A Companion to The Complicated Compilation Conflagraton

I had two very thoughtful replies from my new friends in Arizona and California states yesterday that I wanted to respond to regarding my last post. I cannot express enough to anyone how delighted I am that there is Blogger and that I have these incredibly bright and thoughtful people actually reading what I've written (?!) and then having a thoughtful response (!). When I describe the experience to friends in my Real World, I always find myself saying, "...and I don't even KNOW these people!"

So here is my appeal, to some, or one, anyway:

My friend Death likes plenty of righteous tunes. She LOVES Joey Ramone. She loves Andrew W.K., The Raveonettes. These are very specific tempos. And it is kind of "happy" music for the slightly twisted. The tempo is very quick and dancable and says very little lyrically. She is old school, preferring punk, whereas my tastes lean towards post-punk. It's a little slower, with deeper bass.

I believe everyone has an internal vibration level. I don't believe that we were born with the tempo of house music coursing through our cells. Nor rap music. But that's just me. There are plenty of people that love those genres and try as I might, and sometimes I do get into the former, but only when I'm running around like myself, the chicken, with my head cut off, I don't get it. Again, personal histories inform.
Tempos, genres, key signatures, instrument preferences, vocal stylings, lyrics; these are all the things that are interesting things to explore in ourselves and in others. How does any or all of the above truly cotton onto to one person, but creates a flatline or serious dissonance in another? This is fascinating to me. Everything and everyone gets loved... eventually, by someone. But not by everyone.

We all need TIME to discover what we love.

That's the bit that makes us unique. That's the point I was trying to make.

I have joyfully burnt countless full album discs and compilations for friends. And will continue to do so. I am grateful anytime anyone has done this for me. This time, however, I was asked to create a Top 20, but with stipulations. When there are omission requests, it's as if you've lined up your family and someone has come up with a Glock and shot a couple of your favourite cousins, point blank, in the head.

To get to know others, it's essential that we get to know ourselves. I am not much different than anyone else, really, in the grand scheme of things. I believe we feel things universally. I feel shame. I feel vindicated. I feel love. I feel hate. I feel stupid... But I allow myself to fully feel everything. This allowance is a choice, could be viewed as a luxury. This also takes time.

I don't shroud myself with "keeping busy" anymore. I fight for my own time. I don't stay at functions that don't serve me in the end. I stopped making polite conversation years ago.

There is a wonderful essay in November 2004's Harper's magazine titled, Quitting the Paint Factory: On the Virtues of Idleness, by Mark Slouka. When it hits the stands, please, please get it. He drew his inspiration from Bertrand Russell's famous essay on the same topic. Check it!

When we're busy making money, climbing ladders (that anyone can knock us off, at any time, because there's always going to be someone above us with a size 12 shoe with a trigger-happy foot), making the big deal, working 12 (!) hours a day, we're too spent at the end of the day to do much of anything else... just for us. We've already relegated ourselves to being Bought-men and Bot-girls for the Man. All the brainspace we have left is to watch the TV who is watching us.

My flat refusal to burn a copy of my Top 20 for my friends, and this is political, is to force them into a place where they create time for themselves to find the beauty that was once a mandate. Before deadlines, before saving for an inflated condo, before pining for a flatscreen, before becoming the Yes Man to whomever, we all *made* the time in our teens. We wanted desperately to know ourselves. That was the thing that kept us remotely sane in all that insanity. The school administration has always tried to keep us busy, quashing the efforts of finding the things that would make us truly rounded as citizens, not fucking consumers. Merely a number. I had to do windsprints in middle school. This is running up and down grassed hills, on a 30 degree incline, for 45 minutes. I didn't even smoke then and I was horking up matter. I realised just recently that they were trying to stave off sexual urges. Didn't really work, though. We were all horny, but just really exhausted.

Back to my virtual friends. Understand one is a musician, or an aural artist, and the other is a visual artist. Maybe they have "real jobs" that actually pay for those nights that we want someone else to pour our beer, but that is inconsequential. One still plays in a band and one still makes visual art. These are choices they've made. These are things they do for themselves, and in doing these things it brings them closer to themselves. Creating the stuff we choose, or discovering new things, on our own terms, brings us all closer to ourselves. I'm talking about free will and the unequivicable need to find the beauty and the full expression that, in this case, music brings to the individual.

This young lady would like to share her list, prefacing first with the companion letter accompanying it:
When I was compiling this, my Top 20 List, I likened the process to being naked with someone for the first time. There’s this tremendous nervousness and wondering how the other person is going to react to our various imperfections which we magnify under our own scruntiny. “Oh, God; what is he going to think?”

The tremendous thing about being 35 is that one starts caring about what other people think less and less. That and we become more discerning. Hopefully our tastes grow and mature. The trouble with growing up is sometimes when we take a hard right turn that little person that used to be us gets thrown out the back passengerside door. So when we make a pitstop at a diner on the side of the highway, we realise that the kid’s not in the backseat. So we have to go back. The kid’s a little pissed off, feeling a bit abandoned, but willing to forgive. Thank God.

There are bands that I love so much it was difficult to choose which track. Sometimes I loved a particular song for a time but when I looked back at the time it was fraught with stuff that’s simply not applicable anymore. A pair of shoes that don’t fit, a crutch I no longer need. These ones didn’t make it in.

There were certain criteria that needed adhering. The reasons I chose each are for very unique reasons, though there is a through-line. Playing it like you mean it, like it was the only song they had to write/perform, where a person could satisfactorily say, “Okay, I did it; I can die in peace,” is chief among all. If it changed my little world it made it on here.

It could be a rhythm, maybe a hook, maybe the conclusion, maybe its epic scale, maybe, and this is most often the case, they are the crescendos. If it’s made me cry, be wistful or made me consider another point of view it’s on here. If its made me want to fight the good fight, it’s on here. If it’s made me want to fall in love, it’s here. If it’s changed me somehow, in a wonderful way, it’s on here.

There are kind of embarrassing ones. Included are the ones that are admittedly the least embarrassing. Omitted are Saturday Night, by the Bay City Rollers and something by Andy Gibb. They will secretly and silently get an honourable mention. There are those that have stood the test of time and there are some that are new. The ones I chose, I hope, reflect my authentic self. That’s the aim anyway.

To my new, dear friends: My Top 20, in no particular order; they just flowed best this way.
"THX" (the 30 second surround-sound wall that used to open movies)
"Concierto de Aranjuez", composer Joaquin Rodrigo, John Williams conducting
"Going The Distance", Rocky Soundtrack
"Do You Realize??" The Flaming Lips
"Something Changed", Pulp
"Waiting Like Mad", Ben Watt & Robert Wyatt
"Fake Plastic Trees", Radiohead
"Amie", Damien Rice
"Mad World", Donny Darko Soundtrack
"True", Spandau Ballet
"Lover's Spit", Broken Social Scene
"The Look Of Love", ABC
"Sweet Child O Mine", Guns N Roses
"This Is A Broadcast", The Dears
"Adagio for Strings, opus 11", Samuel Barber
"The Unforgettable Fire", U2
"Someone, Somewhere in Summertime", Simple Minds
"Section 13 (Diamonds/Devotion To Majesty),The Polyphonic Spree
"The Specialist", Interpol
"Still Life", Suede

I would love to hear yours.