On Indie Music.

I was told recently that in order to understand Nietzsche or Heidegger I needed exposure to Classical Music. Ever the empiricist in quest of answers, I decided with a limp conscience to depart from my usual musical explorations and to re-visit, rather arbitrarily and experimentally, Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. I can only hope that the same is true of Pumpkin. Within seconds of the first trumpet solo, he began barking in terror of the alien Sounds, not to be reasoned with, apparently convinced of some strange presence at the door, and thinking only of what such needless stress might do for his coronary system, I dreaded myself in my criminally pretentious attempt to justify my existence to the calcified 'High Culture'.

About three or five minutes into a rather sentimental piece by Wagner, having abandoned Gustav at the conclusion of the opening march, I fold and revert to my usual tastes and interests. I put on 'So Fine' by Telepathe. The Universe becomes again a refreshing and brisk Ocean, stern and candid in its love as a firm but sane Mother, of quadratic electronic chords and square waves, as the sincere, vulnerable but reserved and uncompromising young woman's vocals spring out from the song like fish or dolphins, Pumpkin lies down at a squat at my feet. I unseat myself and kneel at his side, feeling his heart-beat. It is calm and apparently in rhythm with the faithful electronic beats.

How could I bring myself to believe that I comprehend Nietzsche had I never heard Telepathe, or Grimes, or CHVRCHES? What could I know of the Dyonesiac had it not been for Tom Waits, Rob Thomas, or the Arcade Fire? How could a scholar pure at Heart hope to attain even a flash in the pan of comprehension if he were speaking of the Appollonian had I never heard Bon Iver, Elliott Smith, or Built to Spill? Without indie music, I would have no bridge by which to reach Nietzsche save for the strictly Socratic availability of Nietzsche's own favourite bands. Yet since I am not at all moved by Wagner save for this vested interests, Wagner is totally secondary. Is anyone to be blamed? A marriage may be incredibly Beautiful, but once the husband dies, the widow may choose not to take another lover. German classical music may have Approached Friedrich NIetzsche. She never approached me. Telepathe did. Modest Mouse did. Indie music did. And it was by that sovereign bridge that I arrived atop the precarious plateau that I might imagine Nietzsce once tread.

Modest Mouse was my gateway band. They introduced me to a Multiverse of Music whose fundamental atomic constituent was Sound, and even those atoms could be divided into subatomic particles of noise inviting only the most tolerant and wonder-struck of observes to probe the depths of every note and ask the same Question that physicists had asked: Is it matter or is it energy? Is it Music or is it Noise? If one distinction is pretentious, so must the other be left only to the sovereignty of intimacy and the sanctity of an individual heart.

One fellow who failed to comprehend Modest Mouse was a close friend of mine named Kyle. He played first-chair Tuba in the Marching Band, one of the most celebrated (orchestral) music programs in Southern California.
To him, Classical Music was the only 'real' kind of music. The only exception was Avenged Sevenfold. Kyle would go on over the years to include a wide range of Classic Rock in his definition of Music. It was not until I saw him again for the first time after High School that I was pleasantly disarmed and even somewhat disoriented to hear that he had developed a love* for Modest Mouse. Met with his characteristic grin, tempered by wrinkles of sadness, I could only wonder, 'Why?'
I suppose that that was just the abridged version of: 'Why not earlier?' Yet I felt that I remembered the answer to that with striking clarity. Back then, the question was 'Why not?' And Fluffy's answer had been that he listened to music for 'talent', not 'G.E.' What did 'G.E.' stand for? 'General Effect'. It was frequently abbreviated 'G.E.' by judges at Marching Band Competitions who used it as one of their criteria.
To Fluffy's mind, when my friend Jeff had tried to introduce him to Modest Mouse, as he had done for me two years earlier, he had heard 'A lot of General Effect. But not a lot of Talent.' He had been a High School Sophomore when he said this.

I have had some experience composing music. Speaking from experience, committing a composition to electronic form with only one's own Memory for reference must be as difficult as committing it to sheet music with the piano immediately at-hand. The most complicated of pieces can be the most laborious and challenging to one's Sanity to compose. They leave one feeling shortly as Zarathustra must have. Yet would I for an instant think to value this the tallest of my children above those relative dwarves whose minimalism was a testament to their humility? How could I call them merely chords with only one melody, as though that melody were an accident?

The immediacy of Indie Music rests in its minimalism. Like a Hemingway novel, although probably moreso, it has been the only music I have encountered that not only expressed but Was a vulnerable conversation between humble strangers becoming friends. It knows, and has always known, when to talk and when to stop. It does not put on needless airs with flourishes and Orchestral Blasts for attention. It is Interesting. It does not lecture on its own knowledge and get lost within itself except where you can become lost within it, transfixed. It does not feel like a well-to-do white man pacing the corridors of some establishment in histrionic sentimental brooding, or if it ever does it does not ever become ignorant of its Surroundings, or if does it is again with a candour that we could not castigate it for any more than we can castigate Tiresias for his Blindness.



* or at least a strong liking and respect.