GY!BE is a tonic

You know, there are some bands that can change your life.. or, at least, will it in ways subconscious; their music is something - somehow - that stirs emotion; your reality changes for a given time and place (and space: we live in three dimensions, you know!). Wake up to the reality of an insightful riot of alternate brain activity! For this, their ability, I love them all the more; drugs don't have any affect on me. ha!

C'est la vie!

In any case, the aforementioned sonic phenomenon is most real for me now, as the expansive and cinematic sounds of Godspeed You! Black Emperor [sic, punctuation] warmly wrap around me as I be, sitting here in the prosaic, and slightly messy, scene of my San Francisco bedroom; a quiet Saturday is my fate. And I flash back to the first time I picked up - and I mean pick up in a most physical sense; I picked up the cardboard containing "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven" (GY!BE's forth studio album) and I remember not knowing what to make of it. That is, their *reputation* preceded them, but only slightly - as I was only just beginning to blossom into the world of (good) music at the time - and a record of seemingly-random sound bites (from a somewhat-familiar, if ghostly, singularity) overlaid with 30-plus minute instrumentals is not for the faint of heart. The year was 2002 and I was at Waterloo Records in Austin on a work trip; it was nighttime for god's sake, but, yet, I wasn't ready to let GY!BE into my life.

But now, I actually own a few GY!BE CDs (and have for a few years), and I play them on occasion. In fact, it seems that they have made a comeback-into-fashion for me, at least in between Kitsune-this and neo-soul-electro-that, of course; yes, GY!BE and my biological rhythms happen to be aligned in this late 2007. In this way, again tonight, I find myself more-than-on-the-edge-of-tears; I am crying. Hmm.. yeah, so this is fine (sorta); I'm not fully comfortable with this sort of thing, but I *am* trying to be, given that I acknowledge the need for emotional release (as a general theory of human existence); I also acknowledge a personal backlog of emotion that may or may not have other outlets. Here, the music is the trigger; yes - the tears also made an appearance a few weeks ago in similar circumstances, GY!BE and all, so something more than coincidence is at work.

In such a situation it's hard to keep typing with a flow unbroken. And further, it's hard to *not* want to fall towards the floor - to *not* be reaching for the teasingly-horizontal floor (gravity, you are a seductress always).. the subconscious goal is that you just want to be (in a way, mathematically-speaking, chaotic). It sounds nice - right? - to just be listening to, to be surrounded by, the mystery language intrinsic in such deep-seeded music, and to let this set of temporally-extended melodies encompass the whole fabrinific realm of your most-immediate and hypotonic existence? Right? Well, ultimately, it's ok (it's ok for me, for me, for me now); the lights are low (they will only get lower); and my eyelids are vaguely transparent.

Tonight, while GY!BE delicately thumps from a set of lovely speakers (so far, so good), the butt of my right hand rubs a short and shallow - so shallow, it's imperceivable! - track, slowly, center-to-right, across my forehead, just above the space between my eyes; the action inadvertently adjusts the angle of my head upon my shoulders; my head is no longer upright (but, thankfully, still connected). And, as I mentioned before, a few tears roll down a man's cheek (mine!) while he sits as a twisted frame of flesh. It seems that this sort of music exposes me to the true workings of the world, and for that, I am grateful.

Godspeed, Godspeed.