markjgsmith

The world is on an epic allow blocking rampage at me today. It's hard to put into words. Perhaps I'll disappear into an acme hole. Feel like that would be the world's favorite option. Apparently I'm impossible. Well guess what world, if I'm impossible, then you're impossible too. #

It's really quite unbelievable but the world would like things to be even more impossible. That appears to be it's answer to everything. Just add more impossible. #

Destiny always seems to find a way to squeeze in one more more. I'm completely physically and mentally exhausted. #

It literally never ends, the literal next moment after the last note, and the world added another little extra bit on top. Literally literally literally. Literally.

It's pointless asking for a stop, because that means more. Everything means more. #

The Eternal

It's been kind of a strange week, and particularly today. As I sat down exhausted earlier, following a long long journey of one synchronicity after another, I started listening to some Sonic Youth. I haven't been listening to much music at all recently, but back in the 90s I used to listen to them a lot. Not sure I've listened to them all that much since that time. It was those years right at the end of school, and the first few in university.

Anyhow I skipped through a couple of their earlier albums on youtube, and they were ok, but you know remembering the past can be a bit weird. You're not the person you used to be, and so the tracks don't always sound as great as you remember them. Well I eventually landed on their album The Eternal. I remember buying this album when it came out, and I listened to it a lot. It's from 2009 which is quite a bit later than I thought it was. Pretty sure I wasn't listening to them then. But I really remember the artwork and especially the guitars.

I think a lot people might listen to this and not understand it, at least at first. The notes are odd in some places and it's very confusing in other places, but there are these moments of sereneness and calm, and if you listen to the whole thing as an album, the sounds tell a story. You don't need to understand all the words, though some might jump out at you. There is this incredible beauty that sort of emerges out of the chaos, or maybe it was there all along but you just didn't notice it. And when you notice it you are like oh right, I get it now. I get some part of another person on the other side of the world, and some part of all the people that listened to this band.

As an album it's very much like watching a movie. I hadn't noticed that before. It's like Easy Rider but also completely different. Like it has some part of the flavour of Easy Rider. I'm really struck by how film-like it is as an album. After listening to it I really felt like I just walked out of a movie theatre. That feeling of, wow what did I just see, that was really incredible, and just like with the best movies I'm thinking about pieces of it, but also memories it conjured up. What's super bizarre is that it's the sounds, and the feelings, the ambience of the thing, rather than images, and it sort of fades out into the distance.

Youtube of course was playing all sorts of adds in between tracks, which for some reason I found very funny. They were so obnoxiously out of place, but that for some reason had a kind of comedy juxtaposition to it. The other thing that I find super interesting is that according to their wikipedia page, it got to number 18 in the charts in the US (they are a US band), number 42 in the UK, and very similar numbers in all other countries across Europe, except for one country where it charted at number 9, in Belgium where I grew up. There's some part of me, from a long time ago that looks a lot like how this album sounds. #