On my morning walk, I decided to make a right instead of a left. I took the dirt path into the woods. The sun hadn't come up yet, but there was enough light that I could see where I was going, for the most part. The day was new. I got so many spiderwebs in my face that I started to walk down the path with my arms up like I was carrying an invisible medicine ball in front of my face. Still, besides that—beauty, serenity, tranquility.
Not silence, though, since I had my headphones in. Listening for the first time to some old band that the assholes at Record Club are making me listen to on this otherwise beautiful Sunday morning. Some trippy shit, even though I can't understand what they are saying.
I walk deeper into the woods, and finally come across a creek. It's flowing north to south, so I follow it. After a few minutes, I take a look to my left, and stop short. There are plenty of geese in these parts, but I've never seen this before—a crane. Stunningly white, long neck that's bent at a precarious angle to drink the water, long thin legs that reach the rocky bottom of the creek bed, evidently a great wingspan, though I wouldn't know while he's at rest. I'm not sure I've ever seen a crane in person before, and certainly not in the wild like this. I creep closer.
Then, suddenly, the crane turns toward me. Our eyes lock. His maw opens, and—horrifying, irrational, inconceivable—it begins to speak to me:
"Let me tell you your future, human. You will spend the rest of the week trying to figure out the '70s prog rock band Invisible. You will grapple with El jardín de los presentes, put up a valiant effort, and lose. Your patience will be tested. You'll occasionally think you got there, but then realize that you are at a dead end. You will, ultimately, be glad that the week is over.
"But you will try. You have courage. You will diligently map out your thoughts on an email to yourself while you listen. You take your task as music-critic-by-hobby seriously. You'll probably first hear notes of Pink Floyd, but then you'll cross it out with dark heavy ink, because your ear hears 'prog rock' and immediately moves to what it already knows. You don't know this. But you will.
"You'll try to document Invisible's victories. You'll eventually learn to like how the album seems to come right out at you from the get-go. There's no build up in 'El anillo del Capitán Beto.' You'll think that maybe it sounds like you're interrupting an album already in progress. You'll learn how to hold on tight as the album stops and starts and slows and speeds, as it whips around the corner in 7/8 time and then ejects you into the clouds. You might get motion sickness; you'll only dry heave, and the resulting tears in your eyes could be from pain or joy.
"You will wonder how maybe you've misinterpreted the idea of 'prog rock' when you hear 'Los libros de la buena memoria.' You might think this doesn't sound like rock at all. You might even picture yourself tucked away in some corner café in some foreign country listening to a jazz singer. This isn't the prog rock you know. And you'll realize, in time, that it's just a preamble. The cool sounds of the second songs, you'll soon figure out, are just a preamble to the song that follows. You will find confidence in the idea that loud is powerful only in contrast with quiet.
"You will find the loud you seek, though, in 'Alarma entre los ángeles.' You'll hear a six-minute guitar solo. You know this isn't for you, but you are going to let it wash over you anyway. You'll let it take you away, far from here, from these woods and this neighborhood and this planet and this universe. You might think of Pink Floyd again, since you know this guitar player sounds like he grew up with David Gilmour. You doubt Nick Mason could hit the bass pedal that quickly, however. You'll eventually remember that this isn't Pink Floyd, when the vocals come in, which won't be until the next song.
"You'll get restless, for sure, and that's by design. The songs that come in after the guitar solo—'Que ves el cielo' and 'Ruido de magia' and 'Doscientos años'—sound like someone trapped, longing to break free. You are going to be able to feel the potential energy, like a slingshot pulled back as far as it can go, except you're not going to feel the thrill of release, not yet. You'll find that 'Doscientos años' comes the closest to breaking, with some pretty 'la la la la' action, but you'll also find it never fully commits.
"You will discover that the dam finally breaks, but for a moment, on 'Niño condenado.' You're still frustrated, because the full weight of Invisible's powers come crashing down, the titanic guitars and the vein-popping vocals and the shoulder-through-a-door time signature switches, you know THIS to be 'prog rock' in all its glory, but you'll be frustrated with its brevity. You'll wonder whether El jardín de los presentes is an album that knows how to hold its cards close to its chest, only showing those who are worthy, or if it's bluffing it's way to the end of the 37 minutes.
"You'll be shocked to discover that this is pretty much it. You'll listen to the final song, 'Las golondrinas de Plaza de Mayo,' and you'll feel like you're watching the credits for a movie that you didn't understand. You'll know that this is the end; this might be all you'll know.
"Oh, you can go through these notes, and you will, in time. You'll get a sense of the rhythms, of the feel of this thing. But no matter how hard you try, you'll never 'get' it. You might be tempted to blame the fact that this album's lyrics are in a language you don't speak, but that would just be a convenient excuse. You'll come to realize that it's more than that. You won't understand it on an instinctual level.
"And you'll be left wondering whether that was intentional too, if the mystery is wrapped up in the trappings of the genre. You ponder whether prog rock is the place where the inscrutable becomes a mystique. You go back and forth as to whether the mystique is a bug or a feature.
"If you decide on 'feature'—and you will—then that will still leave you stranded in these woods, with no sense of direction home. Something can be so unknowable that it practically doesn't exist. You will not be able to grab onto anything. You'll will fail at understanding anything. You will listen anyway.
"This is your fate for the next five days—to listen and to not know. And you will wake up Friday morning, and you will still not know whose fault that is, yours or Invisible's.
"After a while, you'll realize that it doesn't matter whose fault it is anyway.
"And now I must fly away."
With that, the magnificent crane spread its wings and lifted off, out of the creek, into the sky. I watched it as it disappeared over the trees and into the great unknown.
No idea what the fucking bird was talking about, by the way. This music is fine.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment