different names for the same thing

[30-day music meme] day 4: belle & sebastian - you made me forget my dreams

2017-06-14T13:01:49Z

These prompts are very confessional. Or rather, the path of least resistance leads to confessional-type posts, not posts that focus on the music. But anyway:

Today is 'a song that reminds you of someone you'd rather forget about'. I don't think I'd actually rather forget about anyone who was ever important to me, no matter how bad things were. I have a bad enough tendency to repeat mistakes even when I remember them perfectly. But there are times and situations with people that it hurts to go back to, and not in a 'sweet catharsis'/pleasant wallowing way but actually 'ugh, no, that's still covered in knives and razorwire'.

Some strange person on YouTube said they found this song relaxing. But for me this is the sound of learned helplessness slowly giving way to the realisation that something has to change, but also knowing you're too weary to do anything about it right now (and not being sure that anything you can do will help). Apart from the fact that no one involved was working for a man with a gun, and I was dreaming of trains across Siberia rather than space rockets, it's still painfully close to the bone.

Look, a digression! So, music whose purpose is to cause you to feel those kinds of messy, painful feelings. What is its place in your life? When music is wallpaper, when you can pick nearly anything to listen to, and when you can use it for cheering-up and determination and calming-down and generally twiddling the knobs of your limbic system like the Mood Organ in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, do you choose to listen to the sad music? Do you let it play when it comes up on shuffle? Maybe you even seek it out on purpose? I sometimes do without really knowing why. But I wonder whether sad songs on Spotify - not cathartic emotional-ketchup-blast songs that help you process the feelings, but songs like this one that just express how it is when you're submerged - get listened to less, on the whole, than happy, uplifting, calming music. And if this is the case, I hope this doesn't shape what musicians think it's worthwhile to do, like all the forces that nudge artists towards making artwork that sells well on Etsy and works as home decor.

But maybe this isn't even a thing for others. Maybe you all listen to sad music all day without turning a hair. This is something a LJ poll would have been perfect for. Do you choose music based on your mood? Do you try to change your mood with it, or avoid certain music because you think it might? When do you listen to the sad stuff, and why?

See also: Archway People by Saint Etienne. It's like this one except that 'making a move' seems even more inconceivable. 'There are some nice parts of London. You can see them from here.'

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'i was born in a summer storm'

2017-06-07T15:09:54Z

No music meme today, just this, to go with the previous post.

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[30-day music meme] day 3: the flaming lips - buggin'

2017-06-05T16:33:23Z

Look at this little dude. Those deep red wings. Those magnificent antennae, that look velvety like antlers. I've never seen anything like him outside the Burren, where I took the picture.

( 3: A song that reminds you of summer )

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[music meme day 1] tunng: red and green

2017-06-04T13:22:13Z

I'd like to get in the habit of writing about music. The way people did it on Livejournal is yet another thing I miss about the place; I got some of my favourite music that way, through colourful descriptions of tracks with YouSendIt links by people whose taste I knew I liked. I've always hesitated to do so myself because I thought there were prerequisites I didn't have, but increasingly I think I shouldn't let that stop me.

One of those things was knowing about massive numbers of bands in trainspotterish detail (to the extent that you would be able to name all their members and everyone else on their record label at a pub quiz) and being able to situate each one precisely in a timeline/tree diagram of changing genres, enabling you to make statements like 'X are like Y and Z jamming in the tour bus of early A, heavily influenced by the [genre/style] of B while C was still their bassist'. But over the years I've come to realise I do know a fair few music facts, though they don't all interconnect into a cognitive map; and also that there's something annoyingly rockist (and frankly, willy-waving) about the idea that you shouldn't try to comment on music unless you have that map in your head. And further, that I didn't require that level of knowledge from anyone else to enjoy their writing about music, which meant it was just a self-silencing tactic.

The other 'problem' is that I'm not usually up to date with new releases. I can only take in so much new music at a time, and I prefer to explore it slowly, dumping new stuff into my unfashionably large iPod and munching gradually through it. I often trip over music in there which blows me away, sometimes years after I put it in there and forgot about it. And then there's whatever Spotify decides to play at me, which is always a bit divorced from context. From proper musos' point of view I will have gaps in my knowledge and be very late to some parties. But eh.

So here we go, the Dreamwidth music meme, albeit several weeks after everyone else I've seen doing it (starting as I mean to go on). Including but not limited to assorted dance/electronic, various kinds of psychedelia, folk, 'oh god does this count as indie, what even is indie these days', and whatever the hell the Magnetic Fields are.

( 1. A song with a colour in the title )

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[crossposted from LJ] hello, good evening, welcome and goodbye

2017-05-13T14:43:06Z

Hi! Further to the LJ terms of service change thing, I guess I'll take 'try and get back in the habit of posting on LJ' off my to-do list, where it's been for like seven years.

But is anyone still here? Are people going over to Dreamwidth en-semi-masse? Might that wake things up over there a bit? If you're moving over or have already done, come and find me here. I've transferred my whole journal over, which I hadn't realised was possible.

I've never found a place on the internet to replace LJ, and that sucks. Facebook is like those nightmares where you realise you're naked at school and somehow your boss, your mum and your appalling US state trooper cousin are also watching. Sometimes you find some clothes and put them on, but then Mark Zuckerberg sneaks up and takes them off again when you're not paying attention. Twitter is also like that except there's an angry mob on the horizon with guns. Tumblr is like a cosy living-room which looks like it has walls, so people let themselves be messy and vulnerable, but occasionally something you say gets picked out of the conversation and broadcast to thousands over a giant tannoy. Instagram is nice and laid-back but so full of people (very, very not anyone who's likely to read this, mind) saying they're #blessed, or whatever, with rictus grins, that it makes my teeth ache. ('So #grateful to my spirited children who teach me patience every day!' Oh, honey.)

And everywhere people apologise for writing long things. I like writing and reading long things, especially about people's lives, the totality of lives with all their various interests, not the one topic they guess they ought to focus on in order to monetise their blog. Hi, I am an old curmudgeon, and right now I'm kind of revelling in it. Come and join me in my curmudgeon-den. Maybe even come to Dreamwidth.

But for a long time - like, between 2003 and 2009 - LJ was a whole world, and provided the understructure for a whole rich, busy real-world social life. Thanks to LJ my then-partner and I travelled along the US west coast for three weeks in 2005, staying and having awesome times with friendly not-quite-strangers all the way. The LJ poll feature helped me make massive art (I just asked you all what you were thinking, and just like that you all told me, and it became the Collective Consciousness installation). I have so many and different feels about The Ladies' Loos that I can't sum them up, but... that also happened. I got letters from all over the place, via kindly strangers who found them in the street, after posting about my Postwodehouse project in the found-objects community. So much of that decade is bound up with LJ, for better or worse, and most of the time I felt able to speak here more than I've felt that anywhere else. I'm straight-up grateful for that.

OK, I'm out of here. HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

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O hai

2010-06-05T13:48:03Z

Er yes hello. Customise customise customise.

Is anyone there?

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YAY

2009-05-03T13:47:31Z

I get to be just devi again.

It's odd looking around and seeing all the names, short and snappy and fresh. They're unburdened by numbers, underscores or tactical misspellings, unless their owners have chosen that they be that way. Communities' names are simply the words they're about. The number of this entry only has three digits in it.

Fresh start. Reset. Or maybe a revival of something older. When I was devi before, my online diary was more honest, more open, less choked in caveats and hedging, less embarrassed, than it's been in the years since. Maybe I can get some of that back.

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