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| April 11th, 2006 by Jonathan Fletcher (Permalink) Add Comments |
Of course, its nothing less than obsessional to spend every waking moment engaged in listening to sound sculpted both deliberately and ‘naturally’, or maybe accidentally is more pertinent. But whether glorious or terrible, love is obsession and if you’re happy to be reading Independent Culture then you’re already lost in your illness and have given in. Submission however, is not always a bad thing. Illness is against the norm but the norm is more sick than anything else.
As a writer for various music publications of one sort or another where the use of the word I is tantamount to terrorism, I am going to use this opportunity to briefly speak about what I will be using this window for and also about the experiment that I have decided to undertake through the liberating ideal behind this site. Just this once.
So, this is Against Nature, my column I guess, and a space that I am utterly indebted to Independent Culture for providing. The title comes from Huysman’s book of the same name and tells of an enfeebled dandy who is so exhausted with the pursuit of conventional sensuality that he locks himself away and builds a world to his own liking. It’s not autobiographical by the way, I do get out.
Too much UK (where I am based) music journalism is an endless round of gigging and ligging, promoting friends, never leaving London and utterly obsessed with writing in some godawful gonzo style that should have gone out the window decades ago. Still, after over 15 years of utterly crucial underground (moving overground and back again) scenes like rave, jungle and grime, the press still fall back on The Rock Band that will save us (from what, I really have no idea- Bird Flu maybe- is that why we have Doeherty?). 15 years. This is as insane as it is ignorant. Also, we need another opinion like we need the plague. Independent Culture is bravely seeking to counteract this, to attempt to promote the marginal and the extraordinary away from the highly subjective. I don’t think this will be easy. Media overload traps us and we become cliché machines. I’m as guilty as anybody. But here then, is a chance and an opportunity. I am ready to dive right in.
Against Nature is my experiment- a way of writing about music, of music writing the writer through the never ending rhizomatic circuit of reactions illuminated in this moment by my tapping away that you are reading now. The circuit is never complete, you are as much a part of it as me and we’re both essential and irrelevant. As is the music, which is an element like all others- music writing is not the record but a response. As an experiment, I am seeking (and in a moment of honesty, for myself as much as anything else) to find a way of linguistically recording the reaction between listener and the sounds of my choosing. It will change, and develop. It will be inconsistent as things work and others don’t. It could go embarrassingly wrong. And hopefully it will. Error leads to insight which leads to new creativity, hacking away at the ego of the author.
Against Nature will be my own particular written response to sound or issues that concern me as a music journalist, as a writer. Whatever provokes will always be of positive intent- a signpost or a clue to something that exudes a little magic or a curse on something that blocks, withholds and represses.
The criteria for the column will be simply whatever sound has generated enough of a spark to inspire typing. It’s a gleefully exuberantly open door. I will not be exclusive of genre, format (a Rave 12” may have more vitality than U2’s entire output), duration, age (as Faust are more alive, more contemporary than Kaiser Chiefs). I will not be particularly concerned about clarifying whether or not I even like the sound in question (there is a recommendation section for that). I will not anticipate my audience (which has probably dwindled to zero already) - I don’t know who you are and I do not care (in the best possible way- no offence intended). Most importantly, I refuse to recognise the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow. This is a facile and utterly archaic notion that normally upholds a Descartean or Platonic split between mind and body. Concerns of the intellect are often viewed as both separate from and better than music that seeks to make you shake your ass. Equally, seriousness of intent will not be ignored through a bullshit fear of ‘pretension’. It will not be subjective in the conventional sense of the word (i.e., MY opinion- I have no desire to ‘think’) and it is also not my grand idea for what music journalism should be. Wanting to do something different does not mean that I believe that everybody else should do it.
This is a quest and an inquiry outside of myself and into chemistry. Reactions. The excitement in being provided an opportunity outside of the standard conventions of music journalism is a spark for creative ambition and play. As opposed to power.
That will do for now, for today. In my wildest dreams, I hope I can provide a spark or at least allow for an entertaining journey. And in my begging your attention in the future, at least be assured of my absolute sincerity and my over-riding belief in the power of art to break the straitjacket of self and control.
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