I’ll tend to compose things right here, on this page. Feel free to copy whatever I write, with attribution.
letting myself listen
The first thing I’ll write is on the stupid relationship I have with my own musical interests, and the hypersocial ghosts that I insist on listening with. That’s not a great way of putting it, but I know that this is something many people feel similarly.
I’ll start with an example – the reason I thought to write this down. It recently occurred to me to listen to the album Curtains by John Frusciante, an album I’ve listened to dozens of times front to back in the past. It really is one of the best albums I know. I hadn’t listened to it for a few years, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is fairly simple: I’d listened to it a lot, and it had lost freshness. This happens with all art as it’s consumed, and it’s an interesting thing, but it’s not what I’m thinking about now. It is actually very interesting, though.
But the other reason I hadn’t listened to it for a couple years is self-conscious artistic watchfulness. Frusciante is most famous for having been the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band I listened to almost exclusively from age 11-15. For many years I listened to them less & less because their music similarly lost its freshness, but when I entered college I stopped listening to their stuff altogether, resisting urges to revisit a track here & there, scratch a melodic itch, or satisfy a nostalgic whim.
I was embarrassed. The Chili Peppers seemed too “basic,” a phase I was eager to free myself from, the moment I stepped onto my selective, “elite” liberal arts school thousands of miles from home. I wanted to listen to Nick Drake and the Dirty Projectors and MF Doom and Sufjan Stevens. More generously, too generously, I could say that I was actively trying to broaden and deepen my musical interest and knowledge. That’s far too generous – those weeks I spent speed-reading the Modernist “classics” were similarly motivated, weak contractions, excursions of a misdirected libido. I wanted to quickly produce a public coolness, legible through many stupid layers of reserve and mystery. Whatever – you know what I mean.
Predictably enough, all of those more hip artists were subjected to the same ego-vigilance that tossed the Chili Peppers aside. Their music is great, I really love a lot of it. Some I like more today than I did when I was 12, some less. Sufjan Stevens, too, threatened to belong to too bland an indie catalog, Nick Drake to an embarrassing “sadboy” type, the Dirty Projectors to a stunted “alt” genre, MF Doom to an elitist wordsmith class that was the obsession of white rap listeners. These ghosts of self-conscious aesthetic consumption interfered with all of them.
Which brings me to John Frusciante’s music. I think I’ve moved on fairly successfully from looking over my shoulder when listening to most artists I like. But it’s been hard for me to return to listening to Frusciante’s music as much as I want to. I think he’s just a bit too close to the Chili Peppers, who don’t feel embarrassing for their music anymore – I can gleefully listen to old Weezer tracks, Coldplay hits, you get the picture – but for the real obsession I had with them for years. I collected live recordings, b-sides, trivia. Frusciante is, I think, too direct a connection to this phase for me to shed my associative embarrassment.
This is such a distinct problem because a lot of Frusciante’s music is incredibly important to me, more than the Peppers. Not just Curtains, but many of his albums. Like 5 whole albums. The Will to Death is a unique, fun, controlled record that strikes the ear more lightly than its title suggests. The Empyrean is long, but its openness is addictive. DC EP feels like it’s full of friezed chants, even though it isn’t. Such a full color. Inside of Emptiness is so different from his others, and not as consistent, but packs such huge punches at times. Shadows Collide with People is a fantastic title, and its sounds suggest a type of technology beyond their production. Like they’re intelligent, or like 4 tracks collectively outline a 5th.
Frusciante’s poetry is often excellent, too, and in retrospect I recognize its role in every nascent poetic instinct I thought I only developed years later. The tossed-off “They’re thrown the way that I’d expect” in “The Days Have Turned.” Or from “The Will to Death”:
And have you seen how the cars
when they pass
They come your way, then they're
speeding away.
Coming to you and then going away.
But for them nothing changed.
From “Song to Sing When I’m Lonely”:
No one chooses to beat my pride down
Symbols pierce right through me
People fail to be drawn up.
And from “Someone’s”:
Someone's waiting to fly with me
Someone's saying
goodbye
every time she says hello
And “Inside a Break”:
All of us kids, we like
to climb
to fall
And “Interior Two”:
We'll speak when all the lines are tapped
And we endlessly come on back,
will you come on back.
The lyrics, the songs, the albums, every one steeped with familiarity. It could be a bore to listen to the same songs that I know so well – but I’m accustomed to that. I have no problem letting go of music that doesn’t interest me anymore. What interests me in Frusciante’s music, now, is something different. The capacity for more interest to arise on fresh ears. A music shifty enough that the hundredth listen is more demanding than the first, the reverse of what anyone expects when they think of “demanding” music. It’s supposed to be hard, then easy. But with some music – Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Vince Staples, Frusciante – the demand of the music develops with its familiarity, things fade in & out of focus, the many years of listening arranging themselves in new ways.
