life in the shape and form of something entirely different, and what better way to make anything new and beautiful – and most importantly – different – than through music? What different sound could I find that could firmly establish this otherness without the freedom to go be a part of some otherness? These were slow times when overexcited teenage musical discoveries were like hard-fought battles with near-exclusivity the spoils.
Lucky for me, I had been obsessed with reaching out into the wider world through my penfriendships, and exchanged letters with Peter, a bricklayer from Durham, England. I will never be able to express the mania, madness, joy that washed over me when his parcels would arrive, filled with cassettes (!) of exactly this otherness I had desperately sought. The first tapes he sent: The Stone Roses’ first – and in fairness near-only – album (the second could never live up to that debut). It transformed everything. He continued to send me more tapes of everything that characterized the ‘Madchester’ scene and other music from the same period. I felt like I had stumbled into a goldmine into which only I had access (it was a while before America was fully on board, and even if enclaves of people embraced this music, it was not as though it made its mark on my community).
I distinctly remember a day, walking home from a PSAT or SAT practice test (or something like that – a Saturday morning sacrificed to standardized testing, in any case), with “Made of Stone” playing on my Walkman. Is it overstating it to say that everything seemed different to me after that time? In some way, it was. It was – even if other friends adopted the music and we shared it – an assertion of my own tastes and identity outside of that of my friends. The first step toward something different. Sure, that something different did not turn out to be moving to England, which, in my youth, I long believed I wanted to do. But it was a big stepping stone to figuring out tangibly that there was a much bigger world out there with a lot of different kinds of people in it. Some of them were working as bricklayers and writing letters to fawning American girls. Some of them were making music and going to raves in a depressed late-80s Manchester.
Today, returning from Manchester, where I spent a few days with my brother seeing The Stone Roses reunion, seeing the iconic Haçienda transformed into apartments and generally taking it all in, I am starkly reminded of how I felt, how it was, to feel such intense feelings about music, about the sense of place (the sense of wanting to be in a different place). It’s been 26 years since I walked through the streets of the town where I grew up, overcome by and elated at this new sound – these new possibilities.
Today I am wandering the streets of Oslo, bound by sun and a few clouds, wondering in some way how I got here. In life, that is. Scandinavia was nowhere on my radar back in 1990, and yet this is where I feel happiest and at home. And listening to the Roses as I walked around the sun-dappled Oslo train station and opera house, I create new and very different memories around these same songs that carried me through suburban American streets and experiences. The songs are the same but are no longer the ones that made me feel lonely but understood – and held the promise of different ‘othernesses’ – and now hold this bittersweet nostalgia in every note and word.
Of course with nostalgia there is also the past – whatever happened to the northern boy bricklayer Peter, who introduced me to all of this and spoke in an accent I could not begin to understand? My best friend from that period, too, where has she gone? I thought of her so much as I wandered Manchester and saw this concert we would have killed to see when we were 15. I know neither she nor I are the people we were then, but the heartstrings were pulled. Hard.
