Posted by jordnd on

i’ve been listening to this new james blake recently and don’t know exactly what i’m feeling about it.

1. admiration. it’s pretty amazing how smoothly he’s been able to integrate so many elements of electronica and soul in a way that results in something not only completely different and yet still referential to its ancestry, but also how subtle this blending actually is. in my case, there is the self-evident presence of ‘soul’ in his music, and i don’t in employing this term mean to invoke the slightly racist index of ‘feeling,’ or ‘grit,’ but the actual feeling of listening to soul music. not the artist’s feeling or conviction, but the fact that listening to his music produces in me a clear sense of listening to some new spawn of the soul genre. i’ve tried to explain why exactly this might be the case, and the most i’ve been able to get out of my speculation is the fact that there are a few formal ticks of Blake’s that somehow reference the backbone of r&b from the early 90s up. The harmonies, the tasteful, spare vocal riffs, the vibrato suggesting a tight, muscular throat, all suggestive of jodeci and boyz ii men and, while not present ABUNDANTLY, highly significant and evocative.

and perhaps this is what new soul will look like, beyond the formalistic vocabulary, the sense of taste that drove the greatest soul singers – billie holiday, aretha franklin, sam cooke – an ability to suggest gallons of emotion with the slightest flourishes – and a commitment to building moments within songs gradually. anyway, i see this same gift in adele – who is perhaps the only properly sensitive singer of the past 15 years to meet critical acclaim. that is, the only singer who manages to strike the balance between the hidden/unsaid and the explicit. christina aguilera has held the promise to be such a singer for almost 1.5 decades now, and has without question failed at every turn.

Posted by jordnd on

I’ve found nothing to be as motivating as potential future suck.  That is, the possibility of never going back to school, being stuck here, and/or in some dead-end, meaningless, mind-numbing (keyword:  horribly low-paying) job.  All I want is what everyone else wants:  to be stuck in a dead-end, meaningless, mind-numbing, decently low-paying job.  And without a degree, the prospects of such future employment become more dark and more remote.  Unfortunately, I haven’t done quite enough to ensure the avoidance of this outcome, and the disgust I associate with it is hanging pretty thickly over my head right now.

 

But it’s tough for me, because while I realize that by going back to school I seem to be bettering myself in some way, I’m not sure if the reasons for going are motivated by a value system that’s long-term beneficial.  Let me make it clear, I only want what everyone else wants, but I don’t want to want what EVERYONE else wants, because as far as I see it, most people want horrible things and end up miserable by virtue of their desires.  You could say that actions themselves reveal and are a function of value systems, and I would agree just the same.  And ‘everyone’s is a baggy term.  Regardless, I’m not sure of the social validity of my impulses, specifically in regards to the extent that they reveal the validity of social validit

y.

But abstracting leads nowhere but to the end of thoughts and peace of mind, so  I’d be better off drawing my line of sight to a point of immediacy.  And what’s immediately clear is that without education/return to school I’ll probably have a very hard time leaving this place.  And what’s more immediate is the job I hate, the homelife that is curiously more draining than 20 hours of schoolwork and a superficial social life, etc.

So school wins out.

But I don’t know what to do.  There’s so much to do, and I don’t have the patience for all the bone-picking, the confidence for all the bone-picking.  And I don’t think it’s because I lack desire, I think it’s more that extraneous failures interfere with my ability to properly engage all at-hand tasks.