luka
Well-known member
this is a companion thread to 'western movies' because obscure things are all too often obscure for good reason. sometimes obvious things are the best things. i was listening to one of dave godin's compilations over breakfast this morning and it reminded me,nothing beats soul music, nothing. when i was a young boy i used to swoon to sam cooke and aretha franklin, even as a tiny child i knew this music was magical, it reached a level nothing else could, something direct and real, when i was an adolescent nothing reached my troubled heart like soul music and now as a burnt out, spiritually bankrupt, bored with life 20something, it still is the only music to really do it for me. no other music is so emotionally articulate. the heart is simple. the human animal is a simple animal. at the deepest level, the heart simply longs, and soul is the sound of that longing. thats why its the best music ever made. it strips back the layers. the protective layers. the armoured heart. it exposes the naked, wormlike heart. and dsiplays it, holds it up, says look, the worm, the heartworm, the level at which we're all the same, our common humanity, the heartworm. thats real music that commnicates what it is to be human, doesn't describe, presents, here it is, this is what its like. to be a plaything of the fates, desire's helpless puppet, suffering love and loss, hope and despair, overwhelmed by forces the mind has no control over, things deeper, older and stronger than the concsious mind, frightening forces, like the sea is frightening, the dark, turbulent sea, so deep and strong and unknowable, sam cooke, jackie wilson, bobby bland, solomon burke, irma thomas, artha franklin, the temptations, smokey robinson, otis reading, al green, clarence carter, arthur conley, the sound of the sublime. you can keep your bleepy electro wank and your european avant garde composers and free improv noise, your japanese out rock and all the rest of it, gimmie 3 minutes of the sublime, with horns!