NOT REALLY SONGS NOT REALLY RECOMMENDING ANYTHING JUST BEING TIRED OR WORRIED OR FED UP APR 20 – APR 26
In August 1940 Virginia Woolf wrote a letter to the art critic/historian Benedict Nicholson. They were having a discussion about the biography of noted British art critic Roger Frye, specifically concerning Nicholson's contention that Frye, by continue to talk art during the war (the First World War), was choosing to drown himself in art while ignoring the real-life concerns of the day. Woolf took up the defense of Fry's portrayal, going on to suggest that there was value in unveiling beauty to other people even during war.
I had recently discussed this letter as part of a reading group I led for a few weeks focusing on Virginia Woolf's writing about war. We met every week to discuss literature about war during the war that is stubbornly and cynically rolling on top of us and cataclysmically erupting very near us. There was no reason for a few sessions of talking about Woolf and literature during a war would have any effect. These are not the type of strong political actions that Nicholson had demanded of Frye and, perhaps in a roundabout way, of Woolf as well. We did not stop the war. We might have, in some small measure, however, found a way to deal with it. Woolf quotes one Frye appreciator saying this:
"In ten minutes he caused me to enjoy what I was looking at. The objects became vivid and intelligible There must be many people like me, people with scales on their eyes and wax in their ears … if only someone would come along and remove the scales and dig out the wax."
I write of this because I suppose in a very strange way this Machine Music place might fit into several of these boxes, a place for the appreciation of beautiful things, one with the happy side effect of "removing the scales" for others. Just the other day I received such a wonderful letter of appreciation from a very talented musician, telling me how these writings exposed him to unknown beauty. That's a wonderful thing. But it's getting to me, nonetheless. It's getting to everyone, which is precisely why war is such a toxic environment, it makes everything worse. It makes people into ribbons of meat, it displaces and ruins homes, that too. But it serves as a very noxious mode of breathing, of always being on the cusp of something horrible. Yes, life somewhat continues for most people, but it's a bad, poisoned, half-breathing, almost-suffocating life.
What I should be doing is writing about new music. And I have, as every week for the last few years, a list of songs I would love for you to enjoy. That list will come in a second. Not sure what shape it'll take. If one acquiesces to the idea that the best one can do at a time of horror is to continue to try to be a good person, to stay close to one's family, to speak a soft yet clear truth with one's children, and to hang on to beauty in the same way that a shipwrecked sailor hangs on to a piece of floating timber, then the idea – temporary though it may be – of not having that source of meaning anymore is not great. It isn't great.
This is the list. Apologies to the artists who deserve better than to be rattled off like this. I know attention is hard to come by, I know feedback and reviews are crucial, if not for the actual effective dissemination of your work but even for the fact that that work is recognized by another human. I am consistent in trying to do that. But I don't feel like doing that today. So, again, I apologize.
Nechochwen – "Spelewithiipi," from Spelewithiipi
Białywilk – "Volo Ergo Sum," from Wniebowstąpienie
Cave Sermon – "Sunless Morning," from Fragile Wings
LHAÄD – "Beyond II," from Beyond
Imha Tarikat – "The Day I Died (Reborn Into Flames)," from Confessing Darkness
Thought Trials – "Earthrise," from Earthrise/Gaia
Kommodus – "The Mountain of Past Lives," from A Foetal Wolf in Stained Glass
Locrian – "The Crystal World," from The Crystal World (Remaster)
Keep safe.
