2 Records, 2 Beers

This is a repost of an entry from my MySpace blog earlier this year...I'm feeling this today, so I wanted to throw it on here:

2 records, 2 beers
Current mood: thoughtful

I just wish that I could do that every night. Listen to two whole records, drink two beers. I wouldn't be so tired that the beers would make me too sleepy to enjoy the music...I wouldn't have to start so late that I would flake out after the first record, or sooner...

John Coltrane is a beautiful thing, especially once you've been through your day, and your mind has been stretched out enough to handle it. I've always been bewildered by the fact that things that are less conventional are more enjoyable to me at the end of the day. If I try to listen to Coltrane, or Electroacoustic Music, or Sonic Youth even, at the beginning of the day, it doesn't really work out. The beginning of the day is the time for The Beatles, or R.E.M., or They Might Be Giants. Electric Miles Davis, Albert Ayler, Kenneth Gaburo and The Mars Volta are late night indulgences.

I have a conflicted relationship with the night...I desperately want to wade into it, deeply, until I'm up to my neck...I want to sit, engrossed in the music and the awareness of the darkness outside until the final notes of an album fade and I suddenly realize the sun will be up in two hours. I want to deny that the need for sleep even exists. For it doesn't do me any good in my soul to acknowledge said need...It only makes me feel discouraged and sad, because somehow my body has trumped my spirit... and my true being is disturbingly, dishearteningly subservient to my physical one. The intangible elements of my self could go on for days, continually absorbing and interacting with that which gives me life, if my damned eyes didn't begin to feel so tired, and demand that physical rest occur...

Will John Coltrane be there tomorrow? And Aphex Twin, and Frank Zappa, and Guided By Voices? Yes...but tomorrow will contain only a fleeting moment to engage them, and some of them will be left again, for the next day, and then for the next, and the next, and the next...and I will continually say, "Yes, I'm getting to that record. Or getting back to it. Giving it the attention it deserves, even DEMANDS..."

I try not to dwell in sadness because of these realities. And, let's not forget, this is to say nothing of my OWN music, and the neglect that it suffers. That's a whole other story. For another entry. For now, let's just listen.