sixty-one

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

I Feel the Earth Move
Carole King
Tapestry
1971

It's funny that, up until an hour ago, I had no idea what song I was going to post this week.  And now, a dozen listens later, I'm so excited to be sharing another one of my all-time favourites with you.

In the absence of Buffy, I have turned to that old stalwart, Gilmore Girls.  I have seen every episode so many times that I can leave the room and come back without feeling like I've missed a thing.  I tend to hit "next" just before the theme song is going to start so that there is no jolt between the cold open and the start of the show.  Tonight I was in and out of the kitchen, tossing a salad together and frying a grilled cheese, so I managed to hear the theme song--Carole King's "Where You Lead"--all the way through.  It made me stop.  It hit me with that little jolt I was trying to avoid all along.  It made me think about Tapestry.

The first time I heard this album was in my dad's white, boxy, SUV.  The car had just sort of appeared.  I was in grade 9 or 10.  It was kind of like a big, white marker of how my dad had this life that was kind of separate from the one my mom, brother and I lived.  I liked (and like) sitting in the passenger seat of a car with my dad driving because there was (is) always music.  So many things I had never heard of (I would always get a kind of GEEZ!C'MON!EYEROLL when I asked my dad who was singing a particular song, but I asked anyway).  A taste of things I was so resistant to, at first, and sometimes only grew to love years later. 

I remember my dad and I went to Wal-Mart after dinner some random, Spring evening (a weeknight, I'm certain).  I don't think we went with any particular purpose in mind.  My dad likes a good deal.  When he stopped at one of those bright, red, cardboard bins in the middle of an aisle near the electronics section, I wrinkled my nose (and probably rolled my eyes, haha).  The bin was filled with hundreds of cheap cassette tapes.  I feigned interest when my dad pulled a copy of Tapestry out of the pile.  The cover seemed dull; dark and blurry.  I could make out a woman, frizzy hair, cats.

My dad was so excited that he peeled the cellophane off the tape in the parking lot on the way back to the car.  He slid Tapestry into the tape deck, buckled his seat belt and started the engine.  With the power on, the tape was pushed all the way in and the car was filled with that hissing sound that marks the beginning of a cassette tape.  And then...this song.  Those pounding piano chords.  They were like a stomping foot.  A stomping foot that wasn't angry, but rather a reaction to being filled with something so big that it can't keep still.  That voice...I wasn't quite sure about it, but I liked its warmth.  I liked (and like) that one second beat between "I feel the...earth...move...under my feet."  What I did know was that I was listening to something very special.  I could feel the music vibrating out of the speaker in the side of the passenger door and into my leg.  It seemed to thrum right through me, like an electric shock.

When we pulled into the driveway, I told my dad that I could bring the tape in for him, if he wanted me to.  That maybe, while I had it, I would just listen to that first song one more time.  Tapestry eventually set up camp in my room.  I figured that if I just acted like it was mine all along, my dad would eventually forget about it.  If I ever did actually give it back--and I'm not sure that I did--it was only when I got a copy of the re-release on CD a few years later.

Comments

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

To start: this is one of my favourite posts of yours. It's seriously beautiful, Stephanie. Vignette-in-a-collection, I-would-read-your-work-even-though-you're-a-female-author (hahaha) beautiful. One day I want to ask you more about your dad!! & like I am pretty excited to meet him (next week!) :D


I finished Proust Was a Neuroscientist this morning, and one of the chapters is about Stravinsky (timely, huh? I can't wait to discuss the ballet!!) and his riot-incurring Rite of Spring. The essential thrust of the chapter (quite personally-affirmingly, actually, hah), is that we respond to music because it fucks us up. Okay, so not said in so many words, but: "Music works by confronting us with our prediction errors. In fact, the brainstem contains a network of neurons that responds only to surprising sounds. When the musical pattern we know is violated, these cells begin the neural process that ends with the release of dopamine...[which is] also the chemical source of our most intense emotions, which helps to explain the strange emotional power of music, especially when it confronts us with newness and dissonance."
This chapter is written for you and I, basically; you'll have to read it and I don't want to spoil everything, BUT: I saw what song you'd posted [THIS ALL HAS A POINT, I SWEAR], and this next passage immediately came to mind ---

"Although [the corticofugal system] evolved to expand our minds -- letting us learn an infinitude of new patterns -- it can also limit our experiences. This is because the corticofugal system is a positive-feedback loop...[which becomes] a meaningless screech of white noise, the sound of uninterrupted positive feedback. Over time, the auditory cortex works the same way; we become better able to hear those sounds that we have heard before. This only encourages us to listen to the golden oldies we already know (since they sound better), and to ignore the difficult songs that we don't know (since they sound harsh and noisy, and release unpleasant amounts of dopamine."
When I read that, I felt jolted out of reality -- kind of horrified. I frantically scanned my catalogue of music listened to in the past while: am I getting there? am I getting to the point where I can't listen to 'difficult' music, where I'm content to listen to ole faves? 'I don't think so,' I thought to myself, 'I think I'm okay.'

Then: home, around midnight, and I put this song on, and I will be completely honest with you: it's not the kind of song I'd usually like. I love your description of how instant this was for you, how you immediately knew this was beautiful (because it is!) -- but I had my head tilted, wondering if I was missing something, and then I realized I was: a positive feedback loop. This was new. And it's not as if I've never heard anything like it before --- but my positive feedback loop of 70s rock is psychedelic and glam. Bowie, Pink Floyd, Siouxsie -- that's where I feel comfortable. As old as this song is, for me, it's new territory.

And with the passage I'd just read and that revelation in mind, I listened to it again...and I got it. Just fucking got it. "oh THIS is what she was talking about!" I realized, "oKAY!" I'm listening to it now and can't really sit still, haha.

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

[continued]

So two things:
1) Isn't it fucking incredible how the way of listening to a song can change its reception completely? That's why, I assume, I love the songs you post: I decide I want to love them before I listen to them. I find ways to love them.
2) This comm will be the reason I will grow up and still want to listen to NEW music. 5pm_weds is going to ensure that I will never have to exist in a musical positive feedback loop. I will never stop listening to new things, exploring new musical patterns, engaging in dissonance. I will never settle for my golden oldies -- especially when there are so many old (and new!) songs I still don't know.


Lehrer ends the Stravinsky chapter with this: "Because our human brain can learn to listen to anything, music has no cage. All music needs is a violated pattern, an order interrupted by a disorder, for in that acoustic friction, we hallucinate a feeling. Music is that feeling... It is the sound of art changing the brain."
Thank you for being my best possible musical counterpoint --- and for never failing to provoke that change.
♥