Editorial Note: More Than a Feeling
I wish I could write about music in a way that isn't cloying or turgid. (I wish I could write about anything in that way, actually.) I mean, really, when you're trying to express how something makes you feel, how can you convey that without coming off like a total candy ass?
Par example, the suburbs have had a huge influence on me. I didn't grow up in one—my 'hood was a mish-mosh of small, WWII-era homes, some in good shape, others…not so good (cars on blocks in many a backyard)—so I was always fascinated by their size, tidiness, their sameness. When I was younger, riding in the car on the way to anywhere, I'd stare out the window from the highway as we passed through the outer edges of the suburbs. One after another they'd stream by, the next one bigger than the last, all giving the illusion that inside those walls, everything was alright. Everyone had enough money, food, brand-name jeans. The subdivisions promised plenitude.
And when I was older, before I could drive, I'd put on my headphones and walk up to Market Street, cross it—the divide between my lower-middle-class existence and this wealthy one—and get lost in the subdivisions near the golf course. And when I did start driving, I'd take a variety of routes to or from school or work so that I'd find myself puttering past the cul-de-sacs, the neighborhoods with names like "Fox Chase," "Maple Hills," "Pheasant Run," looking into the windows of all those anonymous families whose lives, I was certain, were somehow better than mine.
There was, however, always a feeling of loneliness and emptiness in those neighborhoods—their antiseptic-ness, their stolidity. I believe that was what appealed to me, that these densely populated neighborhoods were lonely. And loneliness knows know socio-economic bounds. So maybe we weren't so different, these suburban kids and me.
I have plenty of music that sounds like the suburbs. And I'm trying to write about music with the same obsessive level of detail, with the same amount of attention that I've devoted to the suburbs. Make sense?
I looked out this morning and the sun was gone /
Turned on some music to start my day/
I lost myself in a familiar song/
I closed my eyes and I slipped away...
Par example, the suburbs have had a huge influence on me. I didn't grow up in one—my 'hood was a mish-mosh of small, WWII-era homes, some in good shape, others…not so good (cars on blocks in many a backyard)—so I was always fascinated by their size, tidiness, their sameness. When I was younger, riding in the car on the way to anywhere, I'd stare out the window from the highway as we passed through the outer edges of the suburbs. One after another they'd stream by, the next one bigger than the last, all giving the illusion that inside those walls, everything was alright. Everyone had enough money, food, brand-name jeans. The subdivisions promised plenitude.
And when I was older, before I could drive, I'd put on my headphones and walk up to Market Street, cross it—the divide between my lower-middle-class existence and this wealthy one—and get lost in the subdivisions near the golf course. And when I did start driving, I'd take a variety of routes to or from school or work so that I'd find myself puttering past the cul-de-sacs, the neighborhoods with names like "Fox Chase," "Maple Hills," "Pheasant Run," looking into the windows of all those anonymous families whose lives, I was certain, were somehow better than mine.
There was, however, always a feeling of loneliness and emptiness in those neighborhoods—their antiseptic-ness, their stolidity. I believe that was what appealed to me, that these densely populated neighborhoods were lonely. And loneliness knows know socio-economic bounds. So maybe we weren't so different, these suburban kids and me.
I have plenty of music that sounds like the suburbs. And I'm trying to write about music with the same obsessive level of detail, with the same amount of attention that I've devoted to the suburbs. Make sense?
I looked out this morning and the sun was gone /
Turned on some music to start my day/
I lost myself in a familiar song/
I closed my eyes and I slipped away...
posted by Iseult at 2:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home