There’s Something For You Here
Introducing you to (or reminding you of — based on whichever stage of discovery you are at) REDACTED and Coping Strategies.
1. REDACTED PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE AS A MEANS TO FOSTER SELF INDULGENCE
“i’ve found that those pieces of music that really stick with me do so because of some sense of memory. and i suppose memory is often valued — for better or for worse — by a scale of nostalgia. some people would argue that nostalgia is tantamount to dwelling, and that forward thinking individuals should abstain from dwelling.
music that affects me can’t be like that for me. music for me has always been about imagery, of memory, of some catalyst that draws me to it because of one of two things: sheer sonics, or a vivid image.
some music makes me react purely by the sound i hear, like this, or this. but more often than not, i see something. and while i suppose the pure sonic reaction is also embedded in a certain past — though more often than not i’m likely drawn to the sonics i’ve never heard before, so perhaps less so — the image is always embedded in a past recollection. there’s no other way to refer to an imagined visual if not for drawing from three dimensions and memory.
when i was 5–9 years old, i lived in a really remote part of ZZZZZZZ. my parents — father in particular — had a sort of pastoral fantasy, one where they planted a lot of their own root crops on the land we had, the produce of which we stored all winter in a cellar. we lived in a really remote place, just a dirt road, one or two neighbours, cows. i had to be bussed to school, but because of where we lived, i would first get picked up by one bus, just for me. that bus would drop me off at an elderly lady’s house, which is where i would then connect to the school bus that all other students went on. so, every morning for many years, winter, summer, spring, autumn, i would have 15 minutes every schoolday where i would sit in a patio, maybe eating a cookie. her house was very old, there was a lot of china around. i’d sit next to a staircase. she’s dead now.
where i would sit would be in front of a window. her house was on a hill. outside her window was a valley. this valley wasn’t so deep. the road that travelled down and up its depth would bifurcate the valley, the same road that would take me to school and back. the sun would rise directly above this road, and in the morning mist sometimes the road would become reflective and it would become an orange to white line by virtue of the sun. it was mostly farmland on each side.
i hadn’t thought of this valley in a long time, until i heard REDACTED
i have no idea what triggered that memory. there is the melody, which is beautiful. but if i think about it, my first reaction was to the drums, and how they sounded. i’d never heard drums like that before. it was the mix. i asked RRRRRRRRR about it and he told me he was just eq’ing it in real time when it was mixed down. this, to me, was quite a remarkable realisation — that simple EQ would be able to carve out a completely commanding reference point to my past.
the more i listened to the song, the more i connected to that EQ of those drums, and the more i could see that valley, and start to remember other elements of those mornings — table cloth, a chair, wallpaper, a teapot, the clock on the wall. that song, and that mix in particular is now forever married to those daily 15 minutes i had as a child — of that valley, of the yellow bus, of a road, of trees, of farmland, of a morning sky. there were imperfections in the demo that became part of the song; slightly off timings here and there. the way it began loud and then was brought down quickly, but more than anything, how BABABABABBAABA voice had this perfect sense of distance (reverb?) that seemed to match so well that distance between me and that valley. and more than anything else, the way those drums sounded. it gave me space to admire it, which made it even more captivating — the drums were just there to watch change with the light and the clouds that would cast shadows on that valley as the wind would carry them along. somewhere out of sight was a voice, relegated without ceremony, just a sober narrative over an ever changing vista.
so with that admittedly rather indulgent description out of way: you asked me how i felt about the new mix. well, REDACTEDREDACTEDRERDCCCTEDREDAksafjaskldfsaklfisgonnarockya”
2. COPING STRATEGY
I’m torn in half by where and how nostalgia pulls me asunder. I enjoy it.
I enjoy the feeling of references I can’t place allowing me to be drawn to places I cannot remember. I believe this is what lies at my instinctive reaction to music - their histories, and the communities from which they came. Most of these reactions are firmly embedded in an imagined landscape. In that landscape I can create my own vista, and I can try to remember the conversations I had when I was asleep. But of course I can’t, because we don’t have vocal conversations in our dreams.
There are cues that I internalise. My mind hits record, and everything I see and feel around me becomes canonical. Dusk light and melody. I wish I could understand why certain melodies cause me to react in the way they do. Impossible cadence and EQ geographies. I am incapable of understanding. Once when I was six I was missing someone and I was sitting in the back of a car and we were driving away and I was staring at the setting sun and the sky was orange and the shadows were long and I was hiding. I didn’t want it to get dark because I didn’t understand what I was feeling and it was interesting, but I wanted how I was feeling to change so I wanted it to get dark, to make the shadows impossibly long, to change so that things could stay the same. The fetching fascination of not comprehending and dwelling in that incomprehension draws me in. I remain predictable in my insecurity.
I miss my parents. I miss that road that I would wait by when I was seven. I miss that person. I miss you. I miss that person, too.
I want to walk down that road, I can’t. I’ve left. I want to go there. I’m not sure where to go now. I want to go there too.
I watched this video last night. I don’t recognise where the video was shot. The light on the water, the object in front of the lens, that child; I know where, and I know them, primarily because I don’t know where, and I don’t know them. The geometry is instinctively pleasing and the shadows are mine. The score to what I see seems self generative, sort of like this attempt at describing what I am experiencing as I engage with it. It all suits me very well.
word by Rana Ghose (editor’s note: F U Rana Ghose)
Coping Strategies debut performance was them opening for The Sine Painter on May 17 but I forgot to publish this because this don’t pay my bills and I was busy doing things that do pay my bills. Sorry — I can’t quite forgive myself either, but maybe you should go to the next one?
