Make-believe but so in love: a treatise on developing criteria for a roaming system

Mmmm…bad coffee. But I was cold and sluggish and charmed by the highway strip, beleaguered by belongings. Next, a vectoring happiness. Draft a new Veda.

I wanna be like water if I can. ’Cause water doesn’t give a damn.

Turn up the music to muffle office drivel, so far so good: Sons and Daughters (conclusion: I prefer Love the Cup to The Repulsion Box), Magnetic Fields, The Charm of the Highway Strip, Silver Jews, Bright Flight. What will come of this listening? A geodesic dome, for sure. A gingerbread house. A tantalizing tome never to be finished. Naked wood.

This morning as I was getting ready for work (i.e. throwing on clothes and gathering CDs to lozenge the work day’s throat), a song from µ-ziq’s Lunatic Harness came on. The past two days the i-tunes "party shuffle" has frequently been playing tracks from this album. This pleases me. It’s one of my favorite albums, particularly track 13, "Midwinter Log" which feels like being chased by everything you love toward some end that isn't an end at all, and it's totally in rhythm with rhythms you didn't know your body beat to.

So I got to thinking what my other favorite albums are. Difficulty steers the making of this list. Goes like this: I think of a couple of true contenders and then I think of others that I just can’t leave out. And then others that I just can’t leave out. Until I’ve thought of so many the list becomes worthless because it is no longer a list but rather all-comprising. Runaway mind, runaway dog. So populated by other voices.

Immediately in mind:
Kristin Hersh’s Hips and Makers. Already I run away. The Grotto, which I think is her best album since this one, doesn’t hold for me the root intensity of Hips and Makers. It’s newer, though, and gaining ground. The Grotto has an undeniable clarity lending to its own unique intensity, where Hips and Makers has a more raw, otherworldly intensity. Each has been right for the me I was when I took it in. I might tack also to the list her new band 50 Foot Wave’s first CD, though it too is yet too new for the list; nevertheless, I repeat and repeat the thing and I still want more. What a brilliant piece of pure energy. There’s good reason she’s my hero. What you chase at night will haunt you in the day. You want it to.

Brian Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets. An embryonic me knew an album that sounded like this had to be out there, and it is. My psyche and circadian rhythms had been waiting for it, and when I heard it, it was unquestionably right. As in, if you lived here, you’d be home. O, headless chicken. O, perfect masters. People come and go, and forget to close the door. Some of them will turn up when you least expect them to. Remember me.

Doug Martsch’s solo album Now You Know. This one also is just slightly too new in me; however, I think it’s thoroughly brilliant from start to finish, lyrically and musically. Last week I celebrated it each day. My current favorite is track 2, "Dream". It happened again last night. Wanted to escape my limbs and the certitude of death. "Stay", the quiet love song at the end quiets me and makes me love more thoroughly. Quiet in the roar of doom.

There is music that simply appeals to me: I like the sounds the instruments make, the voices, the words, the melodies, the rhythms. But it feels distant, like it’s outside me, circling me. The few above, though, feel like they’re inside me. They don’t just sound good; they make sense to me in a profound and full-sensory way that a close friend makes sense. Kindred and meaningful but without reasonable explanation in terms of language I know. The Gödel on my shoulder whispers, "It’s because the system is incomplete and thus unsatisfactory for such proof and explain." There it is at last: criteria for the list. Perhaps one day I'll have objective criteria, perhaps not.

Just keep telling me this is life and we didn't miss it.

Don’t walk into walls; walk through them, grasshopper. It will follow you. And boy do I like a military snare drum chasing me down.