loveMELT Newsletter #032: I wanna make a song for you
I love music. I love hearing music. Perhaps this love was passed down to me. A memory I enjoy hearing my mom share is her listening to Ray Charles with my grandfather. They’d put the record on and lie on the floor, listening.
However, I didn’t realize how strong my love for music was until I was in college, working in the fashion lab making garments, hearing songs in my earbuds with scissors cutting, and the rhythm of machines sewing in the background. I could be in a trance for hours.
Moving around over the years, I’ve noticed my pattern of befriending musicians. I flock to them for their sound. Or maybe it’s because we flock to the same places to work. Or maybe, we commiserate in the same places when we’re not working. It’s likely all of the above.
The genres of music I listen to continue to evolve as I do. Several years ago, determined to get to the source, I obtained a keyboard and started taking lessons. Living in today’$ world, however, doesn’t give much room for hobbies, especially if you’re already pursuing some facet of creativity. So the keyboard patiently sits above my kitchen cabinets in its case, the case collecting dust. But I refuse to give it away because, mark my words, I will learn.
This brings me to the starting point of my next body of work, how I’ll begin to dig into the roots of sound and music. I’m not certain exactly where I’m going, but what I do or make will introduce an aspect of sound, sound-making, or music-making from an interdisciplinary art perspective. My last body of work started in an open, exploratory manner and became what I just completed, ‘Babygirl–A Rite of Passage’. I hope you’ll join me in this new endeavor of research, exploration, making, and sharing.
To get things rolling, I’ve got some books to read. I’m mentioning this because if you have recommendations, thoughts, etc. on books, music, textiles, art, concepts, and so forth to check out, please share and discuss with me! I’m all ears.
For the moment, I’m starting with:
A Book of Noises, Notes on the Auraculous by Caspar Henderson
The Story of Music: From Babylon to Beatles: How Music Has Shaped Civilization by Howard Goodall
Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty by Ben Ratliff
Only 100 pages into A Book of Noises and it’s exploding with inspiration and jumping-off points for me to run with (but I’m still in sponge mode). For instance, did you all know that when NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, they sent old-style long-play records made of gold-plated copper, engineered to last more than a billion years, on board? They carry the sounds of Earth. Both craft will continue to the stars indefinitely, however, by the mid-2020s…aka now, they will run out of power and fall silent. They will only ‘speak’ again in the improbable event that an intelligent entity finds one or both and plays the records they carry. You can learn more about it here, NASA – The Golden Record
Additionally, the book put me on to artist, Signe Lidén, who installed a twenty-eight-meter canvas – a giant version of the vibration-sensitive membrane of a microphone – on the shore of an island in northern Norway and recorded the noises above and below water as part of her project, The Tidal Sense. It’s a beautiful, pulsating, inspiring piece. I also enjoyed watching the text-based video that correlates to the installation.
I’ve got more digging to do until we engage again. I’ve signed off my newsletter this way before but I’m saying it again adding this… I don’t know how to make music but…
I wanna make a song for you so you move to the love I feel for you
Sadie