Writing About Music Writing

But Mostly Just Rambling

I think I fell out of love with music writing and, for a time music, in general because I was taking the wrong approach. My mindset at the time was to write like a journalist. The problem with writing like a journalist is that you are meant to detach your emotions and personality and personal experience in order to critically and objectively evaluate the art. This is of course not truly possible, boring, and, frankly, sucks a great deal of shit. Art cannot and should not be evaluated objectively and the critique should not be devoid of feeling and personal experience. This is especially true of music, I believe. Music is the most versatile of the consumable arts: it can be listened to anywhere in a wide range of situations, shared or solitary; it can be untethered in place, more so than film, tv, plays, paintings, what have you; the connections we make to it can be intensely personal, more than yadda yadda yadda.

At least I think so. I personally can't imagine a movie or tv show or painting meaning nearly as much to me as say Jai Paul or DESPACIO or "Hannah Hunt" or LCD Soundsystem or "White Ferrari." How many times have you seen your favorite movie? Personally I think the answer is less than 10 but I'm not sure. I honestly don't even know what my most favorite movie is. For this exercise I'm using National Treasure. Stop laughing, it's really good. According to last.fm I've listened to Jai Paul's album about 50 times. I think this is something like 20 or 30 short of the real number but let's say it's 50 because that's a clean number. That's about 1800 minutes listening to that album or about 500 minutes more than I've spent watching National Treasure. I'm sorry about all the numbers, especially with what I'm about to say next. It is not about the raw minutes spent with the material, but rather the number of experiences and moments tied to memories. Watching a movie is a static experience basically 100% of the time. You are sitting your white ass down and listening. That's about it. Movies are incredible don't get me wrong. But music just absolutely kicks its ass up and down Main Street. Have you ever danced and jumped around with thousands of people while you watched The Office? No, you haven't, smartass. When you really needed to lock in and write that final paper did you pull up a Jackson Pollock painting to get you in the zone? I hope not. Have you ever stumbled into a bar where a group of actors was doing a shot for for shot remake of The Master? Absolutely not, though I will admit that would be insanely sick and would invalidate my entire argument. Music is malleable, it is everywhere, all the time and the connections we make with it are intrinsically tied to our feelings and emotions and places and people around us. Music is an extension of love and it is more personal than anything on a screen.

While I was writing this, something beautiful happened. Let me show you:

What a wonderful moment of spontaneous joy. These are the kind of things music can conjure out of what would otherwise be an eventful commute into San Francisco.

Another thing in music's favor is that there is so much of it. There is a shitload of movies and tv shows too, of course, but the amount of music in the world is exponentially and unknownably greater than the visual mediums. Right now, I'm listening to Fela Kuti. I love Fela Kuti; he is one of the greatest musicians ever. But this is the first time I've listened to one of his albums since March of 2021.

Nevermind! I've digressed and don't know where I'm going with the Fela Kuti anecdote! Leaving it in because why not—nobody's editing this, not even me.

This is why I much prefer writing my own shit on my own place on my own time for (mostly) my own self. Not that I had a bad time writing for publications. Quite the opposite actually; I loved writing for Merry Go Round and imagine I may do so again sometime, but I put up all these self-imposed parameters that would often paralyze me to the point where I wouldn't even write the thing I promised I would. And a lot of the stuff I did submit I feel was watered down either because I procrastinated too long and had to slap-dash it at the last minute or was worried my digressions were too weird or uninteresting, especially since a lot of times the artists I was writing about would read my work. Do I want Yves Tumor to have to read multiple paragraphs about Korean baseball to see what I had to say about Heaven To a Tortured Mind? Not really! All I really cared about was that some of my friends found it and found something interesting about it. And this substack checks that box for me. I'm glad you're reading it and thank you for wading through all the mess to get to the end.