Sometimes I might get caught up in my loftier goals with this blog. I have a very important point I am trying to make. I am actually being very anti-corporate and trying to make a pretty extended academic point about the ignorance in academia about Indie media and it’s importance. In the larger scheme of my approach to this, I don’t care if I make those points. I am really trying my best to give my very best appreciation of the artist. A work of art derived from the original work of art.
“People put pictures of places in frames.”
But right now, the side project of documenting some sort of anecdotal memoir is being sidetracked by the very large distraction of my wife being in the hospital. So the first thing I think about when I am trying to write about something is that my wife is in the hospital. It’s a little too relaxed to be sitting around with some kind of smug bull shit about “I remember when…” Great Larry. Maybe I can subscribe to your newsletter.
“I remember someone’s face but then I forget their names.”
So then there is this idea, and I should continue it, because truthfully I feel like it is that important. Maybe not for it’s original intention, but maybe for the idea that I seem to be reaching people. And maybe the first person that I seem to be reaching is me. I really believe in what I am doing for the first time in a very long time. Maybe for the first time in my life.
“I have a book for writing down who I meet and where I’m going to,”
And it may be that I am reaching one other person that it is critical to reach. My wife. She is in a hospital bed and completely isolated from the daily life that brings her comfort. From any feeling of connection and viability in her own family. The discussion of the daily difficulty of life is too stressful for her right now. She has to be quiet and meditative. Pulling energy and calm from the spiritual. Her quest has me as close as I get to not being an atheist. Without being able to discuss the daily stations of the cross, we are left with each other’s presence as comfort. But since I have so much to take care of to continue our daily lives, proximity is limited. The only way I can reach her is by creating.
“but my home is nowhere without you.”
I was a little hesitant to allow myself to like Herman Dune. And I have a problem. If I can’t write a dissertation or engage in a ranting monologue about why I think something is important, then I can’t really like it very much. So I was toying with the idea of continuing to listen to this music and never writing about it. But then it occurred to me that there is something very important happening here. Herman Dune is offering up a simplified style that gets deeper with each repetition. There’s this quality production style. And this laid back beach bum sound. And a strange French accent.
“There is nowhere like the ocean to breathe.”
David Ivar is a vocal stylist. It almost sounds like a way of saying, “The guy can’t sing but I like his music anyway.” But really there is something a little more complex to his rambling style than just a bizarre voice. It’s a really accessible metaphor for a deeper spiritual simplicity. I am not going to get into a whole lecture about other examples of vocal stylists. But there are plenty. And comparing them with David Ivar is going to cause an argument with myself. So I’m just going to have to agree to disagree with me.
“And the world is wonderful as it is.”
And on some level he reminds me of Jacob Holdt in the idea that he seems to be holding up a mirror as his only commentary. This sort of leaves a blank page where he should be. And just as I was about to dismiss him completely, I found My Home Is Nowhere Without You. It’s like he’s doing Tarot readings. He repeatedly offers the same cards in the deck. It’s almost a joke. We expect the fool. He appears to be offering what we expect. Then you look closer and it’s actually the hierophant. A hierophant styled as a fool with a mask on the back of his head. Suddenly there is a candid challenge to explain myself. Who are we and what is happening to us now?
“Now I might try to settle down on some beach in Malibu,”
And the action of time is being held at bay – the blacks and whites of negative space. I am a bolt of energy in a cross dimensional melodrama. The only importance in the narrative is my own emphasis. The tension hovers and breaks apart in an Ambien haze. The messages reach me from across the distance between us in the middle of the night. They are incomprehensible and completely clear at the same time. The hours of the night will inch toward dawn, and Herman Dune has thrown the dice into the future and the fool has returned with a reassuring answer that only the hierophant can interpret. Only time will tell.
“but my home is nowhere without you.”
And somehow this is all so necessary. There needed to be some ritual that ushered in a new era. An era in which Lucy could exist. Nothing could possibly be the same from this point forward. And we will climb the mountain and dance around the fire to prepare the way. To answer the call of the spirits. With all of the irony of the fool and the gravity of the hierophant we open our eyes in a liquid dreamworld and find the wide eyes of the hermit staring back at us.
“My home is nowhere without you.”
Herman Dune keeps throwing those cards at me.
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