My Weird Music

 

 

Okay. Let’s get weird.

So far I’ve presented portions of Weird Music in two pieces for Talking Writing—“What If You’re Not Shakespeare or Jay Z?” and “Music Talk: Digital Losses”—but this “Digital Losses” video is the first time I’ve been able to give a sense of what the final product will really be.

When I started in 2009, a number of factors motivated me to embark on this large-scale project about why people pursue art. I moved away from sampling to creating my own spoken narrative with original music. I began collecting interviews for journalism purposes, interviewing the artists and musicians I was most interested in.

I was a reviews editor for the underground music and culture magazine Rockpile, until it stopped publishing in 2006. In the interim, I became increasingly frustrated with trying to freelance by pitching stories to editors or writing brief reviews. Not only was I not landing very much work, but the work I did manage to secure was artistically unfulfilling and negligible in terms of income.

Eventually, I felt pulled back to doing music journalism, but wanted to do it on my terms. I figured if I could pursue my own artistic project while also creating features for other publications, then I’d be back in the game without selling my artistic soul. Surprisingly, it worked. I ended up publishing the interviews with Matmos, Joe Meno, XBXRX, and Greg Jamie in Skyscraper Magazine—and I got my foot in the door at Talking Writing with the first printed piece that compiled all the interviews. Down the line, I became a reviews editor for Skyscraper and production editor for TW.

In its entirety, Weird Music, which I’ve now performed or presented in multiple small venues, begins with a discussion of Stephen King’s assertion in his 2000 book On Writing that “all the arts depend on telepathy.” In many of my interviews, I asked people about their reaction to that idea and whether they thought there was a telepathic element to creating art. The second section tackles the psychological differences between performing music versus recording it; the third, “Digital Losses,” focuses on the paradigm shift from physical to digital media.

But King’s quote about the arts and telepathy remains a main spark for all the weird music, video, and words I’ve collaged together. Today—September 21, 2020—is King’s 73rd birthday. It’s also 90210 without the zeros. In tribute, I’ve peppered this video with references to both, as I've done with most of my artistic work.

My love of King goes back to childhood and has endured. My earnest appreciation of Beverly Hills, 90210 stems from ironically watching the show throughout college and then finding more poignancy in many episodes than was ever intended. They are obsessions that filter my view of life.

 

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Art Information

Edited versions of the following images appear in this video: 

• “Etech05: Jeff” and “Etech05: Jeff” © James Duncan Davidson; Creative Commons license.
• “President Obama Reacts to Jay Carney's Beard” © Official White House Photo by Pete Souza; public domain.
• ”Boston Kooler!” © Bill Walsh; Creative Commons license.
• “System 6 Boot on a Macintosh Plus” © Geoff Kratz; Creative Commons license.

For more information about and credit lines for the musicians interviewed here, see “Music Talk: Digital Losses” (Talking Writing, Fall 2019).