|
Feb 13
The Message This Decade Is Trying to Send Us
What's Missing From Our World and Age, and Where it Comes From
I've been thinking a lot. About what I want to talk about in 2023. What I think I want to…hold on. This is going to be hard to put into words, so let me begin with a story.
I was in the studio last week. The week before, one of my favorite singers in the world, who I'm privileged to work with, had laid down down some jaw-dropping vocals on a song of mine. The engineer and I looked at each other as she sang, and our mouths literally hit the floor. Sublime. So back I want, to mix the song, with help from the same engineer.
Now, this is where things get tricky. As a music producer, it's hard to find a singer who…gets you. You can find singers who'll hit the notes perfectly, and yet…it's all wrong. The feeling's missing. The intonation's wrong, the expression isn't there, the…emotion's not there. I'd given this song to another singer — it's disco, the great love of my life apart from my wife, dog, and of course you, my friends — and she'd sent back vocals that made my disco groove…somehow…sound…like a fisherman's shanty. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but imagine a shanty over a disco beat and you can imagine the chuckles that ensued when I played…this…for people.
So there I was. Studio. Killer vocals. I'd laid down guitars, basslines, drums, the whole nine yards. It's disco, right? Congas, bongos, soaring strings, pew-pews. And this engineer just wasn't getting it. Everytime I'd say, hey, let's make it slam, he'd…do the opposite. I'd say, let's make those congas bounce, let's make those wah-wah guitars cut, let's make the bassline drive…he'd…grimace…and frown…and scratch his head…and do the opposite. After a while, I gave up. I let him do his thing. He didn't deliver a bad mix. It just wasn't…full of the right feeling.
I wondered. Why was this? What had gone wrong, exactly? Like I said, this is where things get tricky. You have to, as musicians say, "vibe" with the people you work with. That means something like: get each other on an emotional level. What are we trying to do with this…piece of art? Song, film, book? What is it's point? The point of my music, like all disco, is really, really simple. Big, Goopy, Intense Love. Pure Love. True Love. The real thing. I mean…that's what it was literally about. It's why the dancefloor was invented, but I'll come back to that, and I don't just mean "getting it on."
So. This guy. We didn't get each other. And I realized why. He's what me and the kid sis and the wife refer to as a sad guy. You know the type. Just…morose. For the usual reasons. They can't get the girl. It's usually a girl, because being a sad guy of this kind is more a straight thing than a gay one. And being unable to get the girl, well, a whole lot of them fall down the rabbit hole of misogyny, which goes through the wastelands of inceldom, and ends up at full on fascism. I'm not saying this guy was like that — he wasn't. At all. He was a nice dude. I like him. But he didn't understand the mission. Which was to make people feel that moment. Big Love. When it hits you, makes your heart go electric, turns your heart to thunder, sets your body on fire.
That moment. It's what my music is all about. It's what all disco is about. That feeling hits you…and you can't resist it. You have to get up off your ass and dance. Not because you want to seduce the next person, though hats off if you do, you get your thing on, but because the feeling has hit you and you need to share it, be part of it, express it, enact it.
Big love.
Now, this is going to make absolutely no sense to some people. That's OK. I think I know the kind of person: they've read too many books, and haven't spent enough time on dance floors. They think about the world analytically, instead of experiencing it emotionally. Perfectly alright, though I'd say there's a balance to be struck there, and if you haven't experienced the feeling I'm talking about…then you're missing out.
The guy. He'd experienced the feeling. He was in Big Love, you see, but the girl…well…she didn't love him back, at least that was what he thought. And so something really funny was going on in the studio. I didn't need an engineer, first, I needed Sigmund Freud, because this guy was enacting a kind of psychic revenge. Having been denied Big Love, he was trying to take it out of my music, so that nobody else could have it either. That's why every time we got close to that feeling…he'd fight it…strip it right out…kill the mix from really soaring and hitting that point. I get it. There's nothing more painful than thinking hey, I'll never have Big Love — so why should anybody else have it, either?
Maybe, like I do, I'm reading too much into all this. But I don't think so. I remember vividly how he was scratching his head and how uncomfortable it made him feel every time the music would build up to…the precise instant…the exact point…that'd make people get off their chairs and dance…because they felt that huge wave of emotion…and then he'd literally undo it. LOL. What do you do in moments like that? Some people get bossy, demanding, irritated, even angry. Me? I was interested, in a way, to see where his emotions would lead him. The answer to that question was where I suspected: my little song didn't have Big Love left in it.
That's OK. I fixed it, so don't cry for me. Why do I tell you this random story? For a very simple reason.
Take a hard look around the world. What's missing from it? If you ask me, it's pretty simple. Big Love. Now, that's going to make a certain kind of person — a lot of people, maybe — roll their eyes. That's OK. Because I don't mean it in the simplistic way you might think I do.
Let's go back to disco for a second. Why was it invented? It's still the template for all of dance music, and these days, it's making a huge comeback. Hate it if you like, but still, understand it. The reason was simple: it was a music of liberation. Gay people and Black people and other minorities and gay minorities needed safe havens. They gathered together at nightclubs and in lofts. And this was the music they played. That's why disco's so upbeat — but not quite happy, more full of bittersweet heartbreak. That, too, is why, it's been complex and subtle enough to survive to this very day, and make the comeback it's making.
Big Love. So there were a bunch of people who society hated. Abused. Made their existence in public illegal. And they invented this thing that changed the world. Go ahead and tell me that disco didn't, and I'll point you to every single cheesy EDM festival in the world, none of which would exist today if it wasn't for Larry Levan then. These misfits, these outcasts, they created this amazing, beautiful, world-changing thing.
But why did it do that? Well, what's the feeling that kids try to get these days when they go to clubs and festivals? It's pretty simple. Big Love. It's not just getting wrecked off your face — you can do that anywhere, after all. They're after the experience that people like me had — luckily — in those days when clubbing was being born. And people like me? We discovered clubs because we had to. I was being beaten within an inch of my life at school, which is why I had to escape. No choice. I found, at the ripe old age of, LOL, thirteen, my haven for the rest of my youth: the nightclub. The gay community took me in under its wing and protected me fiercely. They could sense it. I was abused and hunted just like them. I wasn't gay. It didn't matter. They took me in like an orphan, and there I was, every single night, school be damned. All around me was this incredible, beautiful new world. Strobe lights and glitter and lasers and…
Big Love.
You see, I felt the power of it, I think. Not for the first time, but in a new way. Was it really possible? That a group of people could just…accept…each other? Could just…be…with each other? And be as free…as this? To the point that they'd take in a little kid like me — everybody knew I had the world's fakest fake ID, LOL — and pour me a very, very weak rum and coke and let me just sit there, because they knew this was probably the only place in the world, right now, that I'd be safe? It hit me like lightning. It filled me with a kind of quicksilver feeling. Not just that I was free and safe here, but that this possibility existed at all.
Because to that point, my world was…hard. I could barely survive it. I was suicidal that year, 13. I'd been a straight A student, blah blah, they'd published me in the Chicago Tribune when I was five years old (go ahead, hit the microfiche), etcetera. Just one problem. Because I was a sensitive, creative kid — not a competitive, macho, overachiever, they hated me. They, meaning, so far as my kid brain could tell, everyone. Kids, teachers who'd laugh and turn a blind eye to my abuse, neighbors who'd watch from their windows and happily sip their coffees, watching it all go down. Was this what the world really was? I wondered. You see, the beatings and insults and so forth I could take. It was the possibility that this was the only world there was…
That I couldn't. That was the thought that was making so depressed that I was becoming suicidal. Because I wasn't like that. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I wanted to do the opposite, but I didn't know what to call that — yet — how to express it, put it into words, precisely because in my little world, nobody seemed to be doing anything but…hating. People like me.
And so I though to my little self, hey, maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I'm the only one who's like this. They all seem to be so completely different. They like to hurt and abuse people, just for fun, for a feeling of superiority, so they feel better about themselves. I'm not like that. Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Not in the sense of weakness, as they'd put it, but in the sense of: how come nobody else around me seems to be anything like me, not interested in hate, violence, brutality, spite, finding someone else to pull down and stamp on, but the very opposite? And "the opposite," like I said, was so scarce in my little world — a small suburb — that I didn't even know how to find words for it.
I didn't need words. That summer, my world exploded into mirror balls and lightbeams. It was never the same again. The words didn't matter anymore. What was the opposite of being hated, of being the kind of person that needed to beat and abuse someone just to feel secure about themselves, of being the kind of person that'd follow in that person's footsteps, of being the neighbor who'd turn away in silence? It was…all this. This world that I'd escaped to, which was full of people who were interested in nothing that was part of that. That just wanted the precise opposite of it.
I sat there, night after night, sipping my incredibly watered down rum and coke, the bartender keeping a gruff, careful eye on me, and just…thought about it. What was…what was it that drew us all here? Was it just…dancing? After a time, I began to understand — I was really young, and it took at least a year — that these were the days of AIDS, and this group of people, this community, was hated and hunted — a feeling I'd had a tiny taste of. So…was it safety…that drew us here. A year went by, and there I was sitting, on my little barstool, furrowing my brow, the little kid at the club. And I realized something, I think, that haunts me to this day. Despite the hell that they were going through — Diamanda Galas would famously sing about it as a "Plague Mass" — this community was determined to live. To the very last breath. And not give an inch. Not one millimeter, one thought, one breath. To hate. To violence, to brutality, to ignorance, despair.
Big Love.
I think I changed on that night, too. I could never compromise after that, and live a life that felt like a lie. I understood something it'd take me decades to put into words, and when I say it people, they laugh, and then they frown. Is this guy serious?
We were there because we were lovers. Not in the trite sense of the word. We wanted to get it on. Nope. Like I said, I'm not gay, and also, I was a kid. But what drew us all to that place was that we were lovers. We weren't, if you want to put in a way that's too simple, haters. We weren't interested, you see, in any of the stuff that had been directed at us. Violence, abuse, scorn, contempt, rage, and so forth. That made us different. We understood that that ended nowhere. We wanted to live as free of all that as possible.
Because that is what the truest freedom is.
I want to say that again, because some people will think is trite — and yet I think it's far more subtle and complex than that. So much so it's taken me decades to really grasp it.
We wanted to live free of the poisons of hate, violence, brutality, fear, rage — we'd understood, already, being on the receiving end, that they were poisonous, even, especially to the giver — because that is what true freedom is. We understood how poisonous they were even to the giver — and we never, ever wanted to be part of that kind of world, life, milieu. It wasn't just that we wanted safety from hate and violence and shame and guilt — we didn't want to create them, either. We didn't just not want to drink the poison — we wanted never to have it anywhere near us, never to give it, deliver it, bottle it up, store it away.
We wanted an end to all that, because that is what true freedom is.
Have you guessed the point of my little story? This is where our world is. The strange and troubled place it's in. All those old poisons are growing again. You can see them right out in the open. There's the GOP, trumpeting hate against everyone from women to minorities. There's Britain, where refugees are firebombed, and the government winks and nods. On and on it goes. The return of fascism and hatred to the world is a hallmark of our age.
And there we are. The sane and thoughtful ones. Wondering: how do we fight all this? What do we do about it?
You see, the problem, if you ask me, with our side — the side of civilization, sanity, democracy — isn't that it's gone soft. It's that it's not soft enough. Fierce with softness, in fact. The Big Love is missing. I can crack open any number of publications, from liberal to left, and I'll read tons upon tons of analysis, theory, dry calculation, rote analysis. But what is missing is the Big Love. Who is out there saying, strongly, forcefully, mightily, that it is wrong — flat out wrong — to hate? To be a bigot? To be prejudiced? To think of others as subhumans and women as inferiors?
There are a few voices, but that's the point. Our side is missing the Big Love. I know that will mystify some of you, and the point is that you're overthinking it. It's not a strategy. It's not a sixteen-part multi-pronged grandmaster chess move. It's just the most basic human thing of all.
It's just saying to people "you belong," you matter, you count, you are loved. This is for you. I am here for you. These hands are always yours. This door is always open to you. We are a community. We are here not just to take from each other — which is what the right wants to do — but to give to each other. So I will begin, in whatever small way I can. I see you. I give you dignity, peace, truth, equality. I regard you as a human being and respect you. You are part of me, and I am part of you.
Think of how little that actually happens in our societies. How often we walk by people we see every single day, and pretend not to recognize. How we make small talk and gloss over really seeing someone, letting them know they're loved. How we turn a blind eye when we should giving people support and recognition and care. That isn't Big Love.
Nor is the idea that analysis and calculation are going to fix our problems. What are they analyzing and calculating? Without Big Love, not much. Not enough, at any rate. As an economist, I can tell you that we should have legions upon legions of PhD students analyzing how much growth is possible on a planet whose extinction rate is accelerating exponentially. We have literally none. Because my field doesn't believe in Big Love. It believes in conquest, competition, indifference, individualism, and greed. And all those have poisoned it. It is now blind to truth, beauty, and goodness.
See my point? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Like I said, it's hard to put into words. I could've said a thousand words to the engineer at the studio, who was frowning over my track. Or I could've just said, "Where's the Big Love?" It wouldn't have mattered. He wasn't ready to get it yet. Not emotionally there yet.
That's where we are a species, too. We're not ready to give the world, the planet, life on it, democracy, each other, Big Love. We're numbly, dumbly clamoring for a foothold on the collapsing ladder of the industrial age, trying to claw the next guy down.
And yet you know and I know that doing that…and not giving any of the above Big Love…well…not a whole lot is going to make it. I don't just meant that in an abstract way. I mean it in a real one. As in resources, money, rights, a chance, room to exist, space, freedom, in the real sense, as in liberation from the old poisons.
So there you have it. That's my mission for this year. Big Love. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, well, don't ask me. Look around, my friend. Ask yourself. What kind of person do you want to be? Do you really want to join this tawdry race to the bottom of the bottom that our age seems to be made of? Don't you think we should get serious again, about really liberating ourselves, the world, humanity, life on this planet, from hate, violence, greed, impoverishment, collapse, degeneration, implosion, extinction? There's a reason the fascists love the apocalypse. But there's no good reason the rest of us are so afraid of Big Love.
Just cynicism, really, because in this day and age, to believe in something like that…well, it's dangerous. It means you might change something. You might end up changing yourself.
Me? I think that you're better and nobler than you know. Because this is what each of us longs for, deep in our most secret souls. And yet, as with all things made of beauty and truth, it's about discovering this tiny, glittering piece of eternity within you, for only then can you give it, share it, celebrate it, say, here it is, see. That's why we were all there, all those nights, so long ago. We were too young to be able to say it, to know it, to grasp it. We discovered a tiny piece of eternity. None of us has ever forgotten. You feel it too, you just might now know it. Because no heart has ever beaten yet that didn't long to pulse with Big Love.
Umair
February 2023
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment