extremophile

barthel:

Sonic Youth - Shadow of a Doubt

Big storm here now, winds and thick droplets of rain and, most importantly, lots of lightning strikes, though not so much thunder.  Sitting home now on the balcony they are muted, hid behind clouds, illuminating banks of vapor like lampshades, but driving home from Nob Hill they were distinct and discrete, clear as glass, unmistakable lines drawn in a dark sky.  I had things on shuffle to see what would feel right.  This seemed good at first, charged and airy, but wasn’t quite right somehow, too controlled, too steady, the dynamics too even and the sonics too sunny.  The above worked, maybe not a perfect match, but close enough: drifting clouds with a whisper of wind beneath, punctuated by moments of distant power and danger.

I’m interested in these things, in figuring out how music can echo and explain the appeal of physical spaces, because we can understand music; music’s appeal has been quantified and theorized carefully and closely, so if we can pick the perfect soundtrack for a moment or vista, we can understand why it holds such wonder.  And to get beyond the banalities, of course, about freedom and authenticity and nature, toward something that connects the view of a landscape from atop a hill and the buildings of lower Manhattan seen from the D train.  Explain to me why a swirling breeze on a warm night feels so full of promise, why storms like this seem to open everything up, to draw your eye further and away from the near horizon.  You could crash from ignoring the yellow lines, but you are almost alone on the road, and so the danger is small; lightning spreads like the crack on an eggshell, opening up the world, letting your path flow out and out, from your circumscribed life to roads and roads and sky.  When you spend a day eyes clamped on minutae in an impossibly dense city, walking outside and seeing a plane cut through a clear blue sky conjures obvious possibilities of escape and expansion.  But why now?  Why does the storm draw me to the balcony here in the relative wilderness, and why does it feel less alone, less desolate than it might otherwise?  Why is everything heightened?  Do the flashes in the distance highlight the distance, or actually create it?  And what does possibility sound like, exactly?

The storm is dying down now, perhaps, and thunderclaps make their presence known as the wind hurls itself audibly into small areas of the street, swirling grandly where no one can notice.  It doesn’t try and push me off; it just puts on a show.  That’s the wind for you.  The lightning still strikes like a duty reluctantly fulfilled, built up and preordained until there was no choice.  It descends not out of abandon or glee, but simple necessity.  It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.