The most important music album of my life
A love letter to “Everyday and All at Once”, by Jasper Sloan Yip
Since this will be a pretty vulnerable read, you might want to start listening to the honest vulnerabilty in this:
There always will be space in-between
where I find myself and where I want to be.I got nothing but time and a big hole to fill.
And if time doesn’t kill me, that emptyness will.
—Jasper Sloan Yip, “Transit”
A friend once told me about the Rubber Hand Illusion. It’s a scientific experiment in which a person is shown a realistic rubber hand on a table, while their own real hand is also resting on the same table, however hidden from view by a cloth or box. An experimenter will rub smalls paintbrushes on both the rubber hand and the real one, at the same time, in the same place, and for the same length. The person sees the brush touching only the rubber hand, but feels it only on their real hand, thus linking sight and touch.
After a while, the experimenter will stop brushing the real hand. The person, though, will still feel the brush on their skin, only by the sight of the rubber hand being caressed.
Promises made, but not made to keep,
leave holes in your chest and blood on your sleeve.
And all of the sense you make but don’t see
it ain’t worth a cent and don’t mean a thing.
Just cus you did does not mean you do.
Just cus you think does not make it true.
Just cus we are does not mean we still.
Just cus we can does not mean we will.In a constant state of freefall I imagine it would seem
like the distance overhead us is the same as underneath.
You’ve really got no idea that you are moving at all.
What actually feels like flight turns out to be a fall.
—Jasper Sloan Yip, “Mistakes and Repeated Carelessness”
Every once in a while, maybe three or four times a year, I stumble upon a new artist or album that makes me happier. It is like meeting someone and connecting so easily and quickly, instantly knowing you’ve made a great new friend. I’ve just met the person, but I already know I can count on them to be in my life for months and years.
Fewer and a lot farther between are the songs that take the ground off my feet. Music that I don’t have to “get”, because it “got” me first by the mere fact that it exists. It’s like meeting a girl and knowing, right there, instantly, that I love her. That no matter what happens, she will always be important to me. She will always be a big deal, a beacon of beauty pointing to this specific place and time.
A few years back, when my life was seemingly on track, I discovered Jasper Sloan Yip’s first album Everyday and All at Once. It was just like that.
There’s a hole in my heart and a pain in my side
and a reality from which I cannot hide.
It sneers and it snarls and it laughs in my face,
it says: “You’ve got a limp, boy, and this is a race.”My mind’s like a fan that has been caught in the wind;
once it gets going, it just spins and it spins.
But my thoughts they just hang like the fruit on a tree,
but they’re either un-ripe or too rotten to eat.
So they fall to the ground and they all rot away
and I know that I too will submit to decay.
—Jasper Sloan Yip, “Athens”
The first time I listened to these songs, I had a hidden restlessness in my heart. I didn’t want to admit, but I knew I had to turn my life around, like it was a vinyl I still had only listened to one side. Side A was not bad — not at all — but how could I live without knowing what was waiting for me on side B?
But also me.
I knew I had to break free from the life I was living and see the world in more dimensions. Reading about Jasper, I found out he had the same sort of dilemmas. After much deliberation, he decided to throw it all away, pack a bag, travel, and write songs about life from that perspective.
He made the never easy decision of living off and for music instead of pursuing a safer, more predictable life.
Tough I’m not a musician, this inspired the fuck out of me. It gave me a kind of strength and resolve I never quite knew I had. Like the first E string in a guitar that vibrates along with the sixth E after it’s plucked, I was listening and “getting it” without any kind of effort. No one physically touched me, but I was touched.
I just had to follow that feeling.
You see I do and I don’t believe in my ability to follow through
with all the things that I implied that I would do.If I had the will, and I had youth, if I had stomach for the truth,
I’d lift my coat and tip my cap and chase the dreams that I once had.
But now and then I lose the plot and waste the time I haven’t got to spare
and sit and stare at nothing. God, I need to feel some something.
—Jasper Sloan Yip, “Today”
Like in the rubber hand illusion, I had linked my feelings of restlessness and resolve with the sounds coming from these songs.
Later, when I also went traveling and seeing a bit of the world, I listened to it all the time. There was nothing better to ward off loneliness. Whenever I hit play, my soul had company. And so, I also linked this experience of traveling alone to Mr. Yip’s songs.
This album is so heavily loaded with feelings that I honestly try not to listen to it too much. There are times. But when I do… It all comes back beautifully.
When I stop to think my heart does race at an uncomfortable pace
because the biggest problem that I have is that I don’t know what makes me sad.
So I watch the days that come and go like I’m walking through the falling snow;
I can see a path, and trace it back, but it will melt and leave no track.
Well that’s ok, because I’ve realized that even though I’m going to die
I know right now that I’m alive and that’s enough to get me by.Though your memory persists you know the past does not exist at all.
—Jasper Sloan Yip, “Back and Forth and To And Fro”
Throughout this article I’ve been quoting some of his lyrics and emphasising the parts that speak to me the most. This next bit of lyrics, however, is not a bit. It’s the whole thing.
It’s the entirety of what Jasper sings on the last song of the album, a song called “Slowly”.
Every single one of these lines could have been written by me, for me, or about me. It’s uncanny.
The first time I read them while listening to the song… I just had to get up and take a walk. I will never forget that moment.
I guess I’ve been walking ever since.
This is me:
I know that it has been said before, but not like this, or with these chords:
I wish that I was someone else so I could sit down with myself.
Maybe I could help explain these crazy thoughts I entertain about my life,
and everything, like how it’s really happening right now.I’m bored, I’m restless, disconnected, aimlessness has left me breathless.
But my life has been redirected and I’m starting to accept this.
Efforts now must be relentless because failures leave me so upset with myself,
but I swear this is all that I love; you’re going to see exactly what I’m made of tonight.As for the rest of my life, well, I’ll just wait and see what happens to me from here.
So it seems, like all of the time I’m about to change my mind.
I’m so naive, yet resolute after I’ve decided what to do.
I can’t wear a tie on my collared shirt, I can’t get a job and just go to work.
I’m worried sick like you wouldn’t believe have you any idea what this means to me?Looking back now makes me laugh. I’m grateful I don’t want the things that I lack.
Except for time, oh goddamn me, when did free time become such a luxury?
See, if I don’t do this while I’m young I’m certain that it won’t get done.
So I’ve made my choice and it’s all right, I’m ready to really start living my life.
So I swear to god that I will quit my job and drive until my car just stops.I’ll walk until I reach the ocean, maybe I will know what to do by then.
—Jasper Sloan Yip, “Slowly”
…and here’s the amazing follow-up
In July 2013, Mr. Yip released his second album, Foxtrot. You can listen to it on Spotify or on Bandcamp. Without any hyperbole, it’s every bit as good as the first. If not better.
