Confessions of a Musical Philistine

Recently a Facebook friend of mine posted a letter she had written in which she extolls the virtues of vinyl records—their longevity, their physicality, their ability to evoke the times and places in which they were listened to. Along with the text, she also posted photos of herself holding up various LPs she was giving away to a young man as a Bar Mitzvah gift. Merely by looking through the photos, I got a taste of the pleasures she was describing in her eloquent letter.

Though I spend a sizable portion of my own leisure time listening to music, however, and have a constant mental soundtrack playing in my head most of the time, I've never been a vinyl guy. In my earliest memories, I can recall listening to a couple of my parents' records: the soundtrack from Grease, the Steve Martin album with the King Tut song on it. I had quite a few read-along records, 45-rpm sized, but that's about it.

When I first started listening to music in earnest, it was on tapes. I didn't get a CD player until I was a senior in high school; and now, mostly, I listen to music on my iPod and my computer. I don't have a particularly nice speaker system. I rarely patronize record stores anymore (particularly since there's virtually none within the city limits)—I buy music from Amazon. In these ways, then, I am anathema to audiophiles, a gauche consumer of tunes without the refined habits of the connoisseur.

Yet, in my own perhaps debased way, I have had something of the experience my FB friend describes. I thought of it a few months ago when R.E.M. announced their final dissolution, and I was moved to pull down from the closet shelf all my old R.E.M. tapes. I took a photo of them and thought of writing a blog post about what R.E.M. had meant to me., but I never got around to it.

Looking at these tape covers, holding the little plastic boxes, I do recall all the time I spent listening to them—working on math homework at my desk down in the basement of the house I grew up in, or hooked into headphones in the back seat of my family's van as we drove somewhere. I remember going to the Streetside Records on Watson Road to buy many of these.

Let's face it, though: tapes aren't the same as vinyl LPs. The cover art is shrunken; the recording material is not as durable; the listening experience is less sensual, and less convenient as well—it's harder to go directly to the song you want to hear.

So maybe it's not surprising that I've become a musical philistine. I never had much of a chance, coming of age in a world of tapes, never having had that formative emotional experience with vinyl. As Huck Finn says, "it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little ain't got no show—when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up."

It may be that eventually all my CDs will deteriorate and my MP3s get corrupted. I certainly won't have fond memories of the fleeting moments I spent buying music online (or downloading my free weekly songs legally from the library). I know that I'm settling for a less beautiful life as a music listener. But, honestly, I don't envision ever changing my ways.

Covers

An interesting series of covers (with accompanying article) for Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, a collection of stories about Auschwitz by an author who was there.

Change

The first paragraph of Timothy Noah's review of Paul Starr's Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform is striking:

Barack Obama achieved more significant change in domestic policy during the first two years of his presidency than any president since Richard Nixon has over the course of four or eight. That’s because in 2010 Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. We don’t know how this story will end, but there’s now a law on the books that, for all its many shortcomings and unpopularity, will extend health coverage to most of this country’s uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the share of legal nonelderly residents who have health insurance will rise from 83 percent to 94 percent. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, some unquantifiable number of people will live who would otherwise die.

As are the final two sentences:

Should the Supreme Court chuck Obamacare, health policy will be back to Square 1, and Obama’s presidency will be instantly transformed from a substantive success to a substantive failure. I fear that Justices Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Kennedy may find that possibility too tempting to pass up.

Halfsies

The provocative opening to Martin Amis's review of Don DeLillo's new collection of short stories:

When we say that we love a writer’s work, we are always stretching the truth: what we really mean is that we love about half of it. Sometimes rather more than half, sometimes rather less. The vast presence of Joyce relies pretty well entirely on “Ulysses,” with a little help from “Dubliners.” You could jettison Kafka’s three attempts at full-length fiction (unfinished by him, and unfinished by us) without muffling the impact of his seismic originality. George Eliot gave us one readable book, which turned out to be the central Anglophone novel. Every page of Dickens contains a paragraph to warm to and a paragraph to veer back from. Coleridge wrote a total of two major poems (and collaborated on a third). Milton consists of “Paradise Lost.” Even my favorite writer, William Shakespeare, who usually eludes all mortal limitations, succumbs to this law. Run your eye down the contents page and feel the slackness of your urge to reread the comedies (“As You Like It” is not as we like it); and who would voluntarily curl up with “King John” or “Henry VI, Part III”?

Proustians will claim that “In Search of Lost Time” is unimprovable throughout, despite all the agonizing longueurs. And Janeites will never admit that three of the six novels are comparative weaklings (I mean “Sense and Sensibility,” “Mansfield Park,” and “Persuasion”). Perhaps the only true exceptions to the fifty-fifty model are Homer and Harper Lee.

Anchored Down

It occurred to me the other day that Michelle Shocked's classic 1988 song "Anchorage" is now a period piece, kind of like the old Marvelettes tune "Beechwood 4-5789"—made quaint by the evolution of communication technology.

For example:

1) The first lines: "I took time out to write to my old friend ... mailed my letter off to Dallas." Who writes letters anymore? Who mails them?

2) Later in the song, the speaker's friend writes back: "Hey girl, it's about time you wrote me. It's been over two years you know, my old friend." Today these two would obviously be friends on Facebook.

3) Near the end of the song: "Tell me, what's it like to be a skateboard punk rocker? Leroy says send a picture. Leroy says hello. Leroy says, As keep on rockin' girl. Yeah, keep on rockin'." In the song, these lines speak of Leroy's yearning for a window into a world beyond his drab workaday existence with the speaker's old friend in Anchorage, Alaska. Nowadays, he'd just Facebook stalk her and look through the albums of photos she'd post of her skateboard punk rock life in New York.

4) I hate to say it, but would it be possible to write a song about Alaska now without making at least a humorous reference to Sarah Palin?

Ah well. It's still a great song.

The Revival of Laughter

A nice bit from a review of a posthumous collection of John Updike's essays:

His own word-pictures — of events remembered, books read, pictures seen, games played, loves grasped and relinquished — are among the gifts of our literature. “Perhaps,” he writes in an essay on humor, “one reason we laugh so much in childhood is that so much is unexpected and novel to us, and perhaps fiction revives that laughter by giving us back the world clearer than we have seen it before.”

Word of the Day

My day has already been made: by David Remnick's use of the word "callipygian" (look it up) to describe Kim Kardashian in his Comment in the upcoming New Yorker.

A Nod to Bob

Today I downloaded some early Bob Dylan tunes (legally!) that I'd previously had only on tape. Listening to them, I became curious about the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, about Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez. Eventually I ended up on the Wikipedia entry for Dylan, where I found this funny little nugget:

In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born-again Christian and released two albums of Christian gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer, Jerry Wexler. Wexler recalled that when Dylan had tried to evangelize him during the recording, he replied: "Bob, you're dealing with a sixty-two-year old Jewish atheist. Let's just make an album."

Breakfast

From a review of a new biography of Kurt Vonnegut

Mr. Shields provides a good assessment of misconceptions about Vonnegut’s writing. Those impressions persisted throughout his later life, perhaps because the books that followed “Cat’s Cradle,” “The Sirens of Titan,” “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” became increasingly unreadable.

“On the strength of Vonnegut’s reputation, ‘Breakfast of Champions’ spent a year on the best-seller lists,” Mr. Shields writes of that 1973 disappointment, “proving that he could indeed publish anything and make money.”

Huh. Should I be embarrassed to admit that Breakfast of Champions has always been perhaps my favorite Vonnegut novel?

I Know Who You Are

In my adolescence I read a lot of Stephen King. I haven't read anything more than a short story or two by him in years, but I do tend to pay attention to what he's up to.

His new novel—a time-travel story about a guy who tries to prevent JFK's asssassination—is being marketed as a new kind of Stephen King novel. Whether it is or not, I found this Wall Street Journal article interesting and this anecdote amusing in particular:

Mr. King recalled a woman who approached him in a supermarket in Florida, where he has a winter home.

"She said, 'I know who you are, you're that writer, you write those horror stories, and I said, "Yes, ma'am, I guess," and she said, 'I don't read that kind of thing. I respect what you do but I don't read those. I like uplifting things like that 'Shawshank Redemption,' '' Mr. King recalled. "I said, 'I wrote that one, too,' and she goes, 'No, you didn't,' and she just went on her way."

Slavery and Shaw

Here's a piece I've got up at the Occasional Planet today about a memorial to slaves who attempted to escape from estate of St. Louis's own Henry Shaw.

Saunders Does It Again

George Saunders is one of the writers who can make me cry. He did it again with this new story, "Tenth of December"—in which, as he did in "Escape from Spiderhead," Saunders seems to be working through his feelings about the suicide of his friend and artistic compatriot David Foster Wallace.

A teacher of writing at Syracuse, Saunders is also a reliably perceptive commentator on his own work and on the craft of fiction. This Q&A with Deborah Treisman is no exception. Here's a nice bit:

I think fiction isn’t so good at being for or against things in general—the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application.

Tell Tale Charts

Colin Gordon, a professor at the University of Iowa, wrote a book called Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, which I wrote about in St. Louis Magazine.

Now Gordon has put together a series of remarkably illuminating short films about the American economy. About three minutes long apiece, they're narrated graphs that illustrate basic facts and trends related to topics like the minimum wage, Social Secuirty, and the current recession.

They're well worth checking out. You can watch them here.

Persistence

Today I've been gobbling up Randall Kennedy's book The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. Among many great insights, this statistical point, made in a footnote and drawn from Nate Silver's blog FiveThirtyEight, struck me as particularly startling:

In 1980, nearly 98 percent of Ronald Reagan's voters were white. In 2000, 91 percent of George W. Bush's voters were white. In 2008, 89 percent of John McCain's voters were white.

I'll Fly Away

In honor of last night's fantastic Gillian Welch show—which featured an electrical malfunction (the lights and A/C at the Pageant both proved unreliable), a wardrobe malfunction (one of the straps of Gillian's dress apparently failed, causing her to disappear off stage for a while, leaving David Rawlings to entertain the crowd with a solo version of "Big Rock Candy Mountain"), and a lyrics malfunction (Rawlings momentarily blanked on the words of the eighth or ninth verse of "Sweet Tooth" before bringing the song to a rollicking close)—here's Alec Wilkinson on the guitar playing of Rawlings, from Wilkinson's 2004 New Yorker profile of the band:

Rawlings is a strikingly inventive guitarist. His solos often feature daring melodic leaps. He uses passing tones as signal elements of a solo rather than relying on them merely to bridge chord changes, and there is an obstinate, near-vagrant quality of chromatic drifting to his playing--of his proceeding with harmonic ideas at a different pace and perhaps even in a different direction from the song's changes. He uses double and triple stops and open strings for dramatic effect. Often, he leaves an open string ringing as a drone against which he plays a note that conflicts with the chord the drone refers to. He likes to go as far out on a limb as he can before figuring out how to get back. In Carrboro, he played a solo that seemed as if it were going to skid right off the pavement and recovered itself only at the very last moment. The crowd applauded the simple audacity, and a woman beside me, clearly familiar with his playing, began laughing and shaking her head. "Of course he ends it there," she said to her companion. "Why wouldn't he?" In the dressing room afterward, I asked Rawlings how he would describe his playing, and he said that he simply has a fondness for certain notes and he finds ways to play them. When I asked which notes they were, he shrugged and said, "The ghostly ones."

Remnick on Obama

It's been a long time since I've last posted, but what better way to get back into it than with an excellent Fraction from David Remnick, from his fine piece on Libya, Obama, and "leading from behind":

The trouble with so much of the conservative critique of Obama’s foreign policy is that it cares less about outcomes than about the assertion of America’s power and the affirmation of its glory. In the case of Libya, Obama led from a place of no glory, and, in the eyes of his critics, no results could ever vindicate such a strategy. Yet a calculated modesty can augment a nation’s true influence. Obama would not be the first statesman to realize that it can be easier to win if you don’t need to trumpet your victory.

What I've Been Up To

From my graduate school days, I recall a quotation from Nietzsche, an exhortation: "Obey in a single direction."

Regular readers of this blog (a small but distinguished group—and you know who you are) may have noticed that my posts have been trailing off lately. I suppose it's because I've been trying to follow Nietzsche's advice. Pulled in a number of directions by my responsibilities as a parent and by some other projects I've been working on (including this one), I've let the blog go for a while in an attempt to focus my energies.

Currently, I'm in the midst of another NEH Summer Institute, this one on jazz, Motown, and American culture from 1959 to 1975. It's been a great experience so far.

For those who may be curious about what I've been doing in that Institute, or who may be experiencing the unpleasant symptoms of Corresponding Fractions withdrawal, here are three posts I've written for the Institute's blog:

Why is Popular Music Important?

What Is Black Music?

Nothing But a Man and Black Art

UPDATE: Here's one more, "The Symbolism of Billie Holiday"

Stone Walls Redux

Not too long ago I did a little post about some stone walls I noticed on a bike ride through the south side of St. Louis. Today I went riding again and ended up in Carondelet, where I saw this interesting example at the intersection of Iron and Michigan:

In this case, the extensive stone wall remains even though the houses that it once framed are gone.

The wall rounds the corner, on which stands an unkempt in-fill home that is largely shrouded by dense tree cover.

As I rode around today, I was struck by how many beautiful and well-kept houses there are, even in areas of the city that would probably be considered sketchy by prospective home-buyers. The admirable people who stick with these houses and these neighborhoods are quixotic in their commitment to these beautiful places that have been bypassed by highways and real estate trends.

The stone wall above is an example of the sheer abundance and wealth of St. Louis's architectural past. Despite all that has vanished, there's so much that still remains—and much that retains its glory.

A couple examples:

(Boathouse in Carondelet Park)

(at Livingston and Holly Hills)

Last Words

I've got a new piece up at The Millions today. It's an idea I've been kicking around for a while, but just last week at tennis my friend Ben told me a story that was the final piece of the puzzle.

You can read it here.

A Covenant of Pathos

From an interview with George Saunders about his story in the current New Yorker, a passage that I think crystallizes what I love about him (i.e., his humanity toward his characters):

Deborah Treisman: You seem, ultimately, to have a lot of sympathy for Mike, despite whatever it is that he has (or hasn’t) done, and the violent urges that keep surging up in him. Why is that?

George Saunders: Well, yes—I think that’s one of the fundamental goals of fiction, and its most efficient modus operandi: as a writer you’ve got to keep trying to “de-Other” your narrator until you’ve established him as basically you but on a different day. (I mean, that’s not the only way, but it is a way that, for me, can have the effect of making the narrator non-negligible, i.e., of minimizing the possibility of authorial slumming/puppeteering.) There’s this funny thing where the technical stuff (trying to make the voice convincing and compelling; operating at a sufficient level of detail; trying to keep the reader emotionally with the narrator) will dovetail with the moral valence of the piece—that is, technique leads to sympathy, or maybe, the appearance of sympathy.

I may have to pay the Art Institute a commission for these quotations I’m nonchalantly dropping in here, but here’s something the German artist Ludwig Meidner said that seems relevant to this question: “Do not be afraid of the face of a human being. Don’t let your pen stop until the soul of that one opposite you is wedded to yours in a covenant of pathos.”