thispresentsojourn

That you and I are not people in a vacuum [that would make for a pretty interesting photograph if we were] is something to consider, particularly when assessing [uncovering?] values. I’ve used the space below to consider it myself.

In a previous post, I promised a “most-important-to-me albums of all time [well, of 23-years time]” list. I specifically chose the “most important” language, because what I’ve strewn together below is other than an objective analysis of musical merit. That’s not my purpose, if even it were one able be grasped at all. Instead, this is my angle: I am a whole human who necessarily [and somewhat unknowingly] gives to and receives from a cultural, social, time-specific context, and, because of this, I am wholly inadequate to attempt interpreting art through any grid Experience does not provide.

[Now is when you start thinking I'm a post-postmodern, deconstructionalist, relativistic, existential, hermeneutically decentralized, breakdown-of-Truth, experience-hungry hyphen-abusing cracker.]

For clarity’s sake, It’d be incorrect of me to say that any of what lies below is not important as art-for-art’s-sake, but again, that’s not my point. My purpose is merely this: to relay you a list of music that’s paired most auspiciously with how reality has developed around me, or, enveloped within me. Music can be – I think – an icon, which actually contains and preserves reality [to an extent]. What I mean is that it’s simply not enough to say “songs help us look back” or that they “describe another time.” My speculation is, that by some strange mystery, Time is Really present in the music.

Sure, listening is, in a small [and the most obvious] sense participation with the songwriter. You identify with him or her because the specific content [or, at least the broader theme] of his or her song speaks of a situation even only somewhat similar to one you yourself have endured. But, there’s something even more beautiful about listening in one context, and later, listening to the in another. That within an absolutely unchanging melody, development and nuance can be detected years after the first listen reflects upon the listener more than it does the song-in-itself. That’s what I’m talking about here.

I type the following with the risk of sounding trite [you know, I should begin every post here that way]: listening becomes interaction with another time, a past you, and all those other characters in whose diverse unity have unknowingly come together to experience reality [in one sense] and to create an experience of reality [in another]. In some odd way, hearing a song that corresponds to another time and another place [as if those were different // as if those were the same] is more than simply a cozy memory. It is a rehearsal of history. And that post-participatory-possibility is very, very rich stuff.

[All] that said, immediately below you’ll find “the most-important-to-me-albums” in the order they affected me. You might say this is my “experiential chronology:”

	The Gloria Record Start Here		Pete Yorn musicforthemorningafter
	M. Ward Transfiguration of Vincent		Copeland Beneath Medicine Tree
	Elbow Cast of Thousands		Ester Drang Infinite Keys
	Björk Vespertine		Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks
	Múm Finally We Are No One		Sigur Ros ( )
	Ryan Adams Demolition		Death Cab For Cutie Transatlanticism
	Rufus Wainwright Poses		Sufjan Stevens Illinois
	Denison Witmer Are You A Dreamer?		Jens Lekman Oh You’re So Silent Jens
	The Postal Service Give Up		Lovedrug Pretend You’re Alive
	Longwave The Strangest Things		Sleeping at Last Ghosts
	Nick Drake Pink Moon		Patty Griffin 1000 Kisses
	Appleseed Cast Two Conversations		Jose Gonzalez Veneer
	Patrick Park Loneliness Knows My Name		Loney, Dear Loney Noir

Some say “music adds – like – so much to life!” or “my life SO has a soundtrack!” and I think what they mean is that when humans interact, share common experiences, and probe Reality with one another, music provides the unique opportunity set those moments we’ve come to know as Real, True, and meaningful, to a melody [the Actual's correspondence to the Abstract].

It is only after we’ve allowed the music to become thick with experience – pulsing existentially – that melody reciprocates, storing in nuance pain and beauty or stolidity [whatever the case may be] in a concise little three-minute-package that sounds really pretty. And in these small movements, it’s possible to identify hints of the Overture that is Being and Belonging and Becoming.