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A review by jdscott50
This Woman's Work: Essays on Music by Sinéad Gleeson, Kim Gordon
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Essays by artists, writers, and musicians on the impact of woman musicians on their lives. Ann Enright writes about meeting her favorite musician and imagines eloquently expressing her impact on her, but instead finds herself stumbling over her words. Fatima Bhutto talks about the need for music for those in exile. She writes, "now dictators hate beautiful things like music since it inspires people and they cannot control it."
So many more experiences from Sonic Youth's Kim Jordon to the CEO of Subpop records.
Favorite Passages:
There is liberty in musical dissonance. And where there is liberty, there will be mutiny. Tyrants hate music because no matter their force and their power, they will never, not ever, be able to control what is beautiful.
“Fruits of My Labor" is a song I most often turn to when I'm at sea in my desk chair with a blank page and the curtains drawn to trick myself into believing I'm writing at dawn. It's a reminder that I'm not the only person who has sat alone with my thoughts and wondered how life got so very confusing, wondered if I can be satisfied, wondered if I can regain the plot, wondered if I can work through my doubts and come out with some beauty.
Betrayal is a immanent risk. The disciplinary structure of language which announces its presence at many encounters—class, gender, race, national border—is a cancer endemic to any attempt at the command or disavowal of a language built to monitor scrutinize and direct expression and labor. This betrayal, or its risk, is a terror from which the only escape is a different register altogether.
When I witnessed that, I was convinced that music becomes audible when the musician is physically touching the instrument, but the music is already being played within that person. If the music you hear is made up of the vibrations being emitted from one person, layering multiple sounds on top of each other is an extraordinary phenomenon. Then you have an audience who comes to see that, and they bring that influence home with them. Music is vibration, so it enters people's bodies and souls like light. In order to be able to make the music audible that is already playing within you, you need to prepare yourself as a vessel to receive the music. You could say that that's my technique. It's all about keeping yourself light and putting yourself in the position to receive, rather than being tense.
So many more experiences from Sonic Youth's Kim Jordon to the CEO of Subpop records.
Favorite Passages:
There is liberty in musical dissonance. And where there is liberty, there will be mutiny. Tyrants hate music because no matter their force and their power, they will never, not ever, be able to control what is beautiful.
“Fruits of My Labor" is a song I most often turn to when I'm at sea in my desk chair with a blank page and the curtains drawn to trick myself into believing I'm writing at dawn. It's a reminder that I'm not the only person who has sat alone with my thoughts and wondered how life got so very confusing, wondered if I can be satisfied, wondered if I can regain the plot, wondered if I can work through my doubts and come out with some beauty.
Betrayal is a immanent risk. The disciplinary structure of language which announces its presence at many encounters—class, gender, race, national border—is a cancer endemic to any attempt at the command or disavowal of a language built to monitor scrutinize and direct expression and labor. This betrayal, or its risk, is a terror from which the only escape is a different register altogether.
When I witnessed that, I was convinced that music becomes audible when the musician is physically touching the instrument, but the music is already being played within that person. If the music you hear is made up of the vibrations being emitted from one person, layering multiple sounds on top of each other is an extraordinary phenomenon. Then you have an audience who comes to see that, and they bring that influence home with them. Music is vibration, so it enters people's bodies and souls like light. In order to be able to make the music audible that is already playing within you, you need to prepare yourself as a vessel to receive the music. You could say that that's my technique. It's all about keeping yourself light and putting yourself in the position to receive, rather than being tense.
There is a disconnect there and being in this position it makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes. But it's all a part of life. when I create music or art and express myself, in a way, I'm posing everything that is inside of me to the outside world. As soon as my expression makes its way into the world, the person Who receives it interprets it in their own way. The receiver will project themselves onto me, the source of the expression, and create their own mental image of me. All the different people who receive my expression will have different mental images of me, so in a way there are multitudes of "me" that exist. By the time a person receives my expression, I don't exist there anymore. So being the source of this expression, all I can do is be myself and express myself honestly. My job is to expose the sounds that are within me in a way that feels good to me, and be myself to the best of my abilities.