The Friendly Album: Stranger Than Kindness
Mar. 9th, 2005 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusOutline your perfect pleasure scenario for us, Nick!
Okay, I'll try. Hmm, let me think... I'm getting pictures. I'm seeing Japanese imagery. I'm digesting a long, slow meal I ate about an hour ago, which included some very soft, tasty white fish and a lot of little plates of pickles and seaweed and things. I've just soaked in a hot spring bath, a public bath up near the summit of a volcano. There's a very starry sky, I feel young, I feel free, anything seems possible. I've been pummelled by jets of water, I've lingered in a room smelling of marshmallow steam and filled with ferns, I've dipped in cold water and I've dipped in hot, I've lain in a computer-controlled massage chair for a while feeling clean, being buzzed and shaken into complete relaxation. Then, in a room empty but for painted screens, tatami mats and scatter cushions, I've made love with my girlfriend. Once I've come, a record of Renaissance lute music begins to play, and my girlfriend gently scratches my back as I lie in a state between reverie and slumber, my head swimming with delicious imagery. There. I'm very, very happy.
Pleasure for me is embodied. It's body and mind in legitimate harmony. I say "legitimate" because, although I'm quite aware that the bliss I outline above is largely chemical in nature (the product of hydrogen sulphide, the chemistry of food, digestive juices, sexual secretions and the post-orgasmic release in the brain of natural dopamines and opiates), it's important that I don't cheat my body by triggering reward mechanisms I don't deserve. I don't do drugs, and I've never done drugs, because I've been wary of peace of mind that doesn't come from a good relationship between myself and the world. Just as vitamins can't replace food, drugs can't replace the natural well-being the body feels after exercise or sex. Nothing can simulate the peace of mind we feel when we're genuinely pleased with the way our lives are going. There are no hidden side effects to that high, no post-comedown depressions, no long-term health risks. How to feel good feelings? Do good things. The moral, relational, intellectual and physical are all connected. You can't tweak one with chemicals and hope to feel good if the others are out of sync.
Let me go back to the music. When I imagine the music of pleasure, I imagine static music. There should be no yearning, no tension in this music. It has arrived at a plateau of pleasure. I can put a record of it on -- or, regally, command a lute player to strum away in my royal bedchamber -- and I expect it to decorate the air with elegant scrolls, but not to develop in any way, or build expectations, or dominate me. It should be self-effacing music, music which defers to my pleasure even as it subtly structures it. I'm thinking of a specific record, actually, a record I played this morning on my old East German record player. It's called Lautenmusic der Renaissance. I have no idea who the composers and performers are. But the music is very lovely. Sometimes I play it at 16 RPM, sometimes at 33. At 16 it lasts longer and rings deeper. It's music from the morning of the world, simple chords which balance almost banal progressions with subtle flourishes and a deep understanding of the elegance of form. Every culture seems to have this kind of music, though I think of it as particularly Islamic or Indian, a cool, classical, aristocratic music which works best in hot places, a music which understands pleasure and sensuality and colours the passing of time in a respectful, restrained way. There's no singing on this music, no focal point. It's almost ambient. It doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end. There's certainly no attention-grabbing music star here, no virtuoso performer taking the solo, no pouting sex symbol trying to provoke erections, no menace or grandiosity or commercial guile.
Most of the civilisations which made this kind of music -- in fact, most of the civilisations which truly understood the value of pleasure -- have disappeared. But I do think Japan still clings to an understanding of this kind of pleasure, at least insofar as it holds fast to its courtly traditions. If I search for a modern equivalent to this lute music, I think of Lullatone, for instance -- an American who lives in Japan and seems to have integrated the gentle static self-effacing pleasure which is part of Japan's low-stress culture much better than I have.
I cringe now when I think of how I tried to introduce Protestant-Romantic dynamism and aggression into Japanese pop in Kahimi Karie songs like Lolitapop Dollhouse: "I'm going to tear my playhouse down" indeed! I should have been learning from Japan's serenity, its avoidance of conflict and protest, instead of introducing cod-feminist defiance into those songs -- a defiance paradoxically yet all-too-typically taught, Henry Higgins-style, by a guilty western male to a compliant (but soon to be cod defiant) eastern female. And now that Kahimi is making her own songs, are they defiant? Not at all. They're "static", serene. Has she learned from me? Thank goodness, no. But it's not too late for me to learn from her.
Or rather, to learn from Japan. Because each time I visit Japan I reel at how different it is -- from the rest of the world, and from me. The difference can be expressed in a myriad of ways, but it's something to do with concensus, self-effacement, other-orientation, friendliness, horizontality, politeness, pleasure, self-sacrifice combined with sensual group-indulgence (never pour your own drink, someone will pour it for you!)... In the words of, ahem, Nick Cave, there's nothing "stranger than kindness". I'm so imbued with opinions, with radicalism, with protest, with satire, with moral struggles and endless questions... And Japan, more concerned with content than with content, is so much the opposite of that. What else could it seem to someone like me but strange? Strange, sometimes suspect, but usually, increasingly, finally, terribly wise.
I'm planning my next album, "The Friendly Album". And I want to make something as static, as friendly, as consensual, as self-effacing, as Japan itself. It will be a feminine record and a friendly record. It will -- it should -- contain the deep sensuality of Renaissance lute music, or bossa nova. You should be able to put it on and just let it hover in the background all the way through, structuring your contentment in a self-effacing, classical, cool and elegant way. I don't know if I'm capable of making music that serene and sensual, but I want to try. Perhaps it'll turn out terribly banal, 15 takes on Don't Worry, Be Happy! But that's a risk worth running. Because the values of pleasure and friendliness, modesty and elegance seem more important than ever to me right now... and, in a world dominated by "aggressive normality", perhaps evoking strange kindness is the most subversive, interesting and challenging thing an artist could do.
Okay, I'll try. Hmm, let me think... I'm getting pictures. I'm seeing Japanese imagery. I'm digesting a long, slow meal I ate about an hour ago, which included some very soft, tasty white fish and a lot of little plates of pickles and seaweed and things. I've just soaked in a hot spring bath, a public bath up near the summit of a volcano. There's a very starry sky, I feel young, I feel free, anything seems possible. I've been pummelled by jets of water, I've lingered in a room smelling of marshmallow steam and filled with ferns, I've dipped in cold water and I've dipped in hot, I've lain in a computer-controlled massage chair for a while feeling clean, being buzzed and shaken into complete relaxation. Then, in a room empty but for painted screens, tatami mats and scatter cushions, I've made love with my girlfriend. Once I've come, a record of Renaissance lute music begins to play, and my girlfriend gently scratches my back as I lie in a state between reverie and slumber, my head swimming with delicious imagery. There. I'm very, very happy.
Pleasure for me is embodied. It's body and mind in legitimate harmony. I say "legitimate" because, although I'm quite aware that the bliss I outline above is largely chemical in nature (the product of hydrogen sulphide, the chemistry of food, digestive juices, sexual secretions and the post-orgasmic release in the brain of natural dopamines and opiates), it's important that I don't cheat my body by triggering reward mechanisms I don't deserve. I don't do drugs, and I've never done drugs, because I've been wary of peace of mind that doesn't come from a good relationship between myself and the world. Just as vitamins can't replace food, drugs can't replace the natural well-being the body feels after exercise or sex. Nothing can simulate the peace of mind we feel when we're genuinely pleased with the way our lives are going. There are no hidden side effects to that high, no post-comedown depressions, no long-term health risks. How to feel good feelings? Do good things. The moral, relational, intellectual and physical are all connected. You can't tweak one with chemicals and hope to feel good if the others are out of sync.
Let me go back to the music. When I imagine the music of pleasure, I imagine static music. There should be no yearning, no tension in this music. It has arrived at a plateau of pleasure. I can put a record of it on -- or, regally, command a lute player to strum away in my royal bedchamber -- and I expect it to decorate the air with elegant scrolls, but not to develop in any way, or build expectations, or dominate me. It should be self-effacing music, music which defers to my pleasure even as it subtly structures it. I'm thinking of a specific record, actually, a record I played this morning on my old East German record player. It's called Lautenmusic der Renaissance. I have no idea who the composers and performers are. But the music is very lovely. Sometimes I play it at 16 RPM, sometimes at 33. At 16 it lasts longer and rings deeper. It's music from the morning of the world, simple chords which balance almost banal progressions with subtle flourishes and a deep understanding of the elegance of form. Every culture seems to have this kind of music, though I think of it as particularly Islamic or Indian, a cool, classical, aristocratic music which works best in hot places, a music which understands pleasure and sensuality and colours the passing of time in a respectful, restrained way. There's no singing on this music, no focal point. It's almost ambient. It doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end. There's certainly no attention-grabbing music star here, no virtuoso performer taking the solo, no pouting sex symbol trying to provoke erections, no menace or grandiosity or commercial guile.
Most of the civilisations which made this kind of music -- in fact, most of the civilisations which truly understood the value of pleasure -- have disappeared. But I do think Japan still clings to an understanding of this kind of pleasure, at least insofar as it holds fast to its courtly traditions. If I search for a modern equivalent to this lute music, I think of Lullatone, for instance -- an American who lives in Japan and seems to have integrated the gentle static self-effacing pleasure which is part of Japan's low-stress culture much better than I have.
I cringe now when I think of how I tried to introduce Protestant-Romantic dynamism and aggression into Japanese pop in Kahimi Karie songs like Lolitapop Dollhouse: "I'm going to tear my playhouse down" indeed! I should have been learning from Japan's serenity, its avoidance of conflict and protest, instead of introducing cod-feminist defiance into those songs -- a defiance paradoxically yet all-too-typically taught, Henry Higgins-style, by a guilty western male to a compliant (but soon to be cod defiant) eastern female. And now that Kahimi is making her own songs, are they defiant? Not at all. They're "static", serene. Has she learned from me? Thank goodness, no. But it's not too late for me to learn from her.
Or rather, to learn from Japan. Because each time I visit Japan I reel at how different it is -- from the rest of the world, and from me. The difference can be expressed in a myriad of ways, but it's something to do with concensus, self-effacement, other-orientation, friendliness, horizontality, politeness, pleasure, self-sacrifice combined with sensual group-indulgence (never pour your own drink, someone will pour it for you!)... In the words of, ahem, Nick Cave, there's nothing "stranger than kindness". I'm so imbued with opinions, with radicalism, with protest, with satire, with moral struggles and endless questions... And Japan, more concerned with content than with content, is so much the opposite of that. What else could it seem to someone like me but strange? Strange, sometimes suspect, but usually, increasingly, finally, terribly wise.
I'm planning my next album, "The Friendly Album". And I want to make something as static, as friendly, as consensual, as self-effacing, as Japan itself. It will be a feminine record and a friendly record. It will -- it should -- contain the deep sensuality of Renaissance lute music, or bossa nova. You should be able to put it on and just let it hover in the background all the way through, structuring your contentment in a self-effacing, classical, cool and elegant way. I don't know if I'm capable of making music that serene and sensual, but I want to try. Perhaps it'll turn out terribly banal, 15 takes on Don't Worry, Be Happy! But that's a risk worth running. Because the values of pleasure and friendliness, modesty and elegance seem more important than ever to me right now... and, in a world dominated by "aggressive normality", perhaps evoking strange kindness is the most subversive, interesting and challenging thing an artist could do.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 02:09 pm (UTC)Why escape the high/low fluctuation of the passionate life? Why float your sensorium in the isolation chamber of a music that pure temporality, or atemporality?
I've been listening to Beethoven lately, over and over again. Constant starting and stopping, building, rising, falling, and unexpected transitions.
This, I think, is more like sex, childbirth, death, actual life, not the escape of passion but passion's fulfillment, not the tranquil bliss of the afterwards, but the very moment of, a perfect, transcendent clamor which is just as much a receding horizon as silence. Pleasure versus thrill?
Also, I like those patterns.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 02:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 03:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 03:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 04:12 pm (UTC)As I get older, I come around more and more to your point of view regarding the varying pleasures, those arising from drugs and the arousal of overstimulation, as opposed to those arising from a carefully modulated homeostasis. Personally, I want to have my cake and eat it. I can get out of my bath and eat my seaweed, light a scented candle or what-the-f*ck-ever, and then maybe have a spliff and put on some Beethoven or Schubert. It's like sitting in a warm, dry, room, but looking out the window at a raging thunderstorm. Or walking out into the freezing rain, and coming back inside. Silence is the elimination of contrasts and oppositions. So is heat death. Muss is sein?
Geek Pie
Date: 2005-03-09 03:57 pm (UTC)I, too, would value friendship over love. I like the idea of a friendly album. One of the first things that attracted me to The Smiths was that I sensed a lack of 'trying to be hard' in the music that was very different to the desperate, grasping street cred of the norm, and quite readical. Of course, there is also a vicious streak in the music of The Smiths/Morrissey that interests some (like me) and puts off others. In terms of friendly music, I personally find Kate Bush very agreeable in a friendly sense, though she does not make the kind of music you describe.
Lately I have much less patience with the noisy egoism of singers than I used to and listen to more instrumental music. This is only relative to the past, where I listened to very little that was completely instrumental. Of the instrumental music I listen to, there is one album in particular that sounds to me something like what you are describing. It is a band (?) or person called Nikakoi, presumably Russian. I actually know almost nothing about them/him/her(?). A friend made me a tape of Nikakoi, and I simply find it very sweet and pleasant as background, or even foreground music.
I wonder if anyone here knows of Nikakoi? I've never really bothered to find out who or what it is.
I've also had similar thoughts about drugs - a kind of unearned pleasure - though must admit to indulging.
I'm tempted to talk about Japan, but I think I won't this time. Oh, except that, I wondered what you thought the significance was of Nathan Barley's Geek Pie haircut being accepted by - applauded by - the Japanese at the end of the last episode? (Of course, it's fiction, but...)
Actually had to give a lecture on Friday about 'a foreigner's view of Japan' to a class full of Japanese students. Didn't relish it, as I don't want to be representative of a foreigner's view. I always get the feeling that I invite misunderstandings in such situations, too. It seems inevitable somehow. I spent most of the lecture trying to explain how I distrust the very idea of 'my group' - foreigners - commenting on 'your group' - Japanese, about how I couldn't really speak about 'Japan' at all, without confronting the dilemma of my exclusion as a 'foreigner', and about how, for that reason, I'd much rather talk about my personal experiences in Japan.
Re: Geek Pie
Date: 2005-03-09 06:28 pm (UTC)I've become aware of an awful lot of silly press in the UK recently about Pete Doherty of The Libertines. He seems to be a second Bobby Gillespie (and seems also to be a protege of Alan McGee, the man who failed to get me onto drugs, though not for lack of trying) in the sense that people exclaim "He's done a lot of drugs, you know!" as if that in itself were terribly interesting or admirable. It all ties in with silly ideas about Romantic artists suffering and suchlike.
As for the Geek Pie episode in Nathan Barley, I thought the TV thing at the end was as embarrassing as anything in Lost In Translation. It was a typical Western view of the way trends and media work in Japan, rather than anything you'd actually see in Japan. They shot it like a purikkura machine. In fact it resembled 80s UK yoof TV more than anything. It also annoyed me that, like Tarantino in Kill Bill, or like Gwen Stefani in her Harajuku Girls video, Chinese and Japanese actors were mixed indiscriminately. One of the "Japanese" fashion victims raving about Barley had a strong Hong Kong accent.
Re: Geek Pie
Date: 2005-03-09 06:39 pm (UTC)A lot of it has to do with Chris Tarrant, I feel, and the whole Endurance thing (was that Tarrant or Clive James? I can't remember now). No Japanese person I know has ever seen Endurance.
Re: Geek Pie
Date: 2005-03-10 01:16 am (UTC)you live with lady one question??
Re: Geek Pie
Date: 2005-03-10 10:19 am (UTC)Re: Geek Pie
Date: 2005-03-09 06:40 pm (UTC)'Where is PETE ?' is a question the rest of THE LIBERTINES have been asking after
their eccentric joint-frontman disappeared on the eve of their European ...
www.nme.com/news/105335.htm - 33k - Cached - Similar pages
Exclusive - Libertines Pete gets new band together - NME.COM
Estranged LIBERTINES singer/guitarist PETE DOHERTY has formed a new band with
the same name - but admits he still wants to play the CARLING WEEKEND shows ...
www.nme.com/news/105808.htm - 31k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.nme.com ]
brooklynvegan: Libertines, PETE DOHERTY has been arrested
... Libertines, PETE DOHERTY has been arrested. PETE DOHERTY has been arrested on
suspicion of assault and robbery. Doherty remains in custody this morning ...
www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/ 2005/02/liberties_pete.html - 14k - Cached - Similar pages
Libertines Pete Doherty Escapes Jail Term
... Former Libertines singer Pete Doherty has been spared a prison sentence after
a judge handed him four month suspended sentence yesterday. ...
www.undercover.com.au/news/ 2004/sept04/20040902_libertines.html - 25k - Cached - Similar pages
Libertines: Ex Libertines Pete Doherty Has Passport Confiscated
Libertines: Former LIBERTINES star PETE DOHERTY's passport has.
www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity/14912004.htm - 20k - Cached - Similar pages
Libertines: Pete Doherty Threatens Morrissey
Libertines: Troubled rocker PETE DOHERTY vows to enact violent revenge on his
hero MORRISSEY, after the former SMITHS icon refused to shake his hand.
That really is the essence of rock idiocy and, in a very real sense, the cul de sac of the Romantic movement.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 03:46 pm (UTC)Hahaha! Thought I recognized those.
Have you had a chance to look at Alexander's eccentric book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195208668/qid=1110383101/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-7106867-5551806?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) on "very early Turkish carpets". Far-out, but in the friendliest possible way. And he claims that his thinking is deeply influenced by his carpet collection.
My preference in the textile pattern domain is for southeast asian weavings.
Sublime!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 06:01 pm (UTC)I've tried to enjoy the works of Arvo Part, but just as he settles the music into a lovely all-overness, he gives the work some cathartic surge that rattles my teeth.
A live performance by Ravi Shankar with his daughter Anoushka was one of the most memorable musical performances I've seen. Likewise a Balinese Gamelan troupe I'd seen years ago, particularly the gong gede, which lacks the crashing discordance.
For those who would bother to listen closely, bluegrass music can often possess such dispersed qualities. We Scots-Irish aren't all bad, you know.
Many late symphonic pieces leave me cold--I prefer the earlier chamber string pieces for the reasons Nick has pointed out. Keep the lutes, harpsichords, flutes and recorders coming, please.
I have two recordings of Satie's famous 'Gnossiennes/Gymnopedies' pieces, one by someone who was obviously trained to attack the keys, the other by Pascal Roge, whose touch is light as a feather, bending the phrasing and tempo to suit the music, notation be damned. The Roge version is far, far, superior.
W
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 07:17 pm (UTC)Here's the question - have you also been listening to Matsudaira Yoritsune or John Adams?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 07:49 pm (UTC)Can't say that I am familiar with Matsudaira Yoritsune, but I am a Mamoru Fujeida fan. Is their work in any way similar?
I've heard some of Adam's On The Transmigration of Souls, and was taken with it. I plan to purchase it soon.
I've also been listening to Kronos Quartet's recording of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh's Mugam Sayagi, which brings both Feldman and Britten to mind in some parts. For some reason, Russian folk tales come to mind when listening to it--I imagine old Baba Yaga flying through the bare treetops.
Bach's flute sonatas have been figuring large of late, as the first daffodils are just now beginning to emerge.
W
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 08:42 pm (UTC)Matsudaira Yoritsune was an impulse buy. I quote from the blurb on the case:
Yoritsune Matsudaira was one of the greatest Japanese composers of the 20th century. His music won the respect of Messiaen and Takemitsu... Matsudaira developed a distinctive, modern style of his own based on the ancient Japanese court music, Gagaku... In these works Matsudaira attempts to integrate Gagaku with the avant-garde of Stockhausen and Boulez.
I'm finding it interesting, though I don't know if I'm captivated as yet, or whether I don't simply prefer to listen to the original forms of music this is based upon. It's strange to hear the piano playing the kind of parts you would usually hear played on the koto or samisen.
It reminds my of part of Nagai Kafu's essay on the arts of Edo, that runs:
Is the piano truly suited for expressing the feelings particular to the Japanese? Are oil-painting and marble truly the only path we must now take in order to realise the beauty of form peculiar to the Japanese aesthetic? When I consider the extremely mathematical nature of Western music, and the simple, plaintive music of Japan, based upon the natural sounds of falling leaves and flowers, birds and insects, above all, I can only be amazed at the yawning gulf between the two.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-09 04:17 pm (UTC)Minimalist techno? Or is there too much residue of commercial guile and sexual provocation in that with it boom-chik-boom-chik?