Living in the Essence of It

8/19/2021

1. Aloha! - Cristobal Tapia De Veer
   A good score compliments a piece of filmmaking like a high-end wallpaper compliments a tastefully designed drawing room. A great score suffuses a piece of filmmaking with substance, texture, and tension. A transcendent score—like Cristobal Tapia De Veer’s ghostly soundtrack for “The White Lotus”—is the divine/Luciferian exhalation that transubstantiates a piece of filmmaking and brings it to life.

2. Bouncin’, Pt. 2 - Tinashe
   Tinashe stays winning because she stays doing battle against the pop music market forces that would see her flattened into a boring, commercial also-ran. Every one of her albums is more rebelliously interesting than the last, and the new joint is no exception. TINASHE WHERE YOU AT?!

3. Alemania - Twin Shadow
   Noel Gallagher always talks about how songwriters should start with a chorus and work backwards from that point. That’s what I imagine George Lewis AKA Twin Shadow did on this one. Alemania’s is a simple chant of a refrain that typifies the supernatural power of 16 solid-as-hell bars.

4. She’s All I Got - Johnny Paycheck
   You’re listening to this, and you’re thinking, man, Johnny Paycheck sounds really, pathetically desperate here. How did it get to this point? Johnny Paycheck sounds like the name of a dude you’d be begging not to steal your girl. But this tune reminds us that even the Johnny Paychecks of the world deal with the creeping, clawing humiliation of romantic insecurity. So let’s not prejudge the Johnny Paychecks by their badass stage names. We can’t possibly know what internal wars the Johnny Paychecks are waging.

5. Be Careful - Greentea Peng
   The Mower

   BY PHILIP LARKIN

   The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
   A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
   Killed. It had been in the long grass.
   

   I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
   Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
   Unmendably. Burial was no help:
   

   Next morning I got up and it did not.
   The first day after a death, the new absence
   Is always the same; we should be careful
   

   Of each other, we should be kind
   While there is still time.

6. The Right Thing Is Hard To Do - Lightning Bug
   A tune that blossoms like a single posy of sunflowers in the middle of an eternally expanding middle-American prairie.

7. As You Are - cktrl
   London’s cktrl blowing cool, lavender twilight from his magic horn. Like the god who wakes the dusk and puts the sun to rest in its starry bassinet.

8. L.A.NIGHT - Yasuko Agawa
   You touch down at LAX in time to beat the jet lag with a quick power nap at your hotel. You’ve booked a Premiere Cottage at the Chateau Marmont after the successful resolution of the vindictive and baseless medical malpractice suit you’ve been dealing with since the trumped up implant migration charges.
   
   You wake up in your 800-thread-count cocoon feeling refreshed and ready to celebrate the fact that you are no longer in danger of losing your dual board certification to practice plastic surgery in Suffolk County, NY. You slip on your Prada espadrilles and head past the poolside bungalows to the desk of the maître d'hôtel. You ring the call bell and she appears in a starched white flash. You slip your titanium toothpick back into its gilded case and say, “How would a guy like me toast the biggest win of his life in a town like this?” She cracks a demure smile and bends to reach for something beneath the desk. It’s a Nord Electro 6d 61-Key Electric Keyboard. She toggles up a laid back 4/4 drum loop and begins to serenade you with an accomplished cover of L.A.NIGHT by Yasuko Agawa.

9. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - Richie Havens
   A Black American music icon’s shatteringly beautiful cover of a song written to romanticize some of the most odious, racist motherfuckers to have ever despoiled this country. America is schizophrenic and this music shit is complicated but Richie Havens always sounds like he’s singing from somewhere beyond all that so just let him transport you with this one.

10. On Divination in Sleep - Giant Claw Remix - NTsKi, Giant Claw, Dove
    I’ll never forget it. I was sitting on the bus one day on my way home from work when this older guy got on—the kind of guy who’s kind of smiling and humming to himself and who you sort of keep an eye on because you’re not entirely sure what kind of eccentricities you’re dealing with. But this guy must have had a rapport with the bus driver, because the driver said what’s up to him as he was feeding his card into the fare collector machine thing. Guy reciprocates, says what’s up to the driver, and the driver asks him how he’s doing.
    
    That’s when he said it. He gave a big toothy smile to the driver and responded, “I’m living in the essence of it, baby.”
    
    Hit me like I’d just rocked off a high dive into an ice bath. It was partly the completely unexpected response to a routine greeting and partly the pithy poeticism of the unexpected response. I knew as soon as I heard the guy say it that it was something I would need to carry with me for the rest of forever.
    
    I think there are a few different ways you can find your way into the essence of it. I think tons of people get there through religiosity—which I think was the case for the bus guy; he was living in the essence of God’s unconditional love—and that must be an amazing feeling. Drugs can get you there too, but that’s a more transient feeling that can just as quickly send you lightyears away from the essence of it. Interpersonal love is a foolproof entry point, same with an aesthetically perfect team goal in a big match vs. a league rival. Music does the trick too, and this song did it for me—plucked me up like a claw machine and dropped me smack in the middle of the essence. Throw on a pair of over-ear headphones and take the plunge yourself.

⛺