I hate silence. It scares me and makes me restless. I find it uncomfortable to be alone with my thoughts, not because of the nature of my thoughts, but because they bounce around like electrons, busy, without direction, endlessly pinging. And I’m not talking about ‘nature silence’, which isn’t actually silence at all. I’m talking about building silence, urban silence, the kind of silence that walls you in.
Thankfully, I love music. I fill my days with it. It’s like a second air that I need to breathe. Ever since technology has allowed it, I have been carting around machinery that allows me to listen to music for ever-increasing amounts of time. I had a battery-powered ghetto blaster in the 80s, a Walkman in the 90s, a portable CD player in the early 00s, MP3 players in the late 00s, and now a Smart Phone. All to push back at the silence.
The silence is worst for me when I come to write, thicker, more clinical. Writing is my job so this is an issue. Why not just listen to music when I write? It seems an obvious solution but as someone who is interested in lyrics, fascinated by how music can push words deeper into you, distort their meaning, seduce or repulse you with these everyday things that escape from your mouth a thousand times a day.
I listen, I sing along badly, and I think about lyrics. And I too am a man. I cannot listen and sing and write at the same time. Their words and my words bash together, and my brain scrambles. No words survive. And here in lies the problem. Maybe you are similarly afflicted. I have decided to compile a list of the albums, those rare and wondrous things, that not only allow me to write but encourage it.
Jim O’Rourke – The Visitor
Achingly, delicately beautiful.
Compositions that grow then collapse, nearly disintegrate, only to blossom once more.
Chopin – Nocturnes performed by Stefan Askenase
I own several copies of this album, performed by various pianists. Not because each pianist brings something markedly different to these stunning pieces, but because this album is often in charity shops and I always buy it with the intention of gifting it to friends. The beauty of this music is something to be shared but I never seem to be able to part with it.
I picked this Stefan Askenase version because it is my favourite album cover. This coaxes out words, gently.
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
Quite possibly, almost definitely, the greatest album ever made.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
This album forces my thoughts into order, my ordered thoughts into words and these words into sentences, in great tectonic lurches, in great ear-pinched and tight-twisted drags. I type away, possessed, as each new layer of angry brooding is added.
John Fahey – The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
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Strange, mystical Appalachian voodoo – Fahey’s playing exposes hidden patterns, natural rhythms, secret codes that make up all life. It unpicks the fabric of being and is the finest laxative for my constipated words.
Brian Eno – Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks
Eno captures a sense of unfolding emptiness, of a terrifying but romantic expanse stretching into infinity. He described Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks as having an “unearthly country and western feel”, something he created after finding out many of the astronauts chose to bring country music into space with them.
The rhinestone crassness of emotions as seen through the country prism is perhaps the easiest way to transport human emotion into the inhuman darkness of deep space – a shot of humanity to be injected when most needed.
Chord – Gmaj7
It’s pretty hard to describe drone music in literal terms. It’s perhaps even harder to describe it without sounding like a knobber. Chord on their album Gmaj7, present two pieces that are variations on a single chord. For musos, this may be impressive. For me, it means next to nothing. I won’t even bother to describe what these compositions evoke in me, it would probably be too personal, woefully subjective and far from illuminating. Put simply, this is moving, hypnotic, dark, powerful music that makes me write like a bastard.
If you have your own music to write to please comment and let me know the albums that work for you. You can see how important it is to me. Now, I’m going to stop writing and listen to some funk.
