Main trouble with Album Week is that the shape and weight of a whole album makes the discussion of any one track somewhat unwieldly, and sometimes that's all I'd like to do--discuss Joanna Newsom's song "Go Long" without having to talk about Have One On Me, which is rather a sprawl of music, or talk about "Radio Ethiopia" without necessarily needing to touch on the rest of Radio Ethiopia (Patti Smith Group). The first post of Album Week 2022 was pretty long in order to say just a few things that I wanted to say about Bach's "Toccata & Fugue in D minor" and still get to the rest of it (all in brief--much as I value concision, long-windedness is my curse, and it can be assured that wherever I choose to stop, I could have gone on and on), and I could generate a post twice as long still to discuss that composition further. Part of me wants to!
What I did last post was kind of fun and refreshing, though. Short bits. Love some short bits.
Comes down to it though, I am the one in charge of Album Week, and if I want to discuss an album primarily through the vehicle of a single one of its tracks, I guess I can give myself that permission any old time. Could even talk about it through just the album art, I guess.
So! What sojourn shall we drag ourselves through today, dear reader? Well, read on, my friend.
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Real quick: I love reading Wikipedia very much, but because I can't look at how much of it there is to read, like with a book, it's painfully difficult to know when to stop, and to organize my approach. Also its authority has made it difficult for websites of a certain flavor to survive. I remember, early days on the world wide web, surfing over to various homemade pages full of information and art about myths and legends. These basically don't exist anymore; sadly, who would read them? We have Wikipedia, and because it is meant to be counted on as a reliable source, much embroidery is lost.
Mentioned because I got sucked into their featured article yesterday, on James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States. Pretty interesting. It's always such a time to be alive, and people sure do get busy with stuff.
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Okay. Album Week 2022, day three, let's talk about Waking Season, by Caspian.
To do so properly, we would be well-served in skating back to Caspian's first offering, The Four Trees. First heard this album while I was tripping acid, and it was a revelatory, sublime experience, notable for its non-dilution in sober circumstances. Caspian is just the best band in the post-rock quadrant as far as I'm concerned; I remember the friend who showed me the music (a culturally nomadic hummingbird; he sips, he moves on, he never comes back to the flower again, which, as a magpie who clutches all treasures close in his nest, I find perplexing, frustrating, and even somehow depressing) frowning at me about how "there are better bands", when I just wanted to listen to Caspian some more. This was at a time in our lives when most of our hours not spent working at a Chinese restaurant were spent drinking and smoking while listening to and playing music together for hours on end. Maybe he's right, but I don't think so, and even if he were, my feelings about things are more important than some potential standard of correctness. The patterns they established and explored in The Four Trees, especially in the first two tracks, "Moksha" and "Some Are White Light", are simply very close to my heart. Music that has always been playing within me, expressed by another. This vibrational recognition is a special aspect of the godhead, a feeling I get from Caspian in a way I get from no other band, with the exception of The Mountain Goats.
The Four Trees promised more; Tertia, their second album, didn't deliver it. It's a good album, a necessary step in their journey, just not an escalating one. They dodged a weak sophomore effort--a well-documented curse in art--by producing an an album that functions as a bridge. It is with Waking Season that what is reached for beyond the exhilarating accomplishments of The Four Trees and the buildup of Tertia is attained: hybridization, ascension, expansion, a full bloom.
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Been going back and forth on the merits of a track-by-track breakdown of this record, since it is one of my very favorite albums of all time, but I can't hear it in my head without sounding foolish. Another time, maybe!
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To put it simply, Waking Season is spiritually orgasmic, a coming together of powers and feelings that surges and climaxes without loss. And while their next LP's and EP's are also amazing, really truly amazing, full of incredible music that goes even further and never disappoints, songs and albums I listen to over and over and over again, Waking Season inhabits a plateau where it lives alone; a place I come back to and experience cleaner, purer air more than any other in Caspian's oeuvre.
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Started going through the hiring process for local school bus drivers. Think the first part is behind me and seemingly positively; the next step is the physical tomorrow, then getting my commercial license and going through training. By the middle of March, I expect to be driving a route! I also have an interview on Monday to work at the local recycling center. We will see how these events play out, how these potentialities unfold or retreat. All things are in the palms of God's hands.
Yeah, that movie. I still plan to make it, and maintain my writing output, but life requires a backbone, patterns, routines, and most particularly, steady money coming in. Can't blithely live off the savings. Hopefully these jobs and opportunities will result in a weekly schedule that serves the community, puts enough cash in the till, and leaves me time and energy for endeavors creative and domestic. Can't involve myself the same way as I did in the last kitchen, which may well be the Last Kitchen. That's how I'm feeling now. If I absolutely have to return to food, I'll look for work at farms. Cooking ought be a home project for me henceforth.
Alright! Enough rambles! I finished that book about the Gospel and Sopranos. It kind of only got worse, but remained pretty good and quite readable. Then I started reading The Power of Myth, which is a conversation/interview between the legendary Joseph Campbell and the journalist Bill Moyers, recorded around the time the PBS series of the same name was being produced, later compiled and edited. It's awesome. Like, it's really fucking fantastic.
Cool. Cool. Even though I don't smoke anything anymore, because I am old, I remain with the feeling that compels me to say that it would be well to smoke marijuana on the daily, baby, party on. Really I just mean you can let yourself live life how you feel.
Peace!
--JL
