I was a finalist for Provincetown! Sure, you might say, finalist means a pat on the back and a punch in the boobs, but I’ll take it. Then I went to the pool and swam 20 laps and read Philip Larkin during that blissfully exhausted post-swim state, which makes me pretty sure I am winning at life. Although I should note that I don’t always follow my own rules listed in the previous WAYS 2 STAY OKAY post, but I usually muddle something feasible together.
Part of that current feasible thing is Marnie Stern. She is a self-taught-in-her-mid-20s guitar player who shreds to death and sings lines like “I’m like a raging animation/I’ve wondered what it’s like to be one” in her girly voice, in her super positive songs that are full of SHRED. Like, grade A Van Halen quality shred. It’s incredible. And I’m not going to issue some unilateral dictate that you must listen to her, but if you’re around me in the next few weeks I will probably make you listen in the car or at least talk about her. So deal. This is clearly kind of because I’m currently learning how to play guitar and I’m sort of infatuated with all of the things it can do–I mean, chord-based instruments! You can play them with friends who are interested in a wide variety of musical styles! You can google tabs or chords for a song you love and know how to play it in two minutes! Anthony makes the very valid point that while it might be the best (physical) instrument ever based on its versatility, its styles and temperaments (at least regarding electronic guitar) tend to fall into one potentially (very) stale idiom. I completely believe this, since my initial attempts at writing songs have left me with some super rudimentary chord progressions, partially because those progressions just sound like what guitars are supposed to do and partially because the G and Em chords are pretty much the easiest to play the moment. But I like Marnie Stern so much because she’s up to this completely idiosyncratic finger-tapping Van Halen thing and is really down to earth about not knowing no damn music theory and she’s writing these crazy complicated songs. It’s encouraging.
But maybe more than that, it’s got me listening to this album in that obsessive teenage way, and I don’t get that way so much lately. I miss it, honestly. I’m probably not remembering it completely right, but it seemed like at one point I listened to all music with this degree of intensity, moving from one favorite to another like leaping from rock to rock across a crick. There was some kind of forward motion to it and I was never lacking a totally essentialized version of myself in CD form. I kept it up all the way through college, which was probably a case of my staying-too-late-at-the-party tendency, but it was fun and kind of instructive. Liking stuff that much gave me a foil for ideas that existed in other genres or didn’t exist at all until I found a way to draw them out based on, say, Cristina’s brash/creepy Peggy Lee covers. I can’t help but think this sort of attention is useful in some nearly invisible holistic way regarding the making of other things.
Maybe the real goal here is to isolate the behavioral element that enables teenagers to be so totally INTO IT because it’s also a thing that goes away. And shoot, I have no idea what that is except maybe having an emotional life that is so confusing it can only find expression in objects that exist outside of it. And if you can remember it, you can remember how much that sucked. So, this time around I’m not being nearly as prescriptive. I can’t tell you that obsessive attention to music will make you have a better time of it. But it’s probably true. Oh damn.
