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It’s 3 in the morning. I’m relaxing. The week has been tough, what with traipsing up and down to the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Rewarding, but tough. I’m listening to music. And not classy music.
In point of fact, I’ve decided tonight is when I take a break from my standard jazz, blues and indie fare and sink into the world of autotuned fake Rnb. ‘Mr. Saxobeat’ has been played, as has ‘Put it down on me.’ A couple of detestable 50 cent songs have also been Youtubed. It’s just that kind of night. Not only have I typed incessantly the past week, I’ve also just finished Jason Webster‘s !Guerra, one of the better books I’ve read in 2011. Some mind numbing isn’t going amiss.
Except I can’t. I can’t take it. And I don’t know quite what’s wrong. Apart from the shit lyrics and the utter vacuousness, that is. Then it hits me. I miss the messiness. Of a plectrum singeing worn guitar strings on its way down. The inevitable plunk plunk that announces hand (and plectern) hitting string, announcing a certain honesty. I miss the beauty of the missed note in a live performance. The imperfection. The wabi sabi ethos. I miss the sax, the clarinet, the wind instruments so liable to be overblown to the point their pitch varies. I miss their complexity, their character.
Forget genre for a second. What modern music has done is taken notes, processed them using large iMacs with the latest I7 processors, and assembled them for optimum hearing. Singers’ voices have been purloined, cheese grated and reassembled into perfect robotic utopian tone. Never again will you hear the dying rasps of a diseased Johnny Cash trying to wring the last breath from his napalmed lungs to tell you about the American dream. Or any dream. No, it’s just perfect mollecules of !ucking perfect !ucking sound. And their perfection bleeds away all character till its muzak not music. Music is spontaneity, and joy. Muzak is just a formula. So go to hell Gaga Bieber Black whathaveyou.
And that’s my problem with mixologists too. You’re going to deconstruct my G&T till it melds at molecular level? You’re going to freeze that little ball of cucumber essence in liquid nitrogen so it dissolves perfectly? Well, go have intercourse with a rabid baboon, Mr. mixologist.
See, I like my music imperfect, and I definitely like my drinks asymmetrical. In want my G&T to taste differently depending on which side of the glass I’m drinking. My whisky and lemon bitters is on a gradient of tangy, smooth and pungent depending on how I drink, what the base was, and how I’m sipping. Don’t give me your formulas. We’ve got actuarial tables for that. But no one goes to a goddammned jazz club to practice actuarial tables. Just Sayin’.
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Do you like your women imperfect too?
Why, yes! How could you tell?