I sat down a couple days ago to write about a heckler at the last Small Beast, and Cory Arcangel too. And maybe something about Odd Future thrown in. My late uncle Sergiu figured in there somewhere as well--(never late, but he's dead now). And then I heard the Drake track "Dreams Money Can Buy" with the dopest sample ever: don't fuck with me. Over and over again; a flow so smooth; intimacy, in that most mercenary and unrevealing sub genre of modern pop that hip-hop has become. I thought, well, this is so beautiful and fundamentally, this column is all about beauty and this is what I have to write about. Then this afternoon I came across Josa Peit and everything small and large became at least momentarily clear. I know that the moment--what has come before, what comes just after--has everything to do with how it all hits you. But it's hours later--(almost a generation in today's attention span)--and I've got the headphones on as I type. "Simmerdown" is playing. Josa is singing. I can imagine the woman in the video I first saw and the woman with her hair up, in the acoustic version. Or every woman that has made my heart skip for the last decade or three. Or I can also just hear the sound of this voice etch a river from ear to ear with a wake down to my soul.
The last couple weeks I finally had some time to myself to listen to some music. This is kind of how it works with me. I say I don't listen to music because I'm always playing it, but that's not really true. What I really mean is that I'm listening to the same soundtrack I've always had, which means in a way I'm just listening to myself--and the things that people are always giving me--which are often quite wonderful, (even when they're not), but it's still somehow more of the same. Inbreeding. Then every once in a while--maybe not often enough--I try to listen to as much as I can. It drives me crazy and the mouse is often on fast-forward, 'because I'm thinking: "Damn! What a waste of time--I could be doing something myself instead of listening to all this shit dropping all around me." So it's a very concentrated experience. After a week or two, if I've done things right, the mash-up-mixing-kitchen-aid music machine in my brain is filled to overflowing and I'm ready to press play. Or is it called work?
Nicholas Carr, a man who thinks a lot about how people think, just wrote a book called "The Shallows." Acknowledging that reading on a screen--multiple windows, links, visuals, audibles and all the hell else--facilitate our ability to multitask, but arguing that the difficulty in actually reading through the distractions, compromises the contemplation born of total and solitary concentration. Carr likens the experience of today's computer reading to the time, mere centuries ago, when words on page--or parchment--weren't separated by punctuation or even spaces; running together as an extreme scroll of thought. Solitary, silent reading was unheard of, writing only being meant for reading aloud. It was too physically taxing to decipher the mess on one's own. Riding one train of thought at a time, Carr argues, allows connections to be made; builds memory. Advances the species.
Tyler the Creator is the creative force behind Odd Future. He's 21, but raps with the rasp and tonal depth of a man 3 times his age. The video, (which he directed), to his latest single, Yonkers, features a hook illustrated by his body convulsing to the beat as he regurgitates the liquified giant cockroach he's just swallowed. This too is so beautiful. How can something so dirty be so clean? And when you look at Josa Peit you think: How can something so clean be so dirty? I get the feeling that Josa's beauty comes from never being bored. From not entertaining the possibility of being bored. And I think that Tyler finds the strands of beauty in the frantic, 24/7 efforts at evading boredom. Josa reads books while Tyler's got that screen lighting up his face. I'm more Josa than Tyler. Looking for the multi after the task.
I think it's one fuck of a great time to look around and listen. I can't remember when I've simply opened my ears--or turned on my computer--and heard so many great sounds. My uncle, a Romanian-Jewish gypsy who achieved quite a measure of international fame and fortune in the classical music world of the last century, told me when I was barely into double digits in this world, that if he didn't make it to the absolute top, it would be because of his lack of education. I'm sure he meant this as advice, (I didn't take), to finish school, but I took it more as his regret at not having been more universally curious at a time when he could still afford the time. Before life got in the way. Now everything's moving so fast. I heard Mos Def--(he had to make it in here somehow)!--casually refer to two generations as "ten years." Two generations!
Besides the hook, my favorite part of "Dreams Money Can Buy," is when Drake all of a sudden grabs his lead pipe of a lyric and with superhuman strength bends it back and down with an effortless twist. You have to hear him do it; hear what happens to the phrase, but I can tell you it's about a fat ass in the middle of summer. A hard road down leads to a high moment of beauty and laughter. And of course: "Don't Fuck With Me."
That sample from the Drake jam, came off Jai Paul's BTSTU where it doesn't have nearly the same impact. I'm thinking--how can I fuck this up further?
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