inlooking #011: It's my life
20230308: one, hit, wonders
It’s March Fadness time! What the heck is that? I hear you thinking. Well, I’ll tell you… That means I need your vote. Read on for details…
The important thing here: I have a new essay up today, on the 1984 Talk Talk song “It’s My Life,” off that band’s second album. The fun thing: It’s part of March Fadness, which is a March Madness-style tournament of writers and essays and songs. Each year, a field of 64 writers each selects a song and writes an essay about it. The essays are matched up in a bracket, and go head-to-head each day, with the winners advancing to the next round based on readers’ votes, as the field is winnowed down to the Sweet 16, the Elite 8, the Final 4, and the Championship. There’s a different theme each year; this year it’s 80s one-hit wonders—which means the Championship round is almost certain to involve Kate Bush.
I’ve done an essay on a song by one of my favorite bands from the 80s: Talk Talk. It’s also a piece about the power of potential, about becoming, about getting older, and about handing out flyers for a bank. Thing is, I’m up against some stiff competition from Patrick Swayze, and you only have 24 hours to vote, so check it out over on the marchxness site, and may the best essay win.
You can also vote on Twitter, by the way. Do so here:
Read Don DeLillo’s White Noise with me in April.
A Writers Grotto book club, 6 Wednesdays, starting April 19
Music writing / writing music
Writing about music holds a special place in my scrivening pantheon, probably because I went to music school in a previous life (i.e., the 1980s). While I’ve written a bit about that experience and about the music that was important to me then, as well as the music I was writing—I studied composition, naturally—most of it has yet to be pulled into the kind of shape I feel good about submitting. There are a couple of music-related book ideas kicking around in my mind as well—no telling when I’ll get to those.
I like writing about music in part because, for me, it’s like a really deep dive into a relatively narrow subject: a song, a symphony, a style. And music goes deep. Because music is, for the most part, abstract, it can encompass quite a lot of meaning/s. What I hear in a Webern concerto may be completely different from what you hear. But this is where music writing has the opportunity to take off from mere criticism: it’s when a writer can convey to us why a Bruckner symphony moves them to tears that music writing becomes a really unique and personal experience.
Often, this sense of the impact of a piece of music is conveyed most effectively when the writer describes for us what it is in them (as opposed to in the music) that makes them react in a particular way. A lot of the March Fadness essays do this really well. Another strategy of great music writing has the writer tell us what it is in the culture that gives a piece its impact and effect. Interestingly, just describing the music doesn’t always do it justice.
Becoming ocean
In my essay on Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” (which, if you haven’t yet, please vote!), I spend some time musing on the phenomenon of “becoming,” and how much effort I have at various times of my life put into avoiding it.
It wasn’t settling down that put me off, it was narrowing down. It was the casting off of possibility, the shedding of potential, with all its beautiful multiplicity, in favor of certainty, which seemed so dull and unipolar.
Instead, I wanted to live in that inexpressible place in which I knew the most interesting meaning was made. I wanted everything to be possible always
I’ll leave you with a piece of contemporary classical music that won its composer John Luther Adams, the Pulitzer prize in 2014. This piece didn’t cross my mind while I was working on the Talk Talk essay, but as I think about it, I realize this is one of those pieces that occupies that inexpressible place. It’s long, but it’s well worth the listen—especially if you have some time to focus on the music to the exclusion of the rest of the world, but even if you just put it on in the background. It’s inspired by oceans, and it washes over you with the same message: that everything just might be possible always. Enjoy.
Til next time,
Wallace