There's a lot of books that I love. Usually when someone asks me for my absolute favourite I go for The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, because it sort of has everything I love (well-written, nerdy, murder mystery, crazy-ass church things, mentions of Abelard etc), but that's not the book I want to talk about today. I was thinking about how all art forms can make the world a more beautiful place, and there are certainly some books that have done this for me. One of the first books that really wowed me because of the beauty of language is Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werther).
The book is a series of letters that Werther sends to his friend Wilhelm, he mainly talks about the village he is staying at and about the girl he falls in love with, Lotte. And really, nothing much happens in the book at all but you don't even notice, because Goethe was such an extraordinary writer. You get dragged into the story and into the emotions and the love, and for me the book was nearly impossible to put down. The language is very colourful and I know there will be plenty of people who find it overly flamboyant but well, that just sucks for them.
I know that the book promted copycat suicides (Werther effect anyone?) and the story is incredibly sad, Werther is a miserable young man, but still, I find the book to be of almost unparalleled beauty. Here are some passages that I love (difficult to pick any, every page is quotable!):
In other respects I am very well off here. Solitude in this terrestrial paradise is a genial balm to my mind, and the young spring cheers with its bounteous promises my oftentimes misgiving heart. Every tree, every bush, is full of flowers; and one might wish himself transformed into a butterfly, to float about in this ocean of perfume, and find his whole existence in it.
[...]
In vain do I stretch out my arms toward her when I awaken in the morning from my weary slumbers. In vain do I seek for her at night in my bed, when some innocent dream has happily deceived me, and placed her near me in the fields, when I have seized her hand and covered it with countless kisses. And when I feel for her in the half confusion of sleep, with the happy sense that she is near, tears flow from my oppressed heart; and, bereft of all comfort, I weep over my future woes.
[...]
Oh, the brilliant wretchedness, the weariness, that one is doomed to witness among the silly people whom we meet in society here! The ambition of rank! How they watch, how they toil, to gain precedence! What poor and contemptible passions are displayed in their utter nakedness! We have a woman here, for example, who never ceases to entertain the company with accounts of her family and her estates. Any stranger would consider her a silly being, whose head was turned by her pretensions to rank and property; but she is in reality even more ridiculous, the daughter of a mere magistrate's clerk from this neighbourhood. I cannot understand how human beings can so debase themselves.
[...]
I turned my sorrowful eyes toward a favourite spot, where I was accustomed to sit with Charlotte beneath a willow after a fatiguing walk. Alas! it was covered with water, and with difficulty I found even the meadow. And the fields around the hunting-lodge, thought I. Has our dear bower been destroyed by this unpitying storm? And a beam of past happiness streamed upon me, as the mind of a captive is illumined by dreams of flocks and herds and bygone joys of home! But I am free from blame. I have courage to die! Perhaps I have,—but I still sit here, like a wretched pauper, who collects fagots, and begs her bread from door to door, that she may prolong for a few days a miserable existence which she is unwilling to resign.
If you're interested in reading it, you can actually find it online at the Project Gutenburg here.
Anna Ackmatova - To Many (translation by Sergei Roy) Iam your voice, through me your temper rings, And I am a reflection of your face. In vain, the futile flutterings of your wings, For I will stay with you in any case.
That is the reason you love me so greedily Me in my feebleness and in my sins, And that was why you gladly gave to me The fairest and the finest of your sons. And that was why in all these endless days You never asked me where he was; instead You filled with acrid fumes of empty praise My house from which its heart and soul had fled. You plead now: none could be as close to me, No other love could be as misbegotten...
The way a shadow would from substance flee, The way the soul aspires the flesh to leave - That's how, these days, I want to be forgotten.
Sorry it has been so long since my last entry, but I am actually working on something that's taking up more time than I figured (but I promise it'll appear on here soon!). But, in the meantime, I thought that it might be a good time to post some end-of-the-year lists, musically related ones that is. Although I don't think I will surprise anyone.
FAVOURITE ALBUMS
1. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo What a surprise! I really don't think I need to explain just how much I love this band, but I will say that I don't understand why this album doesn't appear in any end of the year lists (then again, I don't think I've ever agreed with any end-of-year lists by music journalists), because it really is a FANTASTIC album. I think it's their best, and that's saying something. It has some of my absolute favourite songs of the year and only one song I don't particularely like (Bad Blood just bores me), it's nice and loud (sorry neighbours) and just so good. Words always fail me when talking about this band. Favourite song: "Half State" is pretty EPIC.
2. Wovenhand - The Threshingfloor I will never love Wovenhand as much as I love 16 Horsepower. Really, I won't, probably because Wovenhand are just a bit more polished. But this album is wonderful, it's bleak, gloomy but strangely reassuring and warm. Nobody does creepy-and-depressing-yet-comforting as well as David Eugene Edwards, that's for sure. Favourite song:"The Threshingfloor" "The Threshingfloor"
3. Foals - Total Life Forever I love Foals. I find them exciting and inspiring and intriguing and they just make me want to dance. This album is quite different from their first, in that it seems to have more layers and is more complex, yet it also has some of the most poppy songs (Miami, This Orient) they've written. (Un)surprisingly enough, those are really the only two songs I don't love (Miami has grown on me though), all the others are so good and perhaps even beautiful. They also translate so well live, which is always a plus! Favourite song: "What Remains" but I can't seem to find that on youtube, so have my second favourite, "Total Life Forever".
4.Hot Hot Heat - Future Breeds Not gonna lie, their last album Happines Ltd wasn't so good. I mean, strings that sound like a crappy synthesizer are never a good idea. Ever. Happiness Ltd had some amazing tracks but just less than stellar recordings. But Future Breeds is like good old-fashioned Hot Hot Heat again!! Only.. more mature and maybe even a bit better. It's still happy danceable ridiculously-catchy indie-pop with the familiar vocals of Steve Bays, and sometimes there is really nothing better to listen to. Definitely their best effort since Make up the Breakdown. Favourite song: "Future Breeds"
5. She and Him - Volume Two. I can't help it, I love Zooey Deschanel and M.Ward's beautiful pop songs. There's a certain innocence about them, and listening to this album feels like putting a warm blanket around me, it's comforting and uplifting and relaxing. Favourite song: "Over it Over Again"
FAVOURITE SONGS NOT ON THESE ALBUMS (Otherwise top 5 would be just BRMC...) 1. Janelle Monáe- Tightrope C'mon, JUST LOOK AT THIS. SHE IS THE MOST BADASS PERSON IN THE WORLD:
2. Micah P. Hinson- The Striking Before the Storm This is such an incredibly lovely song, reminds me of why I love Micah's music so much. Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs (it's my #6 album of the year) has some amazing songs, like "2's and 3's" and "My God, My God" and "Watchers, Tell Us of the Night", but none of them are as good as "The Striking Before the Storm".
3. Sarah Blasko - No Turning Back I know that officially this album was released in 2009, but it wasn't released here till 2010 so I think I can count one of her songs! There's a bunch I love on As Day Follows Night like "All I Want", "Bird on a Wire", "Hold on My Heart" and "Lost and Defeated", but "No Turning Back" is my favourite, I think.
4. Sia- Stop Trying What can I say, I'm just a sucker for a good pop song. And for Sia's voice.
5. Gogol Bordello - Sun is On My Side Usually my favourite Gogol Bordello songs are the hyperactive ones you can jump to like a manic (especially Mishto!) but this song is just so simple and lovely.
FAVOURITE SHOWS 1. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Batschkapp Frankfurt [22-11-2010] 2. Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony, De Doelen Rotterdam [19-11-2010] 3. Raskatov's "A Dog's Heart", Stopera Amsterdam [18-06-2010] 4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Batschkapp, Frankfurt [23-11-2010] 5. Foals, Melkweg Amsterdam [29-11-2010]
William Butler Yeats - Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi. (music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing)
Originally I thought I would just write a pretty basic review going “omg omg omg they played Martyr and Annabel Lee and River Styx and I danced so much”, but that just wouldn’t even remotely cover just how much these past few days have meant to me. I know I get obsessive about music, I know it’s alienating to some, but I also know that there’s a lot of people who know exactly what it feels like. And it happens that one of the first times I read something that really resonated with me, was when I first came across Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music. It was one of the first times (I can’t say first time, because that would’ve been when I read George Steiner’s Errata) that my obsessive love/feelings for music were explained in a way that made sense to me. And so, I find it incredibly fitting that I get to see the band that does this to me like no other (apart from Shosty, obviously) in the city where Schopenhauer is buried.
Something that has occupied me for as long as I can remember is the question of why I (and many other) experience music so much more intensely that any other art, what makes it different? What is it about sound that can somehow bring forth such intensity of emotion? Although I haven’t yet found an answer that I find completely satisfactory, Schopenhauer’s descriptions and explanations of the musical experience come close..ish. Because he acknowledges the fact (in my mind) that music is experienced more intensely than other arts, and he places it above other arts for precisely that reason. He tries to explain what makes music so different, but here his metaphysics come in and thereby also the impossibility of proving his theory right (which he actually admits). Still, I understand what he’s trying to say, and he has certainly been a massive influence on my thinking, and thereby on my life. Here’s some quotes that I like (all from the third part of The World as Will and Representation):
“[Music] stands quite apart from all the other [forms of art]. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of nay Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man’s innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [an unconscious exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be.“
“[…] Where the aesthetic effect is the thing we have in mind, we must attribute to music a far more serious and profound significance that refers to the innermost being of the world and of our own self. […] That in some sense music must be related to the world as the depiction to the thing depicted, as the copy to the original, we can infer from the analogy with the remaining arts, to all of which this character is peculiar; from their effect on us, it can be inferred that that of music is on the whole of the same nature, only stronger, more rapid, more necessary and infallible. Further, its imitative reference to the world must be very profound, infinitely true, and really striking since it is instantly understood by everyone […]”
“[..] Music does not express this or that particular and definite pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment or peace of mind, but joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without any accessories, and so also without the motives for them. Nevertheless, we understand them perfectly in this extracted quintessence. Hence it arises that our imagination is so easily stirred by music [...]."
And this is precisely why travelling to see a band you love is worth it (especially if that band is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, obviously). Because it's an experience beyond any other. Hearing songs like Martyr, Annabel Lee (I cried, couldn't help it), Beat the Devil's Tattoo, Half State, Ain't No Easy Way, Shadow's Keeper, Rifles etc. that is exactly what life is about. The high of hearing an unexpected favourite song (MARTYR) live, the anticipation of hearing good oldies (Whatever Happened to My Rock 'n' Roll, Berlin etc etc) that you know will make you smile and dance, the feeling that you are a part of something important, that is what gigs can give you. And of course, the feeling of community, the enjoyment of seeing hundred other people singing and jumping and dancing along, the finding each other in your love for music. Is there anything more beautiful? I think not. After the gigs I had this urge to hug everyone, but I was smelly and dirty and so was everyone else so obviously I didn't. But I can honestly say that nothing makes me feel happier than having experiences like those two gigs in Frankfurt. And no, I will never stop posting about how much music means to me, and no, I will not stop talking about Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. But I do think it's necessary to end this post with some BRMC music (assuming you have heard the ones I've posted here already). Put on your headphones, turn the sound up and close your eyes.
