The Age of Enjoyment
I was streaming Bob Mould’s 1989 album “Workbook” this morning while working preparing, in a way, to see him perform most of the record along with a chunk of his new record at Joe’s Pub next week. Songs that have been leaked/previewed from Bob’s new record has gotten mixed to negative reviews on a fan e-mail list that I’ve subscribed to since 1996. Then again, the same could be said for every record he’s put out the entire time I’ve been on said mailing list.
A friend of mine who is only a year or two older than I am insists, absolutely insists that the best era for rock music was in the last 1960’s to mid 1970’s and that no truly great records have been made since then.
I don’t think it’s the artists. I think it’s us.
It occurred to me that while there is still a whole lot of music that I enjoy, even for me it’s been seven years since a record really blew me away emotionally. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved a lot of records that have come out since then, I’ve seen some great shows, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on music and I don’t regret any of it. However, nothing that I have heard for the first time in the past seven years regardless of when it was made (and I’ve listened to a lot of old stuff along with the new) has had that almost drug-like grip on my soul that the great records of my youth had and in some cases continue to have.
I think it’s me.
In 2002 I was 35 years old which is probably the upper age for someone to experience that new-record-love (and by the way, I suspect that people who are into film, books, sports or whatever experience the same thing: the memories of youth and the first time your team wins something big or you see something you think is great are always better). The record in question was Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot which I discovered by streaming it off their website. Musically fascinating, and lyrically, well, it was one of those records where you swear a few of the songs are “about you” when really they’re obviously not but great art enables us to express ourselves through it by bringing our own notions and experiences to it and inserting ourselves into the work. At least that’s what I think though I have practically no formal arts education whatsoever. So actually, I’m probably full of shit but nobody’s still reading this at this point so who cares?
Anyway, I was probably blessed to have made it to 35 before the emotional- connection-shutdown happened. I know a lot of people whose musical taste is frozen where it was at ages 16-22. I’m also blessed to be able to appreciate good music despite not necessarily connecting with it the same way I used to. I can still get great pleasure and be moved emotionally by it, but the experience is less intense. I suspect that happens to everyone and as human beings we want to externalize the blame, put it on the other, the artists, the musical community, the taste to “the kids nowadays” that’s “driving crap into the marketplace” even though a perusal of the Billboard charts from any year of their existence reveals loads of very popular crap in the marketplace at all times.
In a way it’s like the guy who can’t get it up or the girl who can’t get off. They want to blame their partner(s) but it ain’t necessarily so.
I think this all may just be a function of experience. Is anything really enjoyable in life as much fun as it is the first time you experience it? (OK, with the exception of sex.) There’s a cliché in the food world about how the truly great cooking reminds you of home, the first food you ate (this of course assumes you came from a home where someone knew how to cook, of course). The food and travel writer Anthony Bourdain constantly refers to his first oyster eaten right out of the water in France. There must be a finite range of sensory experience and after a certain point nothing really is new anymore and the departure of the “magic” follows the departure of the novelty.
Or maybe it’s a function of evolution. The romantic in me wants to think that maybe it all becomes old hat as a gradual preparation for shuffling off this mortal coil. There’s nothing sadder than dying in youth without experiencing what life has to offer, is there? Humans didn’t live much past what we now call “middle age” for most of our time on the planet as a species so maybe this ennui, this diminished connection with great pleasure is an ancient signal that it’s time to go, except in modern times many of us hang around for several more decades after our sell-by date.
Whatever it is, I’m still wringing away at it, squeezing out all the good I can. It’s an effort, but ultimately it’s worth it for the moments when the magic does reappear, if briefly. As Pete Townshend said a few years ago, “We still drag ourselves up on stage and try to pretend we are who we used to be and sometimes it works.”
A friend of mine who is only a year or two older than I am insists, absolutely insists that the best era for rock music was in the last 1960’s to mid 1970’s and that no truly great records have been made since then.
I don’t think it’s the artists. I think it’s us.
It occurred to me that while there is still a whole lot of music that I enjoy, even for me it’s been seven years since a record really blew me away emotionally. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved a lot of records that have come out since then, I’ve seen some great shows, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on music and I don’t regret any of it. However, nothing that I have heard for the first time in the past seven years regardless of when it was made (and I’ve listened to a lot of old stuff along with the new) has had that almost drug-like grip on my soul that the great records of my youth had and in some cases continue to have.
I think it’s me.
In 2002 I was 35 years old which is probably the upper age for someone to experience that new-record-love (and by the way, I suspect that people who are into film, books, sports or whatever experience the same thing: the memories of youth and the first time your team wins something big or you see something you think is great are always better). The record in question was Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot which I discovered by streaming it off their website. Musically fascinating, and lyrically, well, it was one of those records where you swear a few of the songs are “about you” when really they’re obviously not but great art enables us to express ourselves through it by bringing our own notions and experiences to it and inserting ourselves into the work. At least that’s what I think though I have practically no formal arts education whatsoever. So actually, I’m probably full of shit but nobody’s still reading this at this point so who cares?
Anyway, I was probably blessed to have made it to 35 before the emotional- connection-shutdown happened. I know a lot of people whose musical taste is frozen where it was at ages 16-22. I’m also blessed to be able to appreciate good music despite not necessarily connecting with it the same way I used to. I can still get great pleasure and be moved emotionally by it, but the experience is less intense. I suspect that happens to everyone and as human beings we want to externalize the blame, put it on the other, the artists, the musical community, the taste to “the kids nowadays” that’s “driving crap into the marketplace” even though a perusal of the Billboard charts from any year of their existence reveals loads of very popular crap in the marketplace at all times.
In a way it’s like the guy who can’t get it up or the girl who can’t get off. They want to blame their partner(s) but it ain’t necessarily so.
I think this all may just be a function of experience. Is anything really enjoyable in life as much fun as it is the first time you experience it? (OK, with the exception of sex.) There’s a cliché in the food world about how the truly great cooking reminds you of home, the first food you ate (this of course assumes you came from a home where someone knew how to cook, of course). The food and travel writer Anthony Bourdain constantly refers to his first oyster eaten right out of the water in France. There must be a finite range of sensory experience and after a certain point nothing really is new anymore and the departure of the “magic” follows the departure of the novelty.
Or maybe it’s a function of evolution. The romantic in me wants to think that maybe it all becomes old hat as a gradual preparation for shuffling off this mortal coil. There’s nothing sadder than dying in youth without experiencing what life has to offer, is there? Humans didn’t live much past what we now call “middle age” for most of our time on the planet as a species so maybe this ennui, this diminished connection with great pleasure is an ancient signal that it’s time to go, except in modern times many of us hang around for several more decades after our sell-by date.
Whatever it is, I’m still wringing away at it, squeezing out all the good I can. It’s an effort, but ultimately it’s worth it for the moments when the magic does reappear, if briefly. As Pete Townshend said a few years ago, “We still drag ourselves up on stage and try to pretend we are who we used to be and sometimes it works.”
Comments
I never really thought about it in just that way, but I think you nailed it. Maybe we can convince a crooner or two to sing happy thoughts about balding middle aged white guys thereby delaying the onset of "emotional- connection-shutdown."
Until then there's always Country. Or Fraggles.