MinneapolitanMusic

I spend half my life burrowing in and out of the deep recesses of my mind, bouncing between reality and how I perceive what should and shouldn’t be happening. It occurred to me recently that this may not be the most productive way to live, each foot on a different plane of existence. It makes me babble endlessly about boring topics such as this one. And, most inconveniently of all, it causes one existential crisis after another to spring up like lame jack-in-the-box clowns, distracting me from all actual work.

So what’s ruffling my feathers this time? And why the hell can’t I blog consistently like a normal person? Let me tell ya.

Writing about music is sort of an odd feat for me. It requires an outward observation of people and their talents and an examination of why musicians do what they do, but there is also an introspective side; I can’t imagine writing about any art without discussing the impact that it has on me personally. After all, isn’t that one of the reasons we make art in the first place?

Oddly enough, I was in the middle of overanalyzing this conundrum when I navigated over to the Pulse and was greeted by a cover story appropriately-titled “What we talk about when we talk about music.” It’s a beautiful piece. Steve McPherson discusses the local music interview series “Making Music,” the brainchild of James Bates, and in doing so uncovers some really interesting questions about what it means to examine music and musicians on a truly minute, microscopic level. In other words, can we ever really understand what makes a craft what it is?

These musings, compounded with a book I have been reading recently, Terry Gross’ All I Did Was Ask, and my own struggle to become a better interviewer, have turned me inside out lately as I try to figure out how to transition out of a boring day job and into a place where I can torture myself with these thoughts all day long. I have passed out of the first phase of this transition (the one in which I stop writing all together for fear that I will never be good enough to make a living with my craft…see my work from August, 2006) and into the next shade of gray (most significantly: how do I do this?), and I continue to struggle with what kind of person I really want to be.

Scanning over what I have written so far I see a lot of question marks. That seems about right.

So back to Steve’s piece. He raises a lot great points about this whole struggle, most succinctly and accurately with his subheadings. “Not how; why?” he asks, and it made me realize that the reason tmusic is so captivating for me - why I can’t stop thinking about it and talking about it - is because of the mystery that lies behind every great song. When I hear the piano part for Atmosphere’s “Say Hey There,” for example, and the way it propels the entire song forward in an eerie, groovy progression; or when Bob Dylan sings, effortlessly, perfectly, on the first track of his new album, “Today’s the day I’m going to grab my trombone and blow,” it makes me go “WHY?!?! Where did that come from?”

And I doubt that either of those musicians could really explain those precise moments technically, nor would it be that interesting; so we have to move out of the “how” and into the “how did you become this kind of artist, capable of making this magic.” And that’s when it really starts to get interesting.

Of course, I am just pulling all of this out of my ass as I go along, so it’s a little rough around the edges, but that’s ok with me for now. I am thinking and playing around with ideas and everything is going to be glorious, eventually.

I really dig this excerpt, from toward the end of Steve’s column, and would like to quote a bit of it here in case you don’t read the article all the way through (for shame!):

It can never be unacceptable to think. We need to ask questions, and not just about mechanics, but about motivation. “Artists have spent their whole lives trying to figure how not to let this groove be boring,” says Everest, and it’s an approach that can have far-ranging applications to anyone’s life. How do I approach my life every day to always be making something of it? Where does meaning in my life come from? Is it possible to actually craft a life out of doing what I love instead of what everyone expects of me?

Today, it’s all about asking questions. Maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll have some answers. See you then.