Claudine &
The Demo Versions by Aldus Santos

It's superbly unattractive, I know, but I think modern critics should pour their energies on only a handful of artists. Life's work, sort of deal. And I don't mean stop covering up-and-comers and Johnny-come- latelys altogether. Not at all, because that would be both unfortunate and irresponsible. What I mean is we've got to nurture our own personal devotions. Like our mothers and aunts and their choice saints. Find your saint, dog that saint for as long as you can, and give them hell.

…We should be on a gung-ho quest to quench that thirst, sure, but we also need to make sure that we stay thirsty. Or that we remain in a place where that thirst is everything.

In other words: The thirst and its quenching should be of equal import.

What I'm saying, in so many words, is that scholarship requires focus.

And I know the internet gives us the delusion that we can know all of ita harmless fiction that wouldn't rob anyone of sleep -but, really, we can't possibly love all of it. Despite our appetites, we only have time and energy for some of the chocolate.

But if heartbreak were soap, I feel we've been getting sold the same characterles, sculpted white rock for eons now.

And heartbreak can't always be front-facing, off-the- shelf stuff.

Don't you want your pain to be, like, "special" soap? The kind which, when a house guest uses your shower, would prompt spirited inquiries?

"Where. Did. You. Get. This?"

That's why sitting through a metal record (or an entire live metal set) is always a great privilege; it's like witnessing some special alchemy unfold. Suspension of disbelief, of course, is requisite. "Surely nobody can be this furious over anything?" But you know that's not true, because every day people get duped, hearts get broken, homes get burgled. Surrendering to metal is volunteering for a pummeling. And that takes courage.

It's a real cest la vie moment, but also telling of our musical meterstick as a people. We love our belters, our bend-over-backwards divas, our Freddies and Ar's. It is as though singers were athletes, and we choose our favorites based on some physiological ideal.

Wouldnt you want the voice of your prophesier a little more personal? More human? Being sung to by a pitch- perfect, near-infallible talent-show singer is like being told your fate by an always-on voiceover guy.

But because music consumption is as personal as dating, no hyper-logical set of rubrics, no amount of technical obsessivenesS, can pluck a listener away from making terrible choices under terrific pretenses.

I never kill myself over the exclusive consumption of material in a vacuum, because part of the metrics, I realize, should be whether a piece cuts through the constant pipe-in whirr of life. And by "cut" I don't mean "interrupt," but more like how audio people use it: the ability to rise above the clutter, like a flower piercing through concrete.

Another odd thing: that if you're "critical"whether the kind or unkind, uhm, kind you should be able to come up with something better.

Between kindred spirits there's more than sparks. There's exhilaration, sure. But also, ironically, bloodcurdling terror: like Narcissus in reverse, aghast at discovering the self in a body other than their own. This, I imagine, is how bands go through their days: the fire of sameness, dowsed by petty (and very much fluid) differences. sparks.

Boredom is a privilege.

Long and short of it.

An affair you look back on with fondness, given the drudgery of adulthood and responsibility.

But what doesn't get said often enough (and maybe should, especially now) is that not everyone has the luxury of boredom, or has reminiscences tied to inactivity, simply because not everyone can afford to take breaks.

Else they'd starve to death.

This is why songs that depict the immaculate impatience of youth-bored from being bored, tired of being tired- will always be pornographic to me.

It was Marcel Proust who first touted the contrarian admonition "Never meet your heroes," but we all know that guy never went anywhere, let alone met anyone.

Talk of Pepe Smith is talk of rock 'n' roll, which is to say, talk of everyone and of no one at all. His great tragedy, I think, is being local rock's banner name: a name that carries so much symbolic weight the actual work cannot possibly lift on its brittle knees.

In other words, he's relegated to thumbnail instead of picture, to quick shorthand rather than hearty prose.

But an audience weaned on hollow mythology will never zero in on what an artist presents, just what he represent.

Pepe was no Whitmanesque captain.

He was a beautiful man whose public legend was a private prison. A vision reduced to caricature, very much able but diminished to fable.

Cohesion doesn't come easy. We can split hairs and say consistency is first cousins with monotony, and we can have that conversation run like drunken ping-pong all through the night.

But monotony is also discipline: keeping to your lane on the highway, only falling out on occasion to overtake, then rejoining the lane with delight.

I remember reading something Matt Berninger said about the early days of The National, and how their entry to the New York pantheon happened, essentially, through a side door "while no one was looking.

And why not?

Not every new act sets out to set fire to the building. Not everyone is wired to rewire. In truth it's counter- survival to be something other than another face in the crowd.

When you make people mix tapes (or, these days, playlists) the generosity extends beyond music. What you are giving, really, is the knowledge of being thought of: of being read and prodded and critiqued in song. In other words, the gift of rabid attention. You're telling the recipient that, for one reason or another, you're aware of their state (or one of their many vacillating states) and that you care enough to either throw it back to him or her like a comnpact mirror, or, otherwise, reverse hat sorry state through music.

In the era of scheduled posts, timeline edits, and incessant remasters, Bob's hesitation to commit to a single, definitive version of a work-his desire to challenge the very idea of something being "released," as though having something "out" is a form of surrender-is a powerful reminder to prioritize doing over finishing.

We're still very close friends today, and when he speaks to me about the music I make, he drops the past participle and takes the present progressive. Unlike some of of the sorry apes from high school the ones who semi- regularly accost you with charming pleasantries like "Oh, you're still doing The Band Thing"-he knows music is beyond something one does, or worse, gets distracted by.

I like the idea of earworm and how the only way to oust it is through counter-earworm: something equally potent nudging it off its seat. That's kind of like h vaccines work: by inoculating the body with the very thing it wishes to dispel.

The Nobel laureate Louise Glück-writing in the introduction to her new book American Originalitymade the distinction between the original and the unique. The former, andI am paraphrasing her here, works to displace existing systems, while the latter is a "dead end" content with its perceived outsideness. Being original, my favorite poet says, is replicable (and, consequently, its practitioners replaceable).

When people you love die, the songs they like become de facto theme music, not quite unlike wrestlers entrance tracks. I'm being facetious but let's face it: All music criticism goes out the window once a song tacks itself onto somebody who's gone ahead. Picture that person breaking in, nicking the knick-knacks from your bedside, and leaving, never to be reached again except through séance or willed remembering.

Finding new things to love through old ears is a triumph of fortitude. Embracing new songs, after all, is like welcoming new possibilities of damage, injury, and heartbreak.