There are times that our actions lead to things we couldn’t possibly have anticipated. I hate to make it seem like the website’s fresh format is now StereoGMBailout, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately because it’s an amazing metaphor for our values, not in the religious sense, but in the philosophical sense of establishing our priorities and making hard sacrifices to achieve those ends.
My friend Wilson is a dyed in the wool libertarian, and he had a strong stance on this crisis that I was inclined to agree with at first: actions have consequences. In the case of our economy, we’ve made unwise choices, and used a great deal of mathematical trickery to forestall the natural effect of those choices. Whether it’s a dot-com bubble, a housing bubble, a credit bubble, these laws are unavoidable – and no matter how much hot air and fake mass you breathe into it, bubbles burst. GM played by the same doctrine. They lobbied Congress for relaxed standards, and while their rivals were gearing up for the day fuel efficiency was king, a day the entire civilized world saw coming, Detroit was trying to squeeze a little extra blood out of the stone that made them comfortable. Perfectly normal. Such is the nature of business. But when that mistake turns painful, turns fatal, Wilson told me it was critically important that it’s allowed to shake out. If the pain is walled off, like a dam built in haste to block rushing water, how can any real changes be made? Plus, this might not solve the problem so much as shuffle it around, push it on a separate pair of shoulders – and China’s only going to bail us out so many times…
Sound reasoning. Right on. Fuck ‘em. After all, in the wake of a disaster, there’s always someone ready to step up to the plate and rebuild.
Oh, did I mention my friend Wilson is from New Orleans?
Death and rebirth are both a part of the Great Circle of Life, there’s no denying that. But they aren’t symmetrical forces, and the consequences of any large scale action won’t be limited to the few that made it. After all, it isn’t just the greedy rotten CEO or the spoiled union manufacturer that takes a hit. The guy that makes sparkplugs and had fuckall to do with the disaster has to look for something new do to with his life as well, and who says his talents will overlap with whatever’s rebuilt from the ashes of the automobile industry?
Drastic action – drastic inaction even – has consequences. I’m not out to invalidate anyone’s priorities or values, but it’s important, when we stand in front of the world and make a stubborn, heartfelt declaration, that we know exactly what we’re asking for.
I was asked after my last noteworthy post if I’d been listening to the recent tirades of Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson. I had to confess I hadn’t – I consider myself a fan of the band, and I bought their last record the week it was released, but there are only a few groups I bother obsessing over between releases, and PT isn’t one of them. In fact, you’d probably have to describe Steven Wilson as “the Porcupine Tree guy” in conversation before I recognized him.
Steven is working on a new film called Insurgentes. The film is described as :
a portrait of an increasingly rare artist who works with music and media out of love and not for fame and fortune, persisting in making art on his own terms in a world where “throw away” mentality is increasingly becoming the norm.
Insurgentes is also about music and the album as art form, and applying the same aesthetic vision through the writing, performance, production, artwork, lyrics, videos and beyond. The film looks into the issues of creating, packaging and marketing music in an era when iPods, Mp3’s and download culture are changing and eroding perceptions of exactly what an album is supposed to sound and look like.
Press release-y puffery aside, it’s an amazing coincidence. The film won’t be out until next summer (although a trailer is out now), but I imagine it’ll be an expansion of the themes touched on in Fear Of A Blank Planet. I honestly think this is a better medium to address this than a film (a dialogue tends to be less disposable than a lecture after all), but I’m more interested in the unintended consequences. Porcupine Tree has a sizable contingent of younger fans. It’s possible, I suppose, that they were driven wild by the cover of In Absentia, but it just might be equally possible that an enthusiastic fan told them “Hey, check this out!”. I’m not playing Devil’s Advocate here – the experience of an artist is wholly different from that of a listener. The consequences are different.
I assume that if the film is as textured as Mr. Wilson’s music, it’ll seek out solutions that lie between making music undisposable and giving the next Porcupine Tree a buzz. It could be a Hetfeld-esque screed. I haven’t seen the trailer as of this writing; I don’t know. But as a direct result of an article I wrote, I got to find out about a new record, a new film, and an invitation to check out a spiffy limited edition of the record at a friend’s house.
And why yes, it was vinyl. Vinyl is great, it sounds very warm due to the nature of the medium -
Sorry.
The experience of the record is pretty much like my initial rant. While the art itself is nothing special – the creepy/mysterious stuff that’s typical of Porcupine Tree, and some artsy depictions of defaced iPods (so much for subtlety) strewn here and there – the experience of opening it up, unfolding it, staring it down… that stuff has an inherent value that’s worth the however-much-he-paid for it.
I’m not going to go through a track by track analysis of the record or quote lyrics out of context to shoehorn them into my own ambiance – there are plenty of other places to go if you want that. But I will say that this is a record worth owning. I was most impressed by how cohesive the record is – there isn’t a single instrument that dominates the recording, although No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun has a funky picked guitar sound I’m most used to hearing on Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s quirky solo jaunts.
The cohesion isn’t just limited to the instrument balance. There are a lot of transitions in the record – Abandoner is one of the best transitions I’ve heard, using a dark backdrop and a dead sexy acoustic overlay to bridge the expansive opening track with the more urgent Salvaging. But despite the pretty large number of styles that are nodded to in this record, the songs flow together, each of them referencing the song that preceded it in some small way, so that if you don’t normally care for something, you’ll likely “understand” its value to the larger work.
Insurgentes is also similar to Blank Planet, in that it’s a little top loaded with structured songs – the deeper into the record you get, the more ambient and leisurely pace it takes. As I listened, drifting off some in my friend’s living room, I started thinking about that Great Circle Of Life again, the cycle of reinvention, birth, death, the hard choices we make of whether to build on what we have, warts and all, or to scrap it and reach for the stars anew. I wouldn’t say Wilson is at that point yet – in his musical content and personal concerns, there seems a conscious build off the themes of his prior work with Porcupine Tree, even if it’s shifting from a societal focus to something more specific.
But still, it’s something we constantly appraise. It’s the trip all of us have to take, signaling our priorities, whispering and shouting at the world around us, or just poking at the folks nearby. And in that, I might have my answer to that kid who wouldn’t know what a Porcupine Tree was if not for his disposable culture and his Napster equivalent of choice. Whether his actions change wholesale or not, he’s been giving something to think about. He’s been prodded a little. Wherever we start, we have to hope that a little prodding – and the push we’re likely to get in return – brings us closer to the same place than doing nothing at all.
Tags: Fear Of A Blank Planet, In Absentia, Insurgentes, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson