Hearing Arcade Fire for the first time was like learning what music could be for the first time. It was my Freshman year in high school (so sometime '04-'05?). Dale was home (either already on OU's big holiday break, or for a weekend or something), and he, Frances, and I were driving his beat-up white Geo down Rt. 736, playing Neighborhood #2 (Laika). I think I owe my fascination with Régine Chassagne to Adam Torres (Adam, I don't know I ever told you that?), who likely introduced Dale to Arcade Fire in the first place. Hell, Adam, I think you introduced Dale to Southeast Engine, Joanna Newsom, and Neutral Milk Hotel, too-- who were all passed down to me through him around the same time. In a weird way, those 4 artists + oddly enough, Roman Catholicism, were what kept me strong for some of the hardest things I've faced to-date (all of which sort of compounded in those early years).
Funny--I've watched my musical tastes refine subtly each year--in high school I was jamming out to a lot more Brit-pop and a lot less banjo--but those 4 artists (plus a few others--Ryan Adams, Modest Mouse, & the old-folkys I inherited from my folks) have remained constants for a really long time...
Drew and I had a conversation about music the other day, and about "staying on top of the scene" so-to-speak, and I've gotta say: as much as I love discovering new music (it's a hell of a feeling), part of me doesn't mind humbly playing and re-playing the same familiar artists I've been in love with forever. Music isn't an image. It shouldn't be exploited to project some status of "hip-ness." Music is a feeling. It's always been a feeling.
Actually I listened to an old Radiolab the other day on Musical Language (which--side note--did a fascinating re-visit of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring), and in the episode this psychologist, Anne Fernald, describes sound as touch. Science confirms it: hearing is the act of sound vibrations touching our ears in different places, at different frequencies. I guess, internally, I took it a step further (the podcast doesn't go here, but it could, I think):
If touch is the action that gives the result of feeling (like looking is the action that results in sight, for example)-- and if sound is touch...
wouldn't music be the feeling that results from the action of touching (sound)?
It doesn't really work when you analyze it, I guess. That's the funny part. Feelings shouldn't be deconstructed by literary devises or critical theory--
(oh, this is a head/heart thing, isn't it?)
sound to touch by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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