In the days before recorded music, I wonder if nobles ever instructed their chamber musicians to play their latest favorite song like twenty times in a row.
Fun fact: Yes. Yes, they did.
Nobles were the only ones that really listened to music and to hear it you had to actually go to a concert. There wasn’t a such thing as background music yet, and whenever there was music people would listen intently. If a piece was particularly stirring, they would give a standing ovation and they would have to play the same piece over again. I suppose this would happen more than a few times so, maybe not twenty times in a row, but close.
Honestly, what better thing did they have to do with their lives anyway?
What about a terrible song over and over but with another song played once in the middle
“Bard! I wish thee to play ‘What is newe, O Pussy Catte’ twenty times! But, hark! After the seventh play, play ONE ‘It bee notte unusual’”
It’s like my number one favorite thing wrapped in my number three favorite thing.
John Darnielle is a human male and American musician who was born in Indiana.
Alone or in collaboration with others, he has been known as the Mountain Goats since 1991.
He grew up in Central California, and has lived in many states, but now lives in North Carolina with his wife and child and at least one cat that I have observed.
I visited his home in the year 2011. I took off my shoes when I came in the door because that is my habit. No one made me do it.
John Darnielle’s house is not rockstar huge, nor rockstar glamorous. It does not have a home theater or rolfing center. It’s modest.
There is an office packed with shelves reflecting his preoccupations: pulp horror and philosophy and religious study. John Darnielle is fascinated with both death metal and the Holy Bible and speaks eloquently of the dark magic and elegance and grace of both.
Now I am going to tell you that, in the study by the stairs, I stepped in a little bit of cat vomit.
I can report that John Darnielle was not embarrassed. Because he knows it is in a cat’s nature to vomit, and because he saw an opportunity for kindness. He loaned me some socks, and they were argyle, warm from the dryer and very soft.
The house has a basement, which John Darnielle describes as “awesome.”
The basement is not particularly awesome. (I have seen some awesome basements.) It has some drums and guitars in it but otherwise is a fairly typical basement of a modest, middle-class home. Normal.
It is my impression that this may be why John Darnielle considers his basement to be awesome, for such normality was not necessarily going to be his fate.
Inside the basement is a box of a limited-edition, alternate vinyl version of his album The Sunset Tree, which came out in 2005. Each one is hand-painted by John: white sleeve traced with naïve snakes and swirls of bright color.
John Darnielle told me that he made these when things were going well in his career, but he was still not convinced he was going to make it…when he still thought he might have to go back to psychiatric nursing, which is what he did when he started writing and recording songs.
Those first recordings, you may have read, were made on a simple cassette recorder. And those tapes of just him plus guitar are full of hiss and urgency. They were made for one reason. Like these hand-painted LPs, even if all else failed, they were going to get out there, no matter what.
He has written almost 600 songs now, and some of them are very sad, dealing with hard drugs and tragic ends, hurting yourself and others, sicknesses of both body and brain, off-brand alcohols. They are told in beautiful, unnerving, specific detail, because John Darnielle is a very good writer, and also some of them are just true stories about his own life.
But many have noted that John Darnielle seems often very happy, and his demeanor on stage is almost exclusively unhaunted, ecstatic.
Anyone who reads his Twitter feed knows he takes great delight in his delights: vegan cooking, fat babies, hockey, the beautiful alchemy of Chemex coffee, Anonymous 4, playing music for people, loaning out socks when the time comes, basements.
These are the consolations; and if some of his songs suggest that there are real hells on earth, other songs remind that the heavens are equally close at hand.
(Sometimes they are even the same songs.)
It is my impression that this is the ecstasy John Darnielle is feeling: that thrill of having survived, escaped for even a second to enjoy those small transcendent delights, and to sing of them.
And I can report that if you are standing in the basement with John Darnielle and wondering how he survived this far, to stand happy in this heavenly basement, you may look down at the hand-painted album of songs you are holding and realize the answer is in your hand.
Like that album, TRANSCENDENTAL YOUTH is full of songs about people who madly, stupidly, blessedly won’t stop surviving, no matter who gives up on them.
I can report that it is a very good album and has many more instruments on it than those early tapes, including Peter Hughes on bass, Jon Wurster on drums, and, for the first time, a full horn section. And all of this makes a very joyous noise.
Everything I have written here is true, to the best of my knowledge.
ways i have tricked people into thinking i am competent:
bought a really nice looking fountain pen
that sounds like a joke but fountain pens are cheap as shit and when you use one people look at you like you’re a fucking wizard
this hero 901 cost me $3 on ebay and i don’t know why people assume that this is a pen for intelligent people but they do
it works better when i am using a nice notebook and not the avengers notebook that makes it look like the hulk is grabbing my sweet pen
i write in code which for some reason leads everyone to assume that i am some kind of da vinci motherfucker, instead of the reality, which is that i am writing about dicks and don’t want anyone to know
it looks like i am constantly taking notes on everything which is both intimidating and inaccurate, just the way i like it
i bought a usb clicker/laser pointer for $11 and now it seems like i’ve got this shit on lock, like i am so pro at giving presentations i even own accessories
holding a clicker makes you seem at least 10% more like you know what you’re talking about i’m pretty sure
i check the weekly freebies on creativemarket every monday so now i have a huge folder of pro-looking website themes and powerpoint templates and fill-in-the-blank resumes (also a lot of autumnal clipart and watercolor flowers and script fonts but that is less relevant)
i bought a ceramic coffee mug at world market years ago and it makes me look like a productive coffee-drinker because no one knows it’s full of hot cocoa
i don’t know why drinking coffee makes you look busy it just does even though i’m pretty sure it statistically reduces productivity
bonus: not only does no one know i’m just drinking Depression Chocolate but they think i am being Environmentally Conscious rather than Poor As Shit
extra bonus: i can take a sip whenever it looks like someone is going to ask a question and then they ask someone else
i almost never have to answer questions and i leave the room a lot because i have to pee constantly so double extra bonus
“That’s a very good question, and one that deserves an in-depth answer, so if you’d like to leave me your card I’d be happy to discuss it with you later one-on-one” aka “how DARE you suggest i waste everyone’s time answering this question right now” aka “lmfao i have no fucking clue what you just said please let me secretly google that okay”
bonus: now it seems like you are a sophisticated grownup who assumes everyone has A Card and if they have to settle for writing their email on a scrap of paper you can feel smug about it even though in your heart you know that you are no better
i’ve got anxiety and poor impulse control and anxiety about my poor impulse control so i generally say jack shit about shit and this constant silence is often misinterpreted as aloof observation
no one knows that my air of mystery is actually a bad case of the shy and i am too shy to correct them so it works out
when i’m on my laptop and i don’t want anyone to notice how much i’m dicking around i turn the brightness way down so they can’t snoop without being obvious
at least one window of notepad++ with some random html page or css stylesheet in it makes randos assume you are some kind of genius doing some genius shit, unless they are CS major randos, in which case i guess find an intimidating looking excel spreadsheet and hope for the best
Verylisa 