I've already written about Movietone's The Blossom Filled Streets, but I'm writing about it again. Or maybe this is an attempt to write about love, about the feeling of discovering a piece of my soul hidden in a work of art.
Music is sacred to me. Art, in general, is sacred to me. But music is perhaps the altar I worship at. Is it because my father loved it, too?
For years after he died, I couldn't listen to his favorite albums or musicians. Even now, I wish I could share all my discoveries with him. I always wonder what he'd think of them.
One day, I'll make a giant post of all my favorite albums. I'm not sure why I haven't made one yet. A rough list would be:
Laughing Stock by Talk Talk
Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos
You Are Free by Cat Power
Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go by Jason Molina
Just Another Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan
A Storm in Heaven by The Verve
The Blue Notebooks by Max Richter
Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris
Living With Ghosts by Patty Griffin
Is This Desire? by PJ Harvey
Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares by Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir
Have One On Me by Joanna Newsom
Bloom by Beach House
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys
When I fall in love with an album, it's like I enter a kind of madness or intoxication. I become obsessed.
The music becomes a second skin that I make a home inside of. I merge with it.
It's what I imagine romantic love would feel like: Identification. Awakening. Homecoming. Union. No end and no beginning, Just a swirling and commingling.
When I put on The Blossom Filled Streets, I wish I could put the feeling into words. It's why I started writing this rambling post in the middle of the night. But I find that I cannot describe the feeling—that's why it's so special and rare. It's how I know an album will be important in my life.
As soon as the first notes of "Hydra" start to play, my body softens and I sink into the sound that envelops me and holds me. I listen on my headphones because I want no distance between me and the music.
Sometimes, I lay down. I can't do anything else. I'm adrift in another world, another time. I'm outside time altogether. Inside the deep mystery of life that only art can touch. Death seems impossible. I feel that I could live forever within the music.
I wish I were not alone in such moments, that I could be near someone and share the experience, the feeling, all the love inside me.