The "Album," The Settled Dust That Rose...

My mother recently sent me a box from North Syracuse, NY full of miscellaneous memorabilia: a couple of bad books, a Very Distribution mail-order catalog from 1995 with a place to order a cassette demo for my hardcore band, two Ziploc bags full of concert tickets, two picture ids from high school and a manila envelope stuffed with words/poems/thoughts printed from either a typewriter or from a dot matrix printer.  Outside the manila envelope was written, The Westwood Diaries.  I have no idea what that means. I recall neither the place nor the dot matrix printer. 

            I have yet to read any of the writings. 

I don’t know if they were meant to be read by me again.  I’d like to view them as some sort of catharsis for a time and place that was full of Upstate New York humidity and darker days. 

I don’t know if they were ever meant for publication.  For me to write them was one thing, but for me to write them and then have even my closest friends read them would mean more of me would be exposed. Exposure frightens me.

And now there is The Settled Dust That Rose.  Much like The Westwood Diaries, I was not sure if The Settled Dust That Rose was some sort of catharsis for me once Sandusky was definitely only me.  TSDTR may have been meant to be recorded by me, listened to once by me and then stored away in my closet next to other burned discs of bands like October Smiled Back and Infusion and Julie Dante.  In one sense, I would Henry Darger it.   Keep it for myself and be proud of what I had done down in my basement morning after morning, cup of coffee after cup of coffee.

Obviously I decided against that.  Why?  I could not tell you.  Is it hubris? Is it an innate quest to remain twenty years old?  Or is it simply proof that I was once on this earth creating and not simply existing.  I tend to side with the latter often enough, perhaps from recycling thoughts of the one poem by Ronsard that struck a chord within me one afternoon in French class:

                Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,


Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,


Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :


Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,


Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,


Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille réveillant,


Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.

Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os :


Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos :


Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.


Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :


Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

— Sonnets pour Hélène, 1587

I’ll never know why you’re listening to this and maybe it doesn’t matter why you either chose to listen to this or chose not to.  I do know that I’ve listened…

Download Available: Music For The Horse Stealing Season...

While entering gently into old age, my aspirations no longer seem far stretched and unobtainable.  They appear simple, direct and self-centered.  During two weeks in late 2009, while the snow fell outside and one dog nestled under the covers and the other buried himself in the snow, I entered the expanse, the cement prairie, the wilderness that is Wild Wild Wyandot with the aspirations to make something for me and me alone.  I wanted to simply make music that I could listen to while I read.   Like language, music must be at once simple and complex.  Sounds have to drift in and fade out much in the same a short poignant Carver-like sentence is followed by the thoughts of a character carried out over an entire page in Proust-like vastness.  Commas are Casios.  Dialogue is the subtle connection between this pedal and that pedal. Conflicts are the noises that shouldn’t be there, but are.   

And for some works there should be no periods.  Something read once and then read again becomes something entirely new.  Something heard once and listened to again becomes more complex, more dangerous. Time and location play a part in this: where you read this, when you listened to that.  I leave that all up to you.  Whether driving while a loved one sleeps in the passenger seat through miles and miles of apparent nothing (though you can sense its beauty) or whether you sit next to a river and watch a mighty ocean going vessel drift easily out of sight.  Home is good too. Keep a book nearby and listen carefully.

            Thanks for reading.  Thanks for listening. 

http://sandusky.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-the-horse-stealing-season