Oh, if she had something to throw; to cause something to happen without anyone noticing. Because she has an audience. And now that she looks around, she sees that other men there have courted her in the past; she dismissed them and now here they are; a rough uncomfortableness rubs up against her skin. She feels like a leader, but who are her followers? What is she leading? She can't even get his attention, as of yet.
*********************************
It is late at night; he sits, unable to sleep. What to do, what on earth to do. He knows well what he must do, and he is scared slightly of going into that oblivious state; he has just said no to a perfectly nice girl who is here for the possible memory of someone else, which he knows is wrong; but he cannot help himself.
And so he sits alone, watching the indiscriminate blue turn into gray and then into blue again, bearing up his own obstinacy. His own foolishness. Perhaps he was gullible to trust her, perhaps not. In the meantime something flies and buzzes and glows, just out of his sight at first; an irritant more than anything. It has wings; it seems as restless and stubborn as himself. He watches it and feels lifted, enough to keep going. The sun rises, sweeping the gray away, the vivid pink fingers of that known rosy dawn are there, against the blue soft sky; he is hungry and better, resigned to much but not giving up, not on her, not on their house in the valley. Not until he knows.
***************************
"Wakey wakey windypants, time to get up!" "I won't get up" he says, his face under the covers, "I was not...consulted." "HAH!" his friend laughs, "you know a little birdie - looked like an owl but what the hell do I know, said he'd seen her in town. At the club you know, that fancy place. She might be there tonight, who knows? Gotta get outta bed before long now." The sun's rays fill the room, obliterating all need for considerations. He yawns and gets up.
******************************
He can hear her now; hear her invocation; her own stubbornness meeting his own hapless gentle qualities. He is the still pond next to her bonfire; or, more prosaically, she dances on the bed he built, as if the furious action alone will bring him back. She's right, he thinks, munching his cereal and listening to the birds hoot and chirrup to each other.
******************************
The pulse of the day quickens; there is foment in the air, a fresh breeze. He has been passive for too long, a rule-abiding man, but there is virtue in that he feels; virtue in that if he breaks the rules, it must be for a very good reason. Does he mind suffering? Not if is for her, which is to say for himself. To him they are indivisible, her and him dancing, her and him sleeping, her and him just ambling down the street, open as a door to whatever is happening.
*******************************
"You know what, bro?," he says, eating his sandwich, "I have nothing at all to lose here. I have to be resigned - no I don't mean that in a bad way. As soon as I see her I can adjust, I'm like a damn thermostat that way. She can be the same way once she calms down, but when I see her she may not be calm at all. She may well be beating down a door somewhere or something. But I can't expect anything too much or we won't work out. I think I misunderstood her at times, you know, and she me. But it's worth working on. Always is."
The party, as it turns out, is a wedding one; he feels a little out of place here, but then he feels almost out of place anywhere. The song playing as he walks in is all eagerness and joy, nervous joy but joy nevertheless. His friend points to a girl and says "You know you would like her, come on" and he lets himself think so, for a moment.
*****************************
She is still, to her own embarrassment, in the bathroom, several minutes later; wishing she could be anyone else, anywhere else. The girls vamp for themselves, for the Other, in the mirrors; rehearsing spells, tricks, moments which they hope will happen, which may well end up in love; or at least a feeling of...something about to happen. She feels as if she can't unleash a thing, or rather that something has happened and maybe she can handle it; just.
******************************
She steps, warily, out the door. If she doesn't treat him like a problem, then he won't be one. He will be here at any time, she feels, or tries to feel; the anonymous one, the one who is beyond any words, mostly. He never did say very much, she remembers, but then sometimes he wouldn't shut up. She smiles to herself, which is armor enough for now.
*******************************
That brave girl, she is walking right up to him. She can't look, she can't not look; she sees them interact and wants to be her, despite herself. The inner flood begins and won't end. What does she have, she wonders? Nerve? Yes, yes. I can do that; yes, I can do that; and once he brushes her off (is she willing this?) then up she will walk. To confront him is braver, but she will need a drink.
He doesn't dismiss that girl just yet; but now that she is looking at him, she has the uneasy feeling she is being watched by someone else, and has no way of knowing who.
********************************
The party runs late; despite his friend's orders/suggestions, he doesn't take up with the girl, who is green and naive and terribly pretty, because he has heard a rumor - that she is over with him, missing him, the rumors change with the winds, the hours. She is there, at least, but how can he know until he gets there? He is still to weak to just walk there. Still she must accept me in some way; I am not returning with a new woman, expecting a purple carpet and adoration. I just want to rest in my own bed, with her.
********************************
The one watching her is perhaps a bit demented, but fundamentally trustworthy; he has ways of seeing that others lack, and vice versa. He is attracted to her not because she is beautiful (she doubts that now, anyway) but because she has a sort of power; a power that he admires. She has nothing to lose, and neither does he.
The blood is back in his veins; he can face anything now, even hospital food. A passing nurse reminds him of her a bit, the shower he is finally strong enough to take is gratifyingly warm.
Oh dear, I could really go for this guy...He is all that. But does he want me? Or the symbolic trophy that is me? She, confused, retreats to the bathroom to sit and breathe. It almost seems like he is everywhere around her already.
****************************
Someone's blood is inside me, others are keeping me alive. He senses this and feels new, or at least newish. His steps are still slow, as slow as the patient clock. The chill has worn off, the dizzy uncertainty replaced with a kind of calm. He sleeps there one more night and dreams that she is with him, but then she leaves, passing out herself from exhaustion, an open box beside her when he finds her. He looks in the box: there is nothing there.
I must get back to her. His eyes open, to blue-black darkness.
***************************
He worries, as he waits for his bottles to arrive, of what she may have done and may well be doing. Does she even remember him? How he didn't have much but ran and ran to win her? She, the most valuable prize of all, kind of in awe of him, maybe a bit patronizing...at first. He has enough confidence to know she is still around, but also knows her well enough to know that she is not like that girl made of stone come to life. She is human, unhappy with his absence and has perhaps given up. He can't give up; after nearly dying he cannot but hope.
***************************
Once he is able to leave he calls on his old friend, who is sneakier than him and most certainly laxer in all ways - to crash at his place as he recuperates beyond what the hospital deems an appropriate time to have him around. "You still look at bit rough, son, come on over. You still pining over her? You know she's not been seen looking for you for a while now. Aw, don't be sad, she's going to be okay. I'm going to a party tomorrow night, wanna come?" He smiles. "Sure, just don't expect me to do the watusi or anything." "Fine, windypants."
***************************
"You know, there's nothing worse than trying and failing but how else are you gonna know anything? A lot of guys come back and their girls are gone, maybe for you it will be different. I know the right one is out there for me, I just have to keep looking. It's worse for you because you know damn well she is there-" "So you say," he sighs, "and she should be there, I know. I know. But how about if I show up and have to get in a fight all over again? Last thing I need, right now, and although you are a fine man, I don't want you to be a substitute for me. I don't know, I just feel like I'm being invoked all the time and it's starting to make me weird out a little bit." "You have to learn to relish that, that feeling. If only I could have that. Oh well."
"Keep breathing" said the man to the collapsed figure on the floor. "That's all you have to do."
He opened his eyes: a kindly man was asking him if he could move all his limbs, maybe sit up a little. "You're okay. But we've still got to get you to hospital. We'll help you out."
He is took weak to protest, but goes along, thinking: maybe she'll be there. In spirit, if nothing else.
***************************
The club - ah, the club. The many faces, voiceless, the music deafening, defining. She knows his homing instinct. She is here to wait, to entertain and perhaps *be* entertained. She has been waiting a long time, though, and is worried that one push will cause an inner earthquake, cause a siege, break her down and flatten her out. There have been men; oh there have been men. Nevertheless, this is where she feels safe, and how right it would be to meet him here again; it is where they first met, after all.
***************************
She sees one man succumb utterly to a woman without meaning to and thinks: it is so easy. It takes no thought; to get lost, to be with that other if the other is willing. She has something to drink and wonders just what, if anything, would happen if she was that woman; but the girl who is spinning with that man is free, has no purpose but to be free. "You're so lucky" she thinks aloud, blessing herself, blessing that girl. And waits.
***************************
He is getting ready, walking, pacing morelike. He is not going home, most certainly not. He is a void waiting to be filled and a thirst waiting to be slaked; all he has to do is have the courage. She is tough, he's heard it said; a friend of a friend got approximately nowhere with her. Perhaps she is weak; weakened enough for that one moment. He thinks she is, is willing to try his luck against...what? Everyone knows he has gone and isn't coming back, no, no...
***************************
She has composed herself for the night; she has armored herself and will find her man, will throw herself at him and dive in like he was a pool. That woman over there is content to wait, she thinks; but I am going to get him, whoever he is. Will him into existence? Why not? And I am the hottest here, the most irresistible, because of my armor. "You look...nice" she hears. And then smiles.
***************************
The big men arrive, the players, the ones who have some consequence - they knew him, they are sure he will be back, talking casually amongst themselves as they check the girls out, flirt, give maybe a meaningful stare here or there. One of them gets a girl who is already tipsy in the corner rather more tipsy, and they disappear, he half-carries her away. She shakes her head and remembers when he did that...
****************************
"Who in the hecking heck is that?" she asks the woman next to her. She inadvertently stops breathing for a moment; her right hand goes automatically through her hair.
"You need another pint of blood" said the nurse, eyeing his drip feed and agreeing to slow the rate down, as the fresh blood hurts him as it entered and swam into his system. "One more, yes" he said, feeling weaker than he would like.
****************************
He looked a bit stupid, she thought; she didn't want to have anything to do with him, which of course made things worse as part of her most certainly did want something; she felt like an antenna, a phone, the buzz in her ears was ringing. I am safe for now, he hasn't noticed me...the other girls did though, the unattached ones, who wanted him because they wanted him; he was an object, a subject, a thing, and she could see him basking in this. It was ugly, seductive, and she hoped meanly he would go off with one of them, all of them. It didn't matter.
*****************************
Was he the enemy? She *could* dance and dance with him and walk that tightrope. Yes, she could. The music would save her; it was bigger than both of them. It vibrated through her, cleansing her in a way that was absolute. If she had to wait she was going to have fun, dammit, and if he wanted her, fine. FINE.
****************************
Meanwhile he thought of her; it was hopeless. A machine beeped and another bleeped in the same rhythm; the blood dripped like a bassline, sleep carried him like water carries a boat. He wakes up kissing his pillow, holding it tight.
In order to talk about the central, it is necessary to get out of it to the outside.
The other afternoon I went to the ICA to see/hear a presentation by Mark Fisher (aka k-punk) - he was inaugurating the Deep Listening Club (as part of Calling Out Of Context), a rough group of listeners who will gather now and then to listen in near darkness to sound pieces, albums, etc. It happened in a white room with gray cloth-covered canvases here and there; even if the lights were on, there wouldn't be too much to distract the eye from the ear's work. I use the word work very deliberately, as we were not there to just hear what was coming out of the two speakers, but to listen.
What we gathered to hear was a sound collage by Glenn Gould called The Latecomers (1969), a documentary of sorts about life in Newfoundland, Canada. I don't know if I was the only person in the room to have ever lived in Canada, but the show felt intimate to me in so many ways (and I haven't even been to Newfoundland)! As the piece continued and gathered strength, multiplied layers, I really felt as if I knew these people, smelt the sea air, felt the constant play of surf on the shore, experienced their rural lives and awkward acceptance of change since they had joined Confederation in 1949. As goes Newfoundland, Gould says, so then goes the rest of Canada. Solitude is solitude of the mind, eventually, against the government and the natural elements. (The general audience at the ICA probably didn't know this, but The Latecomers was broadcast in November of '69, just two years after the general centennial celebrations, forever associated with this great song and Expo '67 in Montreal; a kind of Canadian cool was being developed as well, by Gould, by Marshall McLuhan and by future Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.)
Fisher introduced the idea of how odd and discomforting and intimate listening to something in tandem with strangers can be (and is); people gather regularly to watch things and attend museums; why not gather to listen to things as well? As someone who was taught music appreciation at a rather young age (even before I officially was taught to sit & be quiet and listen to music, my father was teaching me how to do this by example - he never lectured me that much, trusting I would find my way, memorize songs, become familiar with instruments, etc.), this didn't seem quite as odd as it may have been to others. It's hard to know, as after Gould's piece was over no one said what I expected - that they had not had this kind of experience since they were kids in music class, or perhaps just in the backseat of their parents' car, eyes closed, radio on, listening...
No, the talk was about how this sort of thing - gathered adults in a place to listen intently to something - had happened before (the North in the first half of the last century) and there was some comment in general about the structure of the piece and its actual produced qualities. But no one took the piece in and felt it hit them; or if they did, they didn't speak up. When Gould played back his first piece of this trilogy, The Idea of North, to a friend of his, she listened for a few minutes and then started to cry, and Gould was very touched and pleased with her reaction - in some ways I would guess that she understood his message, what was underneath it, and was less concerned with the technicalities of the piece.
The Latecomers takes you into the tough, isolated and foggy world of Newfoundland and gives you back, oddly, a version of yourself, particularly if you are a creative person on the outside (even in super-central London, a mere half mile from Buckingham Palace itself). It isn't necessarily tear-jerking, but the listeners that surrounded me were perhaps a bit too guarded in their responses (I wondered afterwards if some food & drink afterward would have loosened them up a bit) and no one who spoke seemed to take in and digest the subject matter - the perpetual Canadian/Gouldian subject matter of independence, collectivity and how to deal with technology. They are definitely autobiographical and in a way to fail to respond to The Latecomers is a failure to respond to the mind behind it as well. As the listeners are all residents on their own island that is also grappling with letting go of the past in order to get to a better (it is hoped) future, I would have thought the piece would have set up a mirror; instead I could only conclude that the blankness around me was a reflection of how either deep Gould's work went, or how maybe some people were lulled into a kind of non-observing hearing of the piece instead. I hope not; I hope that those who did attend got over the mere novelty of their being together in the first place and were able to also sense the joyful determination of the Newfoundland people, people who are defiantly independent even in the face of opposition or defeat. A collective sense of purpose is what unites them, as it should form in the Deep Listening Club.
As for me, I enjoyed the experience and look forward to the next listening session; perhaps this time it will be Scott Walker, though it may as well be Charles Spearin's The Happiness Project, a unique work also from Canada that deals with, well, happiness. (Or is that too radical for the ICA?)
Before I go on to talk about the top ten of April 12, 2009 - the best chart that has been heard in some time - I want to talk a little about how I decide if I will purchase something - an album in this case - or not.
There are not one but three places to consider inside yourself while making a decision - the head, the heart and the guts. The head, upon seeing the album, will tell you useful things like if it is too expensive, in good/bad condition, and whether you own the darn thing already. All the answers here being satisfactory, the decision baton goes to the heart. How do you feel about the musician(s)? Does the music hit you right there? Does it give you energy and cheer you up? (I realize there are some who want music that does other things - but the heart wants some emotional connection beyond 'solid craftsmanship.') The heart being pleased, we next go to the ultimate judge - your guts (aka the 'small still voice', intuition, etc.) Sometimes you can have an instinctive reaction to a song/album/artist that goes beyond any rational reaction, straight into the profound center of music itself; chances are, that is your gut reaction.
What is the most gratifying thing, of course, is if the head, heart and guts all agree - as I find they do with this chart, a chart that defies any head-heavy sourpurses and those dreaded rockists (poptimists I see they now call themselves) - an all-pop list that appropriately emphasizes and revives New Pop, 28 years after it so colorfully & shinily emerged from various corners to brighten and reassure over a generation ago.
To the chart! From the bottom to the top:
10. "Love Story" Taylor Swift
"This love is difficult but it's real."
Love as an act of defiance; as something worth fighting for, worth believing in, even on the outskirts of town. Love is far more than ballgowns. Romeo and Juliet get a happy ending at last, the Scarlet Letter is ripped off and thrown away...
9. "Right Round" Flo Rida feat. Kesha
"Ain't nothing more beautiful to be found"
Another kind of defiance is to give in to what is 'wrong' - a man and a woman become oblivious to the rest of the world (cf. the Surrealist film wherein the couple are inseparable, surrounded by a crowd trying to pull them apart). They are dizzy with desire, with pleasure, and if he's losing his money - well, it was his decision to go out, to get down (in all meanings and senses) in the first place. She is beautiful; she is beauty, and he is helpless, though not hapless. He's out of control and unlike "Low" he is not just a taker, so to speak, but a giver as well...
8. "Shake It" Metro Station
"When you touch her like this, she goes like that!"
Here the joys of physical interaction (if I can put it that way) are more innocent, more excitable. They are getting to know each other, how they feel, how they act & especially how they react to each other. The polite coolness that was there at first is starting to melt, warming up to a more pleasurable soft breath on the cheek, as they dance. They both shake it in joy and freedom, knowing they are falling in love and happy just to be together.
7. "Halo" Beyonce
"I ain't never gonna shut you out"
Here, the walls come tumbling down - love as a religious (not just physical) experience, her Other is an angel, her "saving grace." This song points to the BIGNESS of this chart - that love is about danger, surrender and joy, yes, but it is also about seeing the divinity in another person - loving their soul as well as their body...
6. "Love Sex Magic" Ciara & Justin Timberlake
"You know that I can make you believe..."
Ciara and Justin do tricks, conjuring up magic out of seemingly nothing; they know they are falling in love, but are a little more grown up than the kids in "Shake It" - they know "tricks you've never seen" and they are the star-crossed lovers in the crowd, snapping to the beat of "Nasty" and upping the antes as they slink and slide around. It is exactly what you want from them, and damn sexy, too...
5. "Don't Upset The Rhythm" The Noisettes
"You know we won't compromise, so let me show you something superbeautiful."
The first time I heard this, I danced! That is a greater commentary than any other I could write, but what a celebration of the need and will to dance, no matter what. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had the G20 protestors, instead of marching, had had a Notting Hill-type carnival, complete with soundtrucks and DJs...hmmmm...
4. "In For The Kill" La Roux
"How far can you send emotions?"
If there is one thing some folks hate, it's a song that shows a young woman's self-determination. La Roux is "hoping you'll understand" her need, but she is not apologetic, hysterical or half-hearted. And it's not a love song (I think...) either. Score one for 1981 drama, for a welcome dose of warm rationalism...
3. "Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny)" Pussycat Dolls & AR Rahman
"There's an ocean in my heart, I will never be the same."
And so we jump from the private thrills of one woman to, crucially, a public celebration of a long-destined relationship. He is the reason she believes, that she breathes; this is clearly a more intense love than any we have encountered on the list so far, a love that has the force of history itself behind it. That this is celebrated in public adds to the happiness and warmth incredibly, a whole community moved enough to rejoice in one couple's destiny is astonishing indeed. (And feel the BIGNESS of it all, again!)
2. "Poker Face" Lady GaGa
"Check this hand 'cause I'm marvelous."
Here we have another self-determined woman, one who relishes the game, the chase, the bluffing and revealing of feelings - sure, she's a tough cookie, but she is going to stun him and leave him wanting more - sure, she says she's not about kissing or hugging, but how much do we really believe a woman who wears a mask? Her claims for being unreadable are so many promises; the real self is there, one day she's got to show emotions or else what good is hiding them for?
1. "I'm Not Alone" Calvin Harris
"If I see a light flashing Could this mean that I’m coming home?"
As great as these songs have been - and I would, if I were rating them, give them high marks indeed - this one is at the top, not just of the chart but in my own thoughts. In order to explain how it was that I cried when I heard it made #1 that early Easter evening, I have to go back a few weeks...*
...as some of you know, I collapsed one night in mid-March, and had to stay in hospital for nearly a week. Hospitals are an odd combination of the utterly personal and impersonal; being an emergency patient, I experienced just about everything you can experience in such a place, shorn of nearly all possessions and utterly dependent on a whole system of smaller systems to bring me back to some reasonable semblance of health and happiness (my dear husband, Marcello, helped a great deal on both counts; I doubt if I would be half as well as I am now without him).
I must have heard this song while in that early stage of recovery, the week just before spring arived; but it was too quiet for me to grasp what he was saying/singing. (I should also add that before my collapse, I fell in love with a song by Defender called "Bliss" - M magically found the Hed Kandi compilation that has it (Served Chilled 59) while I was in hospital. I cannot imagine Calvin Harris not knowing this song and its utterly FREEING feeling.)
"I'm Not Alone," as some of its detractors have noted, is no ordinary song. (These are the grumpy types who want verse/chorus/verse. HAH) What Harris does here is conjure jp an all-too-likely scenario of late nights, sacrifice, trying to remain strong, and then...he's on the floor and feet are coming through the door...
This song, at this most extreme moment, then opens up like no other - the sun comes out and that heavenly riff begins, one that shines and warms and...well, you can imagine my reaction to such HOW DID HE KNOW lyrics and then comes just that little bit more - if on "Dance Wiv Me" he sounded a bit like Terry Hall (in a good way, I hasten to add), here after this divine intervention he sounds like himself, of course, but also like...Scott Walker (particularly when he sings "coming home...") To say that this song gratifies my head, heart and guts is a gross understatement - it does all this and more (when I heard it yesterday I felt it from my head to my toes; it gave me energy, just as surely as the hospital gave me blood and oxygen on that first night). That this is an unorthodox song is the entire piont of it; this is no ordinary experience.
Nor, I can guess, is it a solitary one. As "I'm Not Alone" plainly states, none of us is alone, and in times ("Hard times!" as the Human League said, back in '81) like these, that is the overwhelming message, even above those of love, sex and self-determination. People who snub this are using their head far more than their heart, I'm afraid; but the tremendous response to it (which looks to be continuing) mean they are, as far as I can tell, in the minority. For me (and Marcello), this solid all-pop top ten shows the virtues of the democratic process as opposed to the narrow, aristocratic channels that reject what pop can do at its greatest moments - give warmth, comfort and compassion on a day signifying rebirth.
*When I was with Marcello for Easter 2007, we were moved to cry by another chart - not the current one at the time, but one from 1978 that was broadcast on Pick of the Pops.
The highest-placed girl group on this list and you know what? You can actually HEAR all five of them – in the front, on the side, behind this or that beat or moment – yes, five individual women celebrating and lamenting what girl groups always celebrate and lament; love, ecstasy, loss, desire and sass. These women are vocally in control (even if they have been reduced to a trio now – no girl group is immune to diva problems, alas) and not even Rick Ross can slow down their handclaps, harmonies and heavenly skills that are sensual, bold and ballerina-en-pointe. They drive the sleek shiny yellow car through the city, privileged and “bad,” while they wonder if these designer labels can mend their hearts. They drive into the country for fresh air, free of their bad boys…for now…
=12. BON IVER: For Emma, Forever Ago =12. VAMPIRE WEEKEND: Vampire Weekend
As you may have noticed, this blog is now a collaborative affair, a coupling, and the most natural coupling either of us could ever have hoped for. The list you are reading was compiled by both of us; every album on the list – and many others which we weren’t able to include on the list – was carefully listened to by both of us and the final order of the list was agreed by both of us (the comments were similarly composed by both of us in tandem but we trust that readers will be able to discern who wrote what). The numbering and ordering are quite deliberate; you may recall that in the early days of the British singles chart, jointly held positions were things in themselves, independent of mathematics but thoroughly faithful to logic.
Here, therefore, is a top twelve in precise keeping with the top twelve as it stood in the week ending 14 November 1952; not two different or parallel top twelves, but a dozen couplings, sets of pairs of records which seem to fit together and advance the tale this list has been attempting to tell. It is not a list as the Village Voice or Rocktimists would know it, nor is it an attempt at establishing a new order, although its new order (not the mention the secret rivulet of New Order which flows all the way through it) would be an apt soundtrack to the new order which has been established while we have been compiling it.
First, the meeting of two seemingly opposing ways of recording music; we have the lonely stoner (likely to be a central figure in 2009’s tale, and not that distantly related to the Worried Man as Robbie Robertson and Greil Marcus would have known him), the sober jiltee – that is, if this Emma ever knew – retreating to his cabin, or somebody’s cabin, on the periphery of nowhere, structuring his life and art anew; it might even be Aidan Moffat’s worried awakener in the bus stop, considering where and how he might eventually end up. He caresses, he pierces (like John Martyn, undervalued even after life, did), and somehow he weavevs these bumps, flickers and querulous clicks into – what? A trapdoor, or an escape hatch? He is alone; his voice and instrumentation stop just temptingly short of natural but you can feel that he’s trying to escape the drawing and relocate himself. And you have no doubt that he will.
Meanwhile, in the city (Manhattan to be precise, with local colour and distraction found just to the east and north on Cape Cod) we have the basic building blocks of music – almost like the courses themselves leapt out of their curriculum – the classical Western and the even more classic African merge and take over the campus. Rock’s African roots made explicit…yes. But there is more to the Vamps than passing courses, SPY magazine typography and a general prepitude (if it’s not a word, well now it is) of language. No matter what, there is a Pavementesque air to their concerns, as if they are the sophisticated-enough former townies who see the vanity fair and cosmopolitan METROPOLITAN happenings and sure enough get hopelessly caught up in them (as if they were all Nick Carraways in this less decadent Gatsby-style university world). One day they will graduate and be truly loosed upon a city that is startlingly beautiful, for many reasons: one of them being the very transience and fragility of that golden light, those all-seeing omniscient eyes capturing and framing as much as they can.
=11. NEIL DIAMOND: Home Before Dark =11. PATTI SMITH AND KEVIN SHIELDS: The Coral Sea
“His delicate eyes saw with clarity what others did not.”
The ambition to include everything; it’s not a strictly New York thing, as anyone from Walt Whitman to Elizabeth Alexander would tell you, but it’s the truth of remembering. Like Pincher Martin, Mapplethorpe’s voyage may all have been in his mind and indeed occurred after his life, or within the final, few, ravenously resigned moments of his life, but in those seconds he saw it all, clear, and it was Patti’s duty to express and re-record them, keep recording them no matter how much it pained her to do so, alone, for the best part of twenty years.
Eventually she came to London and to her bloodier valentine – well, what kept them waiting? – and set the truth down twice, in two different years and in two separate but inviolably connected forms. The Coral Sea is a hugely significant record, so significant that it briefly seemed too huge a record for this list, that somehow it existed ABOVE this list, presiding over it, floating, praying, resolving. The placings in this list are all intended in the sense that this is the order in which they best link together to tell this tale of 2008. That this record shares eleventh position does not necessarily mean that it is not the greatest record – as a RECORD –in this list.
Its fury, its love, were unmatched in 2008; its intensity and commitment beyond question. And yet it is here to bridge the personal and the public elements of this tale, since here is an extended, rangy remembrance – those final few moments kaleidoscoped out into an elegy exceeding two hours – for the loved, the missing, the burial, the ship at sea (“Never give up on that ship!” as an old philosopher said when Patti was six), the tears, the screams but above all the exhilaration, the celebration, the refusal to drown, to die in monochrome, to get home and end that darkness. It was the Church of Patti and its resurrection was inbuilt.
It’s that hour of the day; if the sun isn’t down by now, it will be soon. A time to be wary, cautious, to make sure that what appears to be real is real and not illusion. A man drives through this light with his lady, secure in knowing that what they have is genuine, not a trompe l’oeil; they sit in comfortable silence, perhaps listening just to the approaching the night itself. They are connected to each other, in their world, in THE world. It wasn’t always like this: even two, three weeks ago he was scared – yes, scared – of opening his heart and soul up one more time to someone, because he needed them TO be opened so much; it HAD to be right, and getting it right was so rare, so important. Could he? Could he take this further than mere friendship? The golden light itself gave him the nerve, the idea, that YES this was worth it, there was no reason or need to be scared, his loneliness was unnecessary. There wasn’t any more time or energy to waste.
And so, he and she are together, her grace allowing him to give himself to her, her light showing the way, even into the darkness.
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