So a few months ago, I received a page suggestion on Facebook. It was from a friend, a teacher at my sons' school, whose own son had a new band. I didn't know anything about them had never met Ben at that time, but of course had to go check it out. I clicked 'Like' for Silence by the Stereo, and it started me down the path of a very special little journey.
As samples and snippets would be posted, I liked what I heard. I suggested it to some more friends. I became Facebook friends with Jay A. Hansen (Jay A.H.) and Ben Leathers (The Professor). As a tentative release date was revealed for their debut EP, Recurring Themes, I thought, "Why not interview them?"
Ben was in Atlanta and was willing to meet for coffee and talk. We had a great conversation, and I really learned a lot about him and Jay and SBS and their music. Jay and I chatted by phone a few days later and clicked immediately. It was another fantastic hour of delving into what makes Silence by the Stereo. I listened to the mostly-finished tracks and liked it even more. I wrote a nice little article, which is currently in submission for publication, so I can't share it here yet.
What I can tell you is that it's a remarkable story. Jay A.H. went to L.A. Sound Gallery to record the third of his HuCK EP's. Ben was working at LASG. They bonded quickly, and Jay asked Ben to play on the EP, then later to play at the first show of the HuCk tour in January 2010. After that show at the Mint, they went with another musician to a house party in the Hollywood Hills and wrote three tracks that night.
That was the last time the two met face-to-face, or even spoke to each other. All of the work was done while Jay was in New York and Ben was in L.A. or Atlanta. Everything was passed via MP3 and worked out on a Mac. Regular text, email, Facebook and Twitter messages. Not one single phone call.
Now they have about 20 songs in process, including five finished ones that became the Recurring Themes EP, expectedt on iTunes in January 2011. You can sample it at ReverbNation or download the EP at Bandcamp.
Here are my impressions of the five tracks that make up the EP. My interpretations could be entirely different than Jay or Ben's, and they are welcome and encouraged to jump into the conversation. I hope you'll go check them out and listen for yourself.
Track 1 - Strange Daze
Through strange daze, peculiar ways/I'm just tryin' to make the best out of these phases/Strangers playing unusual games,/I'm just tryin' to survive between their folded pages
High energy but dark. It's all about the struggle with overcoming what bogs you down in yourself (addiction, depression, alienation) while simultaneously trying to fit into the world around you. You still have to find a way to push through, to be yourself, and not play the crazy games, because they helped get you into your hole in the first place.
Track 2 - Mus-i-c
Strangers look stranger/When they adore your way/In observation, yeah it's peculiar to picture the pose they place you in
Mellow, a little legato and unexpectedly melancholy. Jay told me he'd seen a pretty girl on the subway and started to think about what it must like to be her. Everyone has expectations of what it means to (seemingly) have everything, even though those preconceptions and judgments can be completely false and misleading. He goes on to sing about the beautiful girl who is his (real life) muse. Really, it's a sweet little love song.
Track 3 - Fancy Free Lovin' Kind
We got that fancy free lovin' kind/You rock that body/Make me blow my mind/Back to that fancy free lovin' kind/Make you remember why you're mine
Dancey and fun. Electronica. He's trying to get and keep a girl he's had before, maybe still has if they can both deal. If nothing else, they can dance and get naked and see if it can all be okay.
Track 4 - Compass
Now you see I got a broken soul/How'm I suppose to fix it?/It's been that way from the start/Now you can see my ignorance
Urban and soulful. He's pleading for her to not leave. It's raw and touching, how he screams to the world for her, how he knows how amazing she is and how he'll do anything to get her to stay. This is my favorite track on the EP. I love it. I would marry it if I could.
Track 5 - Do you believe?
Do you believe it's meant to be?/Living such a clear life and now I can breathe/Do you believe in mystery?/Where beauty is all I see around me
Happy and melodic. When you get past the shit that brings you down, life is beautiful. Focus on the self and making it better from the inside, rather than look to external reinforcement. Even when it's a struggle, the inner peace at the end is worth it.
There's something in these five tracks that resonated with me immediately. (I told Jay recently that he's like 27-year-old male version of me.) There's a lot of talent in these two, and Recurring Themes makes me want to hear more. I'm excited that they'll be releasing a patient's guide to laxadazical persuasions, their first LP, later this year. I'm already ready for more.
I had a conversation a few days ago with a great friend about my ass. Specifically, about how I hate my ass, along with a lot of other parts of my body. Too much of it, absolutely. I know in my head that I have battled hormonal imbalance and metabolic issues for years, that Hashimoto's thyroiditis did a number on me for nearly six years before it was gotten under control, and that I spent the summer of 2010 steroided-up and barely moving because of two ruptured lumbar discs.
Finally, by the first of October, I'd had enough of feeling like crap all the time. I realized that refined, added sugar was causing all kinds of problems for me. So I quit, cold turkey, just like when I quit smoking in 1999. It was hard as hell for the first few days, but eventually the sugar worked its way out of my system. I also started working out a lot. Not obsessively, mind you, but at least five days a week. For Christmas, I got a gym membership, and I started with a personal trainer two days a week. I've lost thirty pounds and feel unbelievably better, at least physically, than I did three months ago. I know I'm healthier and happier.
But I still hate my ass.
So, of course, I go looking to Alice for some explanation and inspiration. I love all different versions of Alice, but I went back to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland, which I think is a remarkably beautiful adaptation and extension of the Lewis Carroll stories. She's also the burgeoning adult Alice, and it creeps me out to think of a 7- or 9-year-old Alice in the same terms of body image consciousness, though I'm well aware that it's already an issue for some little girls of that age.
Burton's 19-year-old Alice is first seen in the carriage with her mother, on the way to Lady Ascot's garden party (where the unremarkable and boring Hamish will propose to her). Her mother is fussing at her because she isn't wearing a corset or stockings, because her hair won't stay pinned back. Helen Kingsleigh is appalled at what everyone else will think of Alice not being properly dressed.
"Who's to say what is proper?" Alice said, with that maddening streak of impossible logic she'd inherited from her father. "What if it was agreed that 'proper' was wearing a codfish on your head? Would you wear it?"
Helen closed her eyes. "Alice."
"To me a corset is like a codfish," Alice said.
At the garden party Lady Ascot immediately looks Alice up and down, noticing her fashion faux pas. Alice notices that everyone who is immaculately dressed looks horribly bored and acts generally bored, as well. Alice's sister, Margaret, reminds her that her pretty face won't last forever, that she needs a man to marry her to be fulfilled. (Unbeknownst to Margaret, of course, her own husband is kissing another woman in the bushes.) Alice panics at the thought of marrying Hamish, and she chases after the White Rabbit, right down the hole.
As soon as she lands, her issues with growing and shrinking begin. While she's trying to adjust her size to get through the door, she hears the Dormouse and the White Rabbit, watching her from the other side, discussing whether or not she looks like she's the right or wrong Alice. She manages to shrink herself to the proper size for the door and steps into Underland, dragging her skirts behind her.
The Dormouse, the White Rabbit, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and even the flowers with human faces argue over whether or not she's the right Alice. The White Rabbit insists he spent weeks looking for her and that this is the right one, but no one is convinced, even Absolem, until she gets to the tea party:
But the man, who was called the Mad Hatter, had another reaction entirely. At the sight of Alice, he bolted upright. His whole being seemed to brighten; even his clothes perked up. Transfixed, he moved toward her, stepping directly up onto and over the table, as that was the shortest route to reach her. Alice shiver a little as he came closer, staring at her intently. There was something in his face that made her anxious for him. She knew she couldn't possibly deserve the delighted look he was giving her.
"It's you," said the Mad Hatter. He reached toward her golden hair, then pulled his hand back before touching her.
"No, it's not," the Dormouse snapped. "McTwisp brought us the wrong Alice."
The Mad Hatter shook his head. "It's absolutely Alice! You're absolutely Alice! I'd know you anywhere. I'd know him anywhere."
When Stayne the Knave interrupts the party in search of the Alice who's rumored to be in Underland, the Mad Hatter quickly has her drink the tea to shrink herself. He hides her in a teapot until Stayne leaves. Before he releases her to a moment of safety, the Hatter makes a new dress, "a miniature ensemble for Alice out of the tea cozy, a doily, and a swatch of her old dress." Alice finds herself more comfortable in the dress made by a mad man from a land of strange impossibilities, than in the dress her mother had chosen for her to wear to her own surprise engagement party.
She eventually makes her way to the palace of Iracebeth, the Red Queen, who has an enormous head, both literally and figuratively. The Red Queen surrounds herself with courtiers who adorn themselves with falsely large ears and noses and stomachs so they will be admired and liked by the Queen. They do their best to be like her, although they (like everyone else) plainly loathe her. In her hurried attempt to grow to a normal size, Alice eats too much cake and is suddenly an enormous girl, naked before the court of the Red Queen--you know, the place where everyone is overly obsessed with how they look. The Red Queen immediately adores Alice, alias Um, because of her largeness, and tells her, "You'll be my new favorite."
Alice goes through some adventures, a bit of this and a lot of that, before getting back to her normal size at the castle of the White Queen, Mirana. Alice finally proves to herself and everyone else that she is the absolute right Alice when she dons the armor of the champion of the White Queen, to face her own doubts and slay the Jabberwocky. In the end, Alice chooses to return to her regular world, rather than stay in Underland.
Alice found herself clinging to the edge of a rabbit hole. She pulled herself up and out of the hole. Grass was tangled in her long hair, and her clothes were wrinkled and torn. She shook her head, trying to remember what had happened. How odd. Had she fallen asleep?
She stood and brushed off her skirts.
She returns to the garden party a disheveled mess, looking "as if she'd been through a great battle."
"You look a frightful mess," Lady Ascot sniffed.
Alice turned to Hamish. Her adventures in Underland were gone from her memory, but the self-confidence remained. And there was a lot she needed to say.
Alice goes on to tell everyone why she can't be who or what they demand that she be. She realizes that to be the right Alice doesn't mean she fulfill anyone else's expectations; she simply has look at her true, inner self and be that person on the outside.
I had a blogging rant just a few days ago about how I'm all about this Verisimilitude of Self. I really don't care if you like me or not, though of course it feels great to be liked. Even though I am confident in my talents and abilities, admittedly with days when I question myself, I am often plagued by self doubt surrounding my body images issues. How I see myself, my ass, will often change how I approach the world around me. More often than not, I assume that it affects how other people see me.
I try to remind myself of all the amazing things this body has done for me. It has brought me through thirty-eight years, all the good and bad. It has borne and nursed two amazing children and stayed strong enough to begin the process of raising those two amazing young men. It has laughed and loved and loathed and gone from point A to point ME, and I should be thankful for that.
Even when I'm told that I'm beautiful or fabulous or full of muchness, I can't help but doubt the veracity of those claims when I look in the mirror. I see so many flaws, a mountain of imperfections, that it can be staggering. If there is a niggling little fear that I have, it's that I'm not good enough because of my body. It's been an issue since my teens, certainly, though no one knew that metabolic issues were combined with my general Amazonian build until my mid-20's. By that point, I believed everything I'd heard from everyone else. That I just wasn't good enough because I had a big ass.
Then, sometimes, I see the Mad Hatter looking at me, and I get a little anxious. It seems impossible that he could be so delighted that I'm absolutely me. There is always, always the lingering doubt in my own mind that I am the right Alice, that I really do need the corset and the stockings to make people accept me.
It's times like this when I need Absolem to blow a little smoke in my face and remind me that I ought to know who I am.
So I'm thinking a lot about the holidays, the year in review, predictions for the next few months, etc., this morning. I'm neither a psychoanalyst ([remove inappropriate comment]) nor a psychic, though I don't know if I'd make a better living being either of those things. I am going to wax and wane poetic and pathetic for a few minutes, so please feel free to sway along.
It's been a long year. (I know, no longer than any other, and it's not even quite finished yet.) The boys have grown (duh!), and it's always bittersweet to see that growth. They've become more capable, more independent, which means a little more distance between them and Mom. They're spectacular, really, and I remind myself every day that the goal is to raise two men, not to keep two precious little boys. It's a hard ass job, though. No one tells you that when you decide to have a baby.
I spent a lot of this year giving away my time and energy, almost to the point of exhaustion. I did some fantastic fundraising and volunteer time. Of course it's always very rewarding, but there were times when I certainly felt overwhelmed by it all. When I was on a high from the reciprocal energy of achievement, it was great. It caught up with me and made me realize how little I was doing for myself. I will continue on in 2011, but certainly not at the same rate I did it in 2010. If other people don't like it, that's their issue, not mine. I will assist in ways my heart leads me to help, not because I feel bullied into participation.
As a family, we spent a great deal of this year battling injuries and a few illnesses. No major illness, thankfully!, but enough injuries to last a lifetime. There's something wrong about having all of your me time at physical therapy or in the pre-op room for spinal injections. Those annoying physical difficulties eventually escalated to such a point that I began to push back. I'm finally starting to feel healthy again, though I know I have a long road ahead of me.
I started to write again this year. I had put that side of me away for a very, very long time. I don't begrudge that time and distance, as I know it was necessary to the plan of my life. All of those things that interceded have led me to this time and place to begin again, and I'm okay with that. I'm finding a lot of inspiration and some difficulties to overcome, all of which are making me work that much harder.
I feel like I'm on a great road trip, driving straight into the sunrise, with so much blinding light ahead of me, warming my face as I squint toward the future. I can't quite hear the playlist for this road trip, but I know it includes some Adam Taylor, some Silence by the Stereo, and a lot of the Gracious Few. Those were my great, immersive discoveries of 2010, and I'm carrying them forward with me into the new year. I'm hoping to pick up some new musical loves along the way; I'm sure you'll hear all about them as I go.
Obviously I don't know what's coming in 2011, but I'm looking forward to it in a way I haven't for a long time. I'm a little apprehensive, certainly, about what's ahead for me, for the family, but I'm also joyous and giddy in my excitement of newness. My muchness seems almost palpable. I don't remember a time in recent memory when I felt so ready to jump feet first into my own life. I'm actively seeking a rabbit hole to explore, and I plan to Futterwacken all the way down.
The wonderful Jay A. Hansen posted a Jack Kerouac quote today, as his Facebook status:
The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time. The ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars….
This started me thinking about madness. And if I start thinking about madness, I'm going to think of Alice in Wonderland. And if I think of Alice, I'm going to write a blog post....
Alice deals a lot with madness in Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton, 2010). She overhears Lord Ascot accuse her father, Charles of having lost his senses for wanting to open trade routes to the East. When Alice recounts her recurring dream of falling down a dark hole into a world filled with strange, unexpected creatures, she asks Charles Kingsleigh if he thinks she's "gone round the bend."
Her father felt her forehead, looking just like their family doctor when he was checking a fever. He made the doctor's "bad news" face and said, "I'm afraid so." Alice's eyes widened, but he went on. "You're mad. Bonkers. Off your head. But I'll tell you a secret...all the best people are."
Of course, Alice believes her own self to be mad when she first sees, and then chases after, the watch-checking White Rabbit at the garden party. But even as she falls down the rabbit hole, surrounded by strange and curious things, she doesn't question her own madness; she simply assumes it's another dream. Having dreamed of Wonderland/Underland for so long, much of what she perceives as being a dream state seems perfectly acceptable, almost reasonable, to Alice. She comments only that it is "curiouser and curiouser", and not quite as familiar as she had imagined.
The concept of madness, as such, doesn't come back into the story until the Cheshire Cat takes Alice to the home of the March Hare, for the tea party with the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter. The latter character, of course, is presumed to be "mad as a hatter" because of mercury poisoning common to his profession. While he's off-kilter, certainly, he is predominantly lucid in his actions and his interpretations of Alice and Underland.
When Stayne, the Knave of Hearts, intrudes on the tea party in search of Alice (conveniently shrunken and hidden on a teapot), he calls the Hare, the Dormouse, and the Hatter is favorite trio of lunatics. In an effort to protect the possibly-right-Alice, the threesome do their best to oblige the Knave's misconceptions, throwing teapots and singing ridiculous songs. The Knave growls at them that they're all mad and leaves. Alice is safe thanks to the feigned lunacy of her new friends. The Mad Hatter agrees to take tiny, apprehensive Alice to the White Queen, transporting her by way of his hat:
She couldn't help thinking the Knave was right about these three. They were all quite mad.
And yet...she had no one else. Mad or not, it seemed she was stuck with them.
The Mad Hatter is inadvertently captured by the Red Queen's minions, and Alice infiltrates the castle of Iracebeth to rescue her friend. Twice we see the Hatter maniacal and in a tizzy of self-recrimination at the thought of creating chapeaux for the horrid woman whose Jabberwocky wiped out his entire Hightopp clan of milliners. When he's at his seemingly maddest, it is inevitably Alice who recognizes it and pulls him back from the brink, usually to save him from a terrible fate.
Alice escapes, but the Hatter is once again imprisoned by the Red Queen, sentenced to beheading at dawn. The Hatter sits in his cell, unresponsive and staring "blindly into space." When the Knave and his guards taunt the Hatter and his accomplices, the Hatter is described as having madness in his eyes as he seizes Stayne, doing his best to choke the life out of him. The Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter hatch a plan to fake the beheading and escape to join Alice at the White Queen's castle.
The Hatter looked bemused. "You still believe this is a dream? Do you?"
"Of course. This has all come from my own mind."
The Hatter thought about that for a moment. "Which would mean that I'm not real."
"I'm afraid so," said Alice, shaking her head. "You're just a figment of my imagination. I would dream up someone who's half mad."
"Yes, yes. But you would have to be half mad to dream me up," the Hatter observed.
"I must be, then," Alice said.
The maddest of characters in Alice in Wonderland are the ones who are most in touch with what really matters, while the truly foolish are the ones who make and enforce the rules. The Hatter is mad because of the horrible injustices perpetrated against himself and all of Underland. He often seems lost in lunacy when he's actually most rational, faking madness to save an ally from certain doom.
And if they are each half mad, does that make them whole?
In the end, Alice finds a way to mesh her dreams with her own, beautiful madness. She recognizes that there is wonder in being mad, in finding the driving force that ultimately fuels her dreams.
Maybe Kerouac had some of the same madness in mind when he wrote On the Road. The people he loves are the uninhibited, thoughtful risk-takers, who sublimate their own madness to create their own dreams. Kind of like Alice.
There's a thin line between creativity and madness, and it might just be found down the rabbit hole.
