It doesn’t always have to come back to Lennon. But, on a day like today, it does.
Now, I’m all too ready to progress and embrace some new stinging iconoclast of this millennium’s music mold, but I can’t deny it when the outspoken Beatle already got it right: “Whatever gets you thru the night…”
I envy his knack for succinctness – hopefully I wind up having a shred of it for this column. It doesn’t even matter that “Whatever”’s not anywhere near being one of the songwriter’s best work – the title alone carries enough oomph to ease my restless mind on any day so surreal that it becomes dark; it’s motivational and existential and reassuring and indifferent all at once…just what we need, sometimes.
People have lined up for the Hunger Games movies the same as they lined up for Jack White tickets. Doesn’t matter if Hunger Games ripped off a patchwork of iconic dystopian Sci-Fi epics that came before it and it doesn’t matter if White’s new Blunderbuss album is going to be shaded with distinctly different stylistic aesthetics than the songs that most of his fans fell in love with ten years ago… They’re seeking their own harmonious escape, a sanctuary of song and action and elegant pacing, exciting and visceral exertion, something cinematic, something, hell, anything that’s transcendent.
Whatever transcends you thru…
You want a movie trailer, Hunger-Games-fans? Lower my writing voice to a dramatic, baritone boom and hear me speak with an austere hush:
“In a world…. In a world where lax gun control legislation has resulted in senseless deaths in suburban settings, where wars wear on way past the 10-year mark to the point where our worn soldiers are experiencing record high rates of post-traumatic stress, brain injuries and suicide…a world where the brutal crackdown of civilian protesters by the Syrian regime has gone on for a full calendar year and political campaigns in the U.S. are legally permitted to withhold the identities of their financial backers…In a world where we’re still not getting around electric/solar-powered flying cars or even mastering teleportation, a world where some countries have more mobile phones than operating toilets…a world where Google has altered the way our brains function…
That’s when you need music. It’s when you need almost any kind of melodic noise…because isn’t that what almost any day of your life is? A knotted up, spiraling symphony of noise – work stress, school stress…and the sweet nonsensical stress stirred up by, say, a columnist? Or the TV news? Or some slanted blog you linked-to-?
It’s no wonder, after thousands of years, we still seek the beat of a drum and the thrum of a voice, or an acoustic instrument, stringing together a soothing melody or a cathartic cacophonous crescendo.
Whatever transcends you…
I’m not saying you should disengage yourself, listener. And I’m certainly not saying that, if you want, you can use something overtly Emo or corporate-rock-smacking to ease your weary rat-raced minds, that’s fine.
What I’m really saying is that columns like this one are often only going to ask maddening questions, whether loudly or tacitly – they’re going to stir you up on the issues and they’re going to ask why things aren’t, at least sensibly, utopic? How do they get away with it, why does it go on, why are we so numb….Or…
Are we numb? Can you still listen to a song and have it jerk loose a tear or two? In those three or four minutes where we slash away the chaos of the world through the harmonies of the all-too-sensitive artsy, avant-garde, visionary, beatnik, rap-slinging, drum-breaking balladeers…in that window, with our heads-between-headphones, can we feel (truly) alive (again)?
I don’t know if that’s what gets you through… But when columns like this one make me feel mad or scared or weary of the world, I turn to music.
“C’mon listen / listen…”
Playlist:
? GLOSSIES – (Performing at Woodruff’s in Ypsilanti – 3/31 –with Lightning Love, K.I.D.S, and, a new favorite, The Walking Beat)
“Maybe all you need is a nervous breakdown?”
? Gotye – “Easy Way Out” (VIDEO)
(Performing at EMU Pease Auditorium –presented by the Blind Pig – 4/2 – with Kimbra).
? Jack White – …since I, among many others, missed out on buying a ticket for his forthcoming Masonic Temple show, this May, in Detroit (it sold out in 13 minutes), you can still stream the lead singles (“Love Interruption” and “Sixteen Saltines”) from Jack White’s new album from his Third Man Records website.
Or maybe you could spin some Lennon? Plastic Ono Band, perhaps? Not that it always has to come back to Lennon… Oh, but today…for me, it does. Gets me through…
