Deep Voices #16
I can't go on, etc etc
Deep Voices #16 on Apple Music
One treatment for regulating binge eating is to go out and buy as much of your problem foods as possible. Eat as much of it as you want. It sounds counterintuitive, but it shows that you have the power to regulate. At some point you’ll finish and there will be more food. While you may think you’re eating nonstop, you actually can and do stop. It’s impossible to eat forever. Bottomlessness isn’t real. It’s a good way to think, not only about cookies, but about sadness. Both cookies and depression have an ending.
That’s been something I’ve tried my best to remind myself over the past few months. On top of the pandemic, my family has had some bad luck, and it’s been hard to separate the personal and the global, to separate disasters, natural or otherwise. Everything feels like another log on the fire. I was laid off back in May, which has made for some hard months. When there are so many problems in the world, life can feel insurmountable. But my job largely consisted of solving problems, imagining a perfect situation and walking backwards from there. I wasn’t solving the California fires, but I was using logic to making a product better and some people happier. Often that productiveness has been enough to keep at bay a more universal despair, which I can be prone to. Without utilizing that slice of my brain, I’ve felt particularly useless. But I was feeling good on Friday. My wife and I were having a conversation about our savings, which are in good shape. “The rainy day hasn’t even arrived,” I said. I was not intending to tempt fate, rather to point out that we’re doing okay even during a difficult time. She glared at me—playfully, but still a glare. “Watch how you put that!” she said, a very good point. A few hours later, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
The prevailing sentiment, amongst friends and family, seemed to simply be “fuck.” What else is there to say? When the weight of the world is on your shoulders sometimes that’s reason enough to push against it. Sometimes the path in front of you is a hill that looks so Sisyphean you just go back to bed.
Not quite a boulder, but I strapped my 20-pound son on me on Saturday and took a walk in the woods with my wife and our friend. Walking and talking, I expressed some existential doubt about Trump’s possible reelection. Both of them put progress through a longer lens, looking backwards and forwards. It helped. I can find it difficult to imagine a way out. I’m sensitive, and always feel pain or pleasure deeply. This is usually a blessing and a source of pride, but this year I’ve wished for a bit more numbness. That was a mistake. Flatlining doesn’t really do anyone much good, and, like pain or pleasure, it too has an end. A lack of feeling is only a postponement of the inevitable feeling. Might as well let it in.
Another bit of practical advice I’ve received that is not cookie related is don’t try to fix everything, that it’s better to see where your skills are and use those for good. Earlier this year, stunned first by COVID and then the murder of George Floyd, I inventoried my skills and they turned out to be…making playlists. Not exactly practical. So I thought I’d do my best to turn that into money and made custom playlists for people who donated to charitable causes. I’d like to do a version of that again here. If you’ve been enjoying these playlists, I’d ask that you donate to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s not old enough to be president yet, but she will be, in a few years, after enough time has passed. As this stupid year has proved, we may not have yet hit bottom, but we’ve also certainly not yet reached the top.
Playlist notes:
I think the work of both saxophonist Matana Roberts and bass player Joshua Abrams can be hit or miss. Regardless of my personal taste for their individual aesthetic choices, it’s undeniable both are extraordinarily talented. The two made the 2002 album Sticks and Stones with champion drummer Chad Taylor and is pretty much sublime. Somewhere in the songwriting are hints at the experimental tendencies of both Roberts and Abrams, but they still largely color within the lines. I often think thinking outside the box while still staying within the box is more interesting than throwing the rules out the window entirely. A sweet and lyrical jazz album well worth listening to. I’ve included one of its peppier songs, “Son of Slaves,” but the slower songs are really dreamy.
One of the ways I like finding new music is with the very basic “Fans Also Like” tab on Spotify. It’s most interesting when looking at less popular artists, as the results are usually more idiosyncratic. One name who has continually popped up for me is Unknown Mobile. I have resisted listening for months, largely out of petulance. But I finally listened, and found his music to be quite nice. It’s very on the nose (too on the nose?) for my interests, with digital bird sounds, light sweeps of guitar, percussion that sounds made from bamboo. Has, by chance, anyone else had Unknown Mobile forced on them by the algorithm? Or their own Unknown Mobile?
Something I’ve noticed about the “Fans Also Like” tab is that it is very male heavy. I don’t know know exactly why that is, probably some combination of entrenched societal sexism and an algorithm. Computers’ best instincts can never be better than our worst. Alexa, play Adele Sebastian.
Seriously though, play Adele Sebastian. Her only album, 1981’s minimally soulful jazz outing Desert Fairy Princess, is a gorgeous mix of meditative flute and her restrained vocals. It mercifully never breaks out into anything too funky, staying organic and close to the ground, like something recorded 15 years earlier (or 30 years later). The bass is prominent and when Sebastian sings over the instrument it’s incantatory. That’s most obvious and striking on the album’s closing track, the relatively brief “Prayer for the People,” which felt like an appropriate note to end this week’s mix. Sebastian of kidney failure died at 27 two years after the album’s release. RIP.