I’ve been rereading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a poem I wasn’t really a huge fan of when I first picked it up. I found it overwrought and too much like propoganda for manifesting an American destiny. I still hold those criticisms to be true, but reading it again, I pick up a lot more romanticism of nature and a desire for equality than I did the first time around.
I won’t pretend like Whitman is going to meet current sensibilities for acceptable opinion. But in much of his work, he captures a sense of poetry in nature that the Romantic poets of the period often try to get at but aren’t quite successful. It’s unbound and untamed, written in this messy free-verse, but in that sense approaches closer to the wild forests and seas he so often profiles.
Whitman doesn’t talk much directly of the seasons in Leaves of Grass but he does have a lot to say about the seasons in some of his other poems, like in “Seasons of the Year”:
"O the farmer’s joys!
To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
To plough land in the spring for maize,
To gather apples in the fall.
I watch’d the ploughman plowing,
Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn,
The plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground."
That seems like a pretty positive description of the season. On the other hand, haiku master Matsuo Basho takes a more pensive approach in this 1686 poem:
“The east and the west || the melancholy all one || the autumnal wind.”
I might be more predisposed to the latter, but I can’t help but admire the optimism of the former.
With that in mind, here are some albums I’ve been exploring so far this season:
Intense melancholy permeates this live, piano-only recording. The story goes that Sakamoto had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer the day before, and combined with Covid-era limitations, drew out this solitary feel in the music.
I tend to be a little skeptical of death narratives (with some notable exceptions like Blackstar) and I often get annoyed at how people seem to care about that aspect moreso than the actual music. I do, however, think there is something to the narrative with this release. Compared to Sakamoto’s piano on 1996, the playing here is careful, slower in pace, and emphasizes the space between notes a little more. Wonderful for more easygoing nights.
Certainly more upbeat than Sakamoto, Corelli’s music is regal and refined, even for the middle Baroque period. Much like Bach, this is classical that is easy to listen to and enjoy.
All things considered, I’m a newcomer to the Baroque period; after having devoured large portions of Bach’s canon, this seemed like the next logical step. And you can hear lots of Bach-like passages especially when Corelli digs into polyphony. What I seem to pick up most, though, are the chord progression, which can often feel like “Canon In D” from Johann Pachelbel.
Of the concerti present, no. 6 and the no. 8 “Christmas Concerto” are probably my favorites, though I could just as easily spin the whole thing without much complaint.
Getting off the classical beat and onto something a bit more poppy, this is the latest release of the Kiwi indie rock stalwarts. Like previous albums, this is a solid collection of hooky tunes that stick in your head, but can be surprisingly technical and well-polished, too.
I felt the lyricism of this one, compared to last efforts, to be on a stronger level. Something a little more melancholic, a little more reserved, but I think that introspection has resulted in something a bit more thoughtful than the crassier tunes on their debut, Future Me Hates Me.
There are certainly times for both moods, of course! But at the same time, the emotional punches are just a bit stronger on softer tracks like “Mosquitoes” or “Mother, Pray for Me”, a side of which I hadn’t yet seen so prominently from this band.
One of the things I’ve had to learn this year, maybe even the hard way, is the idea of breaking free from the world. Lately, I’ve had this idea in my head that the path to peace is total disconnection. The more we seek to understand the world, the more depressing and out-of-reach it all seems, right?
I so appreciate the music of Joseph Shabason and his frequent collaborator Nicholas Krgovich because they gently reorient me out of this doom-laden headspace and into a focus of the small and good, the personal and intricate. Not interested in asking too big of questions but instead distilling thoughtful asides about fatherhood and waiting for buses, all wrapped in this ultra-soft yet sophisticated instrumentation. This is ambient pop in the most relaxing sense, and I can clear out my head of worldly worries, even for just a little bit, when I’m listening to them.
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