I’ve been overwhelmed by the guilt that the stack of unopened CDs on my desk perpetually induces, and so I’ve devoted several hours a day this week to spinning discs and reading liner notes. The music has run the gamut from amazing to dull, as have the accompanying texts. Like cleaning out your inbox, however, I’m down to just two or three discs still in their shrink wrap, and I feel much, much better.
In my own recreational listening, I tend to spend little or no time perusing those little booklets, and I’ve pretty much sworn off writing for them. The first time I tried my hand at it was for a CD of solo violin work performed by Curtis Macomber. It should have been easy–I’m a violinist, I’m a writer–but instead I suffered a minor panic attack the night it was due, mumbling to my roommate, “What do I say? What do I need to tell anyone about this music? They don’t need me. They’re probably already listening to it! Who needs me blabbing about history and making up descriptions when the music is already filling their head?”
I was thinking about this again today while assembling Ikea furniture, aided by those clever/poetic/maddening (depending on your talents) pictogram instructions. In the international language of line drawing, they try and make the process of transforming a box of boards into functional furniture a little less daunting, offering a suggested route and posting signage where the wrong turns are. They give you an idea, and a piece of your brain has to take that information and translate it into a small set of tasks to complete. I wish I could write about music in a similar way, leaving more room for reader reaction to fill the space so that they are helped along by what I’m saying, yet the experience and the end product are uniquely theirs. I want them to walk away and think: a million people may brush their teeth over a Vättern sink cabinet tonight, but I put this one here together myself.
I think you’ve pegged Michael Hearst’s next project: songs for ikea instructions…
My solution to listening to all those CDs would be to load them into an iTunes Playlist made for the occasion. Click on shuffle and see what comes out to tantalize your senses. Who cares if whole movements of a sonata are thrown to the wind? Listen to it while assembling Ikea furniture. A perfect way to while away a few hours.
If the CDs on my desk came with Ikea-like instructions, I’d insert each one into the player upside down, and jam it in repeatedly a few times with increasing frustration, since it looks *just* like the CD in the line drawing. Then I would squint a little harder, stare more diligently at the stoopid instruction leaflet, and finally notice the two oh-so subtle slashes that are supposed to be the universally recognized icon for “shiny surface” (in a universe for which I do not have a passport). I would then flip the CD and reinsert it, correct side up. By this time, however, I would have nicked the edge of the disc from my prior ill-fated attempts, and while most of the disc plays all right, for as long as I own the CD there would always be one little spot that skips that I hope no one else notices. This, a poignant reminder of the perils of my cheaper, do-it-yerse’f all-assembly-required lifestyle. Sigh.
In fact, defacing a cd and playing it can come out with some pretty cool skipping effects, which Eric Bünger replicated quite well in his “Variations on a Theme by Casey and Finch.” Just one of the many technologically-driven ways to alter existing material.
I have to agree, though I hardly ever buy real CD’s with leaflets any more, only because I have no money, when I check them out from the library I usually only consult the notes for biographical information on the composers, not for how to listen to the tunes. Somehow, “a measured epilogue with which the thematic arch fades away into nothingness” or “serene beauty” or “dramatic movements that rise to the surface like brief reminiscences of past battles” (all from some notes to a Brahms and Reger cd of clarinet quintets) just don’t do it for me. Ugh. Notice how leaflets to rock or hip hop cd’s or really most genres other than classical and jazz skip the fluff? Perhaps it’s because they’re not yet academicized, and we’re not yet supposed to “take them seriously,” and listen quietly? This will happen to rock and everything else some day, too, though, I think.
Liner notes (more akin to Ikea instructions than an album review) might frustrate me, but I always appreciate a thoughtful review, and Molly, I think your writing and thinking are much better than Ikea-like instructions through a track listing. Sounds like you’re disenchanted by liner notes, too, so why not stick to articles and reviews?