Passion Pit has been my passion for the past week. Synth? Check. Keyboard? Check. Guitar? Check. Bass? Check. Drums? Check. Excellent? Check.
It's amazing how many times I can go through one set of 11 songs taking up just about 45 minutes... over... and over... and over. It's great music and one of the most painful moments in recent memory, if only for a brief moment, was realizing I missed seeing them live by about a day.
My room is faintly lit by a lamp, tilted slightly to the ground as I sit in my bed, typing. To my right is the bouncing silhouette of my body, earphones placed firmly on my head as the opening track "Make Light" plays in the background, Michael Angelakos' youthful falsetto wailing with the electronic symphony of beats and samples.
I made a point to check out some of Passion Pit's live performances on YouTube earlier today. Hearing "Sleepyhead" in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, the festival circuit... Angelakos' falsetto hitting moments of brilliance and bedraggled depending on the day.
Once I write this, it will be written. Occasionally read, if I'm lucky, and rarely recited. My blessing.
But as a musician, how does one cope with the repetition? Angelakos' library consists of that single full length LP of 11 tracks and an EP containing mostly cross-over tracks. Okay, so "Sleepyhead" is first on the set list on Tuesday and now, let's make it seventh on Wednesday?
Or, once you've reached that peak, does the love and adoration of a fanbase, all focused on your talent and ability, make the feeling never get old despite the fact that all you are doing with every new performance is rehashing something old. For the fan? New.
For you? Old. Practice. Practice. Practice. Play. Repeat. Practice. Practice. Practice. Play. Repeat.
Or do you keep that fresh feeling?
Waking up a block from the ocean, smelling that thick, salty breeze every day of the week... soaking up the rays, one thinks and then utters: "I am alive."
Is that the feeling?
Or maybe, as life, it's all a repetition, no matter how talented and creative we are?
Wake up. Eat. Go to work. Eat. Go Home. Eat. Sleep.
Get off the bus. Unload. Mic Check. "Sleepyhead." Encore. Reload. Get on the bus.
Conception. Get off the bus. Adolescence. Adulthood. The inevitable decline. Get on the bus.
3 comments:
It's never performed exactly the same way twice. That's the impression I get from musicians and performers--like stage-plays too. Even if you're trying to repeat things exactly, it's never going to be identical. There's room for discovery, for hearing something you didn't hear before, playing something in a new way you didn't think of previously.
But I can say this too, with certainty: whether I'm doing the same things every day or not, my days are never the same. Reading the same book does not give me the same experience. Walking to the park is never a same experience. Different traffic, different weather, different thoughts.
Pete and Repeat were in a boat, and Pete fell out, who was left?
I was actually thinking about it a bit more after I wrote this and started floating over towards the conclusion in your first paragraph more.
I agree with that about most books... though I've found some that I've had to reread to fully grasp, and I was somewhat citing that as an advantage of writing... not having to go through that repetition.
But then I started thinking of some performers, like Jack White, who are in so many different collaborations and bands... or Radiohead, where none of their CDs sound alike, maybe the most brilliant ones are the ones that attempt enough change... that the repetition actually affects and they do their best to counteract it?
Honestly, there is a lot of repetition in writing. Sometimes I get to the point where I've looked and relooked at, written and rewritten a portion of the story so many times, I can't see what I've actually written anymore, only what I think I've written, or what I had intended to say. And it's incredible frustrating to look at the end of your book and realize that you have to go back and rewrite the beginning again, because your voice and style changed. Repetition, but not sameness, and certainly not a lack of growth.
And now that I'm talking about this I'm starting to maybe revisit your original thoughts again-- because I'm thinking that I can imagine a performer being frustrated by the fact that the audience wants them to play, over and over and over again, FOREVER, a song which, as they've grown and become greater and better, they see as hugely inferior to their more recent body of work. It would be like someone LOVING one of my short stories from college, that I can't even LOOK at without irritation and wanting to revise it from the ground up. You know? THAT I think would be the frustration, born of repetition. I think.
did that makes sense? Also: clearly this is food for thought.
Post a Comment