Deep Voices 136

Revelation

Deep Voices 136 on Spotify
Deep Voices 136 on Apple Music

Hello! Welcome back to Deep Voices! This playlist was originally meant to be sent out around New Year’s, as a renewal playlist. I’ve sent those the past few years, a collection of meditative songs to guide you towards an hour of reflection and resetting as one year wound down and another began. Obviously, that didn’t happen. It’s May now; have you renewed yourself without me?

I’ve been trying. In February, a friend of mine told me he was playing at a rave three blocks to my house. I don’t live in a neighborhood where raves typically happen, so I asked him where. He sent me an address. Google showed it to be an event space across from a parking garage. I’d never noticed it. The party, he said, would be going for 36 hours. I looked at the flyer; DJ Nobu, the headliner, was slated to start at 8 am, an hour after I wake up with my three-year-old. I don’t go out late at night much, but this seemed feasible. So, in the morning, I got up, played with her for 45 minutes and then I walked over.

I opened the door and entered into the brief line. The windows were covered in black plastic, probably cut up industrial trash bags. I told the security guard that I was just coming from watching videos with my daughter. She told me she was a mother of four and had been up all night at the party. She was tired. I went to coat check, where they suggested I also check my hoodie. It was hot upstairs.

I recently got these new shoes I really like, slip on Merrells in an ecru brown. Great for day to day moving about the city, probably light hikes. Solid sole. But not great for a super sweaty queer rave. And it was not just the Merrells; I was not wearing the right anything. Everyone at this event was wearing barely any clothes, and what clothes they did have on were made of little strips of leather, wisps of shirts, hints of underwear. I was wearing corduroy pants. I would have been presumed a NARC if I had made even a smidge of effort to fit in; instead this was just comic mismatch. Well, funny to me. No one else cared.

A part of me wanted them to. But they were busy. I saw people putting drugs in their noses, on their gumlines, pulled out of crumpled Ziploc bags and tiny bottles. I imagined at home, my daughter was having yogurt. I had come to see DJ Nobu, the headliner who went on at 8. I like his music. He played techno that was generally forgettable if entirely serviceable as evidenced by the crowd of generally delighted people. I too started dancing and did not stop for 90 minutes. It was great. Exactly what I needed. At one point, I tried to take a stealth photo of the crowd to memorialize that I was a part of it, but I realized I’d accidentally left the flash on and I rushed to put my hand over the lens, so there’s no evidence I was there.

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I want to note the death of composer and pianist Michael Harrison earlier this month. He died of complications from pancreatic cancer.

I listened to his music, expressive, magical piano pieces, quite a bit in the time after my son died. “Michael Harrison plays piano for me all day, while I attempt to work, to relax, to do the crossword, to love my wife, to see my friends, to find any reason to be grateful,” I wrote here in Deep Voices in 2022, the year after Renzo’s death. That listening continued, as have those attempts.

I read about Harrison’s death sitting at the kitchen counter with my wife and daughter and I was surprised to be totally overcome with grief. Maybe it was for my son as much as it was for him, I honestly couldn’t say, but I found the idea that this man was no longer here to be momentarily unbearable and so I excused myself and went to lie down on my bed. I put on Revelation, largely considered Harrison’s masterpiece. It’s a solo piano composition, slow and stark, yet bewitching. I am not academic enough to be able to explain the theory behind just intonation, the tuning system Harrison and his one-time mentor LaMonte Young, have always adhered to. All I know is it gives the piano a tangerine twang I want to live inside. So I might not be able to understand what it means but I do know what the collision of rigor and passion sounds like. Beauty, beauty so strong it can be difficult to take. An amount of force he yielded delicately.

There’s a video of Harrison performing an abridged version of Revelation I like to listen to some times. It’s filmed from a few different angles, including one that is a close up on his hands. They move slowly, lithely. Watching today, I noticed his wedding ring. He was a real person. Harrison was 67. Renzo was not yet two.

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I have a book coming out in a little less than three months. It’s called Rise Above and it’s about music and art and grief. I’d love if you’d consider preordering it from a seller of your choice. Thank you.