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shookethbrooketh · 4 years

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seven days (i’ll find you in any world)

day seven

summary: dan is stuck in the wrong timeline. one day, he kisses phil goodnight. the next morning, he’s completely alone. he doesn’t even recognize where he wakes up, and little details in the world around him have changed. he has no clue what’s happening or where to go next in an effort to fix it; all he knows is that he has to find phil.

genre: sci-fi, a lil bit of angst, happy ending

warnings: just some swearing!

fic word count: 19.0k chapter word count: 3.0k

a/n: i can’t believe i’ve finally finished this fic!! huge thanks to any of you who have stuck around all the way through this mess--i love you all sm <333

written for the @phandomreversebang ! inspired by the awesome moodboard/edits by @maybeformepersonally ! beta’d (beginning to end) by @i-might-just-leave-soon ! HUGE thank you to eilidh for being such an amazing beta for this entire fic <333

much to his surprise, phil pulled him in closer, and he closed his eyes again, allowing himself to feel the kiss. he could sense the world tearing itself apart around him, but all that mattered to him in that moment was that he was back kissing phil, and he was completely confident--that was his phil.

read it on ao3

Dan blinked his eyes open with no sense of urgency, rolling over to snooze the alarm beside his bed. It read 7:00, and he wasn’t sure why he was getting up that early, but he wasn’t pleased. He stared at his boring, beige wall for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should get up, when he came to the realization that there was something in his mouth.

“Bleh,” he spat, disgusted by the spit covering the bag. He looked at the bag for a moment, and a wave of chills came over him as memories came rushing back to him. “Fucking damnit,” he whispered, looking around his childhood bedroom. He’d woken up so at peace there that he’d completely forgotten that he wasn’t eighteen anymore. Blissful ignorance was preferred to this bullshit.

He picked up his old phone from the nightstand and saw a text from Phil. “That was easy,” he muttered, and then furrowed his brow. Dan couldn’t remember it completely, but that seemed identical to the text he’d received from Phil ten years earlier on the day that they meant. He glanced up at the date on the top of the notification screen--October 19, 2009.

Dan’s eyes widened as he scrambled to access Phil’s twitter, and his suspicions were confirmed--everything was identical. “Okay, calm down,” he said to himself, already on his feet and nervously pacing the room. “There’s billions of parallel universes out there! There must be one tiny difference in this universe and mine, right?”

He banged his head on the wall, struggling to search his memory for anything that anyone had told him throughout the week that could explain this universe--this final universe that Dan would have a chance to travel through before all would collapse.

“I’m living in tropes,” his own voice echoed in his head.

“Follow them, and you will find your way home,” a Phil from days ago responded.

Dan picked his head up from where it was resting on the wall and looked into his mirror. “Follow the trope.” Realization after realization hit him, each of them like another dodgeball in his personal secondary school hell. 2009!Phan was one of the most popular phanfiction tropes; he knew that. Every other trope was in an alternate universe, but this one took place in theirs. And it took place at that very moment. He was in his own timeline; he had to be.

He looked to his side and found the suitcase that a younger him had packed the night before, his train ticket to Manchester sitting on top. The clothes he’d worn all those years ago when he’d met Phil were laying on a chair beside it. Dan took a deep breath, looking back into the mirror. He had a train to catch.

Everything from there until Manchester went off without a hitch. Dan had no problems getting on the train, and the ride itself was pleasant enough--it was when he was approaching Manchester that everything began to go wrong.

He was in his own timeline, and he’d tried thus far to recreate everything he’d done when he traveled ten years earlier, but he couldn’t do that forever. How would he react when he met Phil? How would Phil help him get back to 2019? And worst of all, would his actions now change his future with Phil?

As Dan stepped onto the platform in Manchester, he began to feel as if he was being torn in half. Half of him was being pulled, almost against his will, towards Phil, his future and his trope. The other half was petrified with fear and wanted to turn right back around and get back on the train in fear that if he interacted with Phil he wouldn’t even have a future to go back to.

“Follow the trope,” he repeated to himself, putting a wide smile on his face. He ran towards Phil without even thinking; he already knew exactly where Phil would be. A wave of sadness fell over him; the memory of the joy he’d felt the first time he’d done this made him feel even worse about the situation he was now stuck in.

As he neared Phil, he saw the bright smile that had been engraved in his brain for the last ten years. Dan’s smile became a bit more genuine as he buried himself in Phil’s arms, a familiar warmth enveloping them. Much had changed in ten years, but the feeling of home that Phil gave him, even though Dan had no way of knowing if it was even real, would never leave him.

“I can’t wait to show you around Manchester!” Phil exclaimed, almost giddier than Dan remembered.

“I can’t wait to see it!” That was a lie. He knew everything about Manchester. He knew everything about Phil, too; the two of them had lived there for years. But Phil didn’t know that.

“Let’s go grab some Starbucks,” he said, and Dan nodded, his body jerking a bit afterwards. Was that what he had done the first time? Was Starbucks their first stop, or did they go to the Apple Store first? What if he’d already changed their future with just a simple nod?

Dan knew he’d screwed up when Phil remained completely silent all the way to the Starbucks a couple of blocks away. It was as if they were both actors, and they were just waiting until they had more lines to speak.

They reached the Starbucks and ordered caramel macchiatos, and Dan couldn’t help but crack a smile. It was odd for him to relive moments that had become iconic to thousands of people, but it was almost therapeutic. If the entire universe was going to explode at the end of the day, it might as well be the best day of his life.

Dan allowed himself to fall into the experience, and his anxiety lifted ever so slightly. He and Phil talked and laughed, and they felt natural for the first time. Dan felt real for the first time.

“You can’t tell me Muse’s latest album was their best. I mean, come on!” Dan exclaimed, smiling at Phil with the softest possible form of anger.

“I’m not saying that! I’m just not saying it’s the worst. The worst was clearly Simu-Symmetry. Origin of Symmetry.”

Dan furrowed his brow. “Phil, you love Origin of Symmetry. We both do.” Dan replayed Phil’s phrasing in his head. It sounded almost like he was beginning to say simulation, the first word in the title of Muse’s 2018 album.

“I’m just messing with you,” Phil said, appearing a bit uneasy. “Symmetry is the best.”

Dan chuckled nervously. “Yeah.”

Dan couldn’t help but notice more things that seemed off throughout the day. It seemed almost as if he and Phil both were simply going through the motions--as if things that they’d had to discuss and decide on ten years ago they simply did.

It wasn’t long before they found themselves taking their first picture together in the Apple Store. “Picture?” Phil asked after charging directly towards the spot Dan remembered the picture being taken in. He might have been losing his mind, but he could have sworn they meandered the store until they found themselves there. It was as if they were just checking boxes.

They took the picture, both of them struggling in attempts to recreate the exact picture--Dan could only remember because they’d done it in PINOF 10 only a year earlier. They did it, though, as far as Dan could tell, and Phil posted it on Dailybooth.

And then they were there. The Manchester Eye. The place the two of them had first kissed.

Dan wasn’t ready for this stop. The moment he’d first kissed Phil there years ago had been the most magical moment of his life, and still to date it was the memory he pulled whenever he was asked to think of something happy. He wasn’t sure if he could handle tainting it with this fake do-over. It was like he was back in the VCR days, and he was about to tape over his happiest memory.

As the two of them went up in the wheel, Dan’s head was spinning so fast that he couldn’t keep track of his thoughts. The only thing he could cling onto was the same mantra he’d been repeating in his head for the entire day: follow the trope.

All he could seem to do was follow the trope. He was confident now that it was pulling him, guiding him to do things he wasn’t completely sure he wanted to do. He felt helpless, as if he was back in high school theatre class and had to kiss a girl onstage. He wasn’t even himself anymore--he was an actor, a character in a story that was no longer his own. Follow the trope, his brain said. But his heart told him to stop it all, to break character.

Breaking character, though, could have serious consequences. What if he’d done the one thing he’d truly feared all day and destroyed the future he had with Phil? What if he lost his only chance to repair the timeline?

But then again, what if the real Phil, his Phil, his 2019 Phil was sitting across from him, and he wouldn’t know until he broke character? What if the Phil across from him was the character, and his Phil was the actor?

Follow the trope. Break character.

They stopped at the top of the wheel.

Follow the trope. Break character.

Phil smiled nervously at him. He was out of time.

Follow the trope. Break character.

“Dan, I can’t do this.”

Dan blinked himself into reality and his eyes widened. “What?” was the only thing he could muster out. This was certainly different.

“I’m not who I say I am. Well, I am, but I’m not.”

Dan took a deep breath, calmer than he’d been since awakening that morning. “You’re a time traveler.”

Dan needed the comic relief that came when Phil’s eyes popped out of his head.

“I’m from 2019, and you are too, aren’t you?” Phil barely managed to nod his head. “Phil, I think we’re from the same universe. I think you’re really my Phil,” he said, taking Phil’s hands.

“How-how do you know?” Dan could feel Phil shaking.

“We’re meant to be here together. Right now. Again. We’ve done all this before, and we have to follow this trope back home.”

“Dan, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You did live this ten years ago, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course I did!”

“Then trust me.”

Dan pulled the bag from the night before out of his pocket and looked up at Phil, who was suddenly holding a device with a large, red button in the middle.

“What’s that?” they each asked each other at the same time.

“This can take me back to 2019 in my timeline,” Phil said, answering before Dan had a chance. “I came back here for Dan--for you, maybe. I don’t know. But I do know that if I take the wrong Dan back, we’ll both be torn apart on the way back, along with every timeline in existence.”

“Yeah, well I know that if we don’t get the timelines back to normal by the end of the night, they’ll split beyond repair anyway,” Dan replied, more serious than he could ever recall being.

Phil bit his lip. “I don’t know.”

Dan ignored Phil’s panic and opened the bag. “Here,” Dan said firmly, handing Phil the paper. “The Phil I met in the timeline I was in yesterday said this is the key to fixing everything.”

Phil took the paper, his hands shaking as he read it. “Bring the anomalies together?” Phil shouted. “No shit!”

“Is that all it says?” Dan asked, panic beginning to set over him as well.

“That’s it!” Phil shouted, starting to rock the cart they were sitting in. “This is fucking useless!”

“I guess he didn’t know how much you’d know!” Dan exclaimed, anger creeping into him as well. All the hours they spent the previous night, just for nothing?

“Dan, I don’t know what to do!” Phil exclaimed, fear setting into his eyes. Dan looked at him, and he could tell Phil was relying on him. Dan was the only one who could fix this, and he only had one idea.

“Follow the trope,” Dan said, his voice suddenly quiet.

“What?” Phil replied, equally quiet. An eerie, tense silence fell over their cart.

“You have to kiss me.”

“What?!” Phil exclaimed, his voice loud once again.

“I’m supposed to follow the trope. I’ve been in a world where you’re famous and I’m not, a world where we meet in a coffee shop, a world where we’re both parents, and a whole pile more, but the point is that those are all fanfiction tropes. And the two of us, here, right now, are a trope too. 2009.”

“You’re trying to tell me that the way for us to get home is for us to make out?”

“No, Phil! We just have to complete the timeline with everything that happened tonight!”

“You’re fucking insane, you know that?” he shouted, spit flinging from the corners of his mouth.

“Do you have any better ideas?” The silence fell again, and Phil looked at Dan with desperation in his eyes. “Do you know of any other ways to find out if we’re really the Dan and Phil that have been in love with each other for the last ten years?”

Phil’s expression softened a bit, and Dan could feel his own follow. Their faces still showed desperation, but they now had a sense of understanding, a sense of love. And for the first time since a week ago when Phil had kissed him goodnight, Dan finally felt as if he was truly back with his Phil.

Dan reached out and took Phil’s hand. “Are you ready?” Phil nodded, and Dan leaned in, pressing their lips together for the first time in what felt like ages. Before Dan could even begin to feel the numerous emotions that the kiss instilled in him, a wind began picking up around them. Dan wanted to pull back to mention that they were inside a cart and there was no way wind could have gotten inside, but he found his lips stuck to Phil’s. “Mmm!” he hummed, his eyes wide open in fear.

Much to his surprise, Phil pulled him in closer, and he closed his eyes again, allowing himself to feel the kiss. He could sense the world tearing itself apart around him, but all that mattered to him in that moment was that he was back kissing Phil, and he was completely confident--that was his Phil.

Suddenly they were thrust away from each other, and Dan felt himself land on a hard floor. He sat up, rubbing his head, and looked around the room. They were in their lounge in their 2019 flat, and Phil was lying on the floor across the room. “Phil?” He sat up immediately, beaming from ear to ear.

“We did it,” he laughed, lunging across the room to tackle Dan into another kiss. Their first kiss may have been literal magic, but this second one felt like magic to Dan. They were safe, and they were together, and he’d never been happier to have Phil in his arms.

“We did it,” Dan repeated, tears filling his eyes as he gazed into Phil’s. He pulled back slightly, refusing to leave Phil’s grasp, but needing to make a point. “Is the timeline alright? Is everything really back to normal?”

“As far as I can tell, yeah,” Phil said, standing up and helping Dan to stand beside him.

Dan brushed off his clothes and looked to Phil. He was his 2019 self, but he was still wearing his 2009 clothes, and Dan couldn’t help but chuckle internally at the sight. “How the hell did we get back?”

“I’m assuming some other Dan and Phil in a parallel universe didn’t follow the trope and just pushed the button to go home,” Phil replied, waving the device he had kept in his pocket over his head.

“Fair,” Dan replied, “but I prefer the magic kiss theory.”

Phil laughed openly, the extreme relief they shared showing through. “I suppose that works too.”

Phil took Dan’s hand in his and the two walked to their bedroom to get ready to sleep; it wasn’t all that late, but they were exhausted from their journeys.

“Phil?” Dan blurted out as Phil was cutting the light off and they were climbing into bed.

“Mmm?”

“Why did you never tell me about your science?”

Phil shrugged, turning towards Dan in bed. “I never wanted you to get dragged into it, like some other Phil clearly let happen. I’m sorry I wasn’t completely transparent, though; that’ll change.” Dan opened his mouth to speak, but Phil took notice and cut him off. “We can talk about it in the morning. I’m fucking beat.”

“Wait, one more thing,” Dan said, a smile growing across his face. “You really traveled through space and time after me?”

“I’ll find you in any world,” Phil said, grinning so widely that Dan wanted to smack the smile right off of his face.

“Stupid fucking tropes,” he said, leaning in to give Phil a kiss. “Goodnight, Phil,” he said, moving his lips to Phil’s forehead to give him their traditional goodnight forehead kiss.

Phil smiled much wider than he usually did, allowing his eyes to close as he calmed himself for sleep. “Goodnight, Dan.”

Dan rolled over, smiling to himself. Those were the last words he’d heard from Phil a full week ago before they were separated, so he would have thought they would have stung a bit to hear again. At the very least, Dan thought hearing Phil wish him goodnight would have incited fear, that something like this could happen again. But Dan felt the contrary--as he heard Phil’s goodnight, he felt safe and at peace. After everything they’d been through, they were still together, and Dan truly felt as if they’d be together forever. After all, Phil’s stupid cliche was right: they’d find each other in any world.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #seven days #phic stuff #dong and ping

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Listed: Joshua Stamper

Photo by Christopher McDonald

After 25 years composing and arranging, Joshua Stamper’s versatility remains as notable as ever. The artist moves fluidly from classical to indie-rock to chamber music and more. While collaborating with acts like mewithoutYou and Robyn Hitchcock or scoring films, he manages to release his own work, too. Reviewing Stamper’s most recent release, Justin Cober-Lake described PRIMEMOVER as a “soundtrack for a particular kind of year in the church life, one with puzzles and rest, beauty and complication.” His work, as with PRIMEMOVER or his new Elements project, tends to be multidisciplinary, with Stamper incorporating an array of influences from outside music. With his breadth of input and output, it's no surprise that Stamper would offer us a list that includes music, visual art, philosophy, and poetry.

Thierry De Mey — “Unknowness, for percussion and sampling: Love Function is to Fabricate Unknowness”

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My brother gave me Thierry De Mey’s Kinok for my birthday about twenty years ago. He bought it on the strength of the album cover alone. It’s a record I have returned to dozens of times. “Unknowness” is utterly arresting — a deep and loose sway juxtaposed with startling percussive gestures as unpredictable as ricocheting gunshots. It is all swing, mystery, magic, and space. I feel when listening that I am reduced to sub-atomic scale, where mountains of granite become a gossamer mesh that I move through as a stroll in the park, looking at trees that are freeze-frame explosions.

John Cage — “Water Walk”

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4'33" is a popular punching bag for Cage critics. The piece is derided as an adolescent practical joke from an impertinent child of a composer who gets his kicks deliberately wasting audiences’ time. “It's not music” is the common refrain, but the complaint behind the complaint is that it is alienating; that the only way in which the piece facilitates communal experience is that everyone feels on the outside of an inside joke.

When I was younger, I shared this impatience with Cage. Then I came across “Water Walk,” a piece premiered in January 1960 on the popular TV game show I’ve Got A Secret. My view of John Cage and his music were both upended, instantly and utterly. Instead of a preening and pretentious provocateur I encountered a playful and guileless individual filled with wonder; one who took unfettered joy in people, invention, and the sheer fact of sound.

In the space of one viewing, 4'33" shifted from an insolent and self-satisfied prank to a concentrated celebration of community and sound — a wide-eyed invitation to pause, together, all of us here sharing this space, LISTEN, all of us here sharing this space, together, pause. My self-righteousness shattered. All becomes music. I haven't heard anything the same way since.

I’ve since spent a great deal of time with his writing, lectures, poems, prints and music, and wonder how I could have ever thought ill of the man's intentions. It may seem obvious, but Cage taught me that an artist’s own life is the clearest interpretative lens through which to understand their work.

Prince and the Revolution — “I Wonder U” (from Parade)

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Sgt. Pepper-esque sound design, kaleidoscopic orchestral arrangements, the hushed voices of Prince, Wendy and Lisa riding on a composite groove of such integrity and force that it sounds like it's forged from steel...

I first encountered Prince’s Parade the summer between my high-school graduation and my first year of college. “I Wonder U” is less than two minutes long, but I was stopped in my tracks. The song feels like the liminal space between dreaming and waking, at once welcoming and dangerous, where multiple musics converge like Charles Ives’ double marching bands destined for head-on collision. Discreet melodies and rhythms and keys bleed in and out of each other, but also exist as vital layers in a larger whole. It's a hypnotizing 3-D sonic Venn diagram.

My decision to major in composition was set.

Jasper Johns — “Regrets”, 2013, oil on canvas

Jasper Johns said, “I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final statement has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.”

“a helpless statement” – I find myself breathing deeper and slower with Johns’ words, grateful for the reminder that before anything else, art making must be grounded in vulnerability and weakness. The hope and the challenge in Johns’ words is its call to distillation, to get to the heart of the heart of the heart of a matter, where there is simply nothing else that can be said. The process of distillation even involves the shedding of all those things we sometimes mistake for the work itself: craft, expertise, training, credential. There’s a threshold that must be crossed, a moment of lift-off where will and deliberation are left behind and the work takes flight on what is inevitable, as involuntary as a cry or a laugh.

Palestrina — “Missa Brevis”

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“Painting is time, music is space.” So said one of my brother’s undergrad art professors. Of course, you’d expect the opposite, as space is the context in which painting exists while time is the fundamental warp and woof of music. But my most profound experiences with music are always characterized by new spaces being revealed or created. By “space,” I don't mean some state of cerebral or emotional revelry. I mean real, actual space — with dimensions. A space that’s shocking in its physicality. This happens to me constantly.

My first experience of Palestrina’s “Missa Brevis” was in a choir rehearsal in my junior year of high-school. It was a catalytic event. A braid of interweaving melodies and counter-melodies emerged, enveloping me and everyone else singing, and the room seemed to expand. I wanted more. The vocational pull to become a musician was like being swept out to sea.

Every time I return to this piece, I experience this expansion. The patient dip and rising of every “Kyrie,” “eleison” and “in excelsis” creates its own cosmology, its own dimensions and gravity. Our relationship to time is also a relationship to space; their woven-ness is inextricable. The space-time continuum isn't just a physics thing.

Ann Hamilton — The Event of A Thread

Years ago, I had the opportunity to experience The Event of A Thread by Ann Hamilton at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. A massive silk that moves like water or vapor, a field of swings, a record stylus, wooden crates of live pigeons, paper scrolls spilling onto the floor, a ceiling peppered with pulleys, bags of words and sacks of sound... It's difficult to describe the piece, in either its scope or particulars, but I became a child.

In Ann Hamilton's discussion of the piece, she says, “It happened because a space was made for it to happen.” The inverse implication of this statement is that if space isn't made, things won’t happen. In my experience, solitude, reflection, exploration and craft are so easily bullied by the crush of life and of calendars, but Hamilton’s observation presses an urgent case for the care and protection of these kinds of spaces to think and puzzle and make. How much wonder, play, rest, and beauty could exist only for want of a place to exist?

So, with that, “it happened because a space was made for it to happen” – my working manifesto.

Mary Oliver — Upstream (Section One: “Of Power and Time”)

“It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone, or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone.”

The untroubled waters of a day whose promises have yet to unfold are not untroubled for very long. But the most persistent interruptions are those that come, as Oliver describes, “not from another, but from the self itself.” The resonance for me is deep.

In a 2015 On Being interview, Mary Oliver tells a story about when she learned she had received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (she didn't even know that her latest, American Primitive, had been submitted for the award): she was at the town dump looking to buy shingles to shingle a roof with. A painter friend of hers came by, joking, “Ha, what are you doing? Looking for your old manuscripts?”. Oliver just laughed and continued looking. When recounting the story to Krista Tippett, she chuckled and said, “...my job in the morning was to go find some shingles.”

To simply be dedicated to the work of the day, to be unmoved and uninterrupted by either rejection or by accolade represents a degree of settledness that I find very beautiful and very challenging.

She was known for writing while she was walking...

Ludwig Wittgenstein / Wendell Berry — “How to Be a Poet”

To continue on the subject of the working life, last night I came across a beautifully concise quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein that speaks to a consistent tension I experience: the urgency to cultivate the solitary and silent spaces required for thinking and working, and a loud and frenetic pull in the opposite direction to “produce” (to what end? - I constantly find myself asking). He simply says: “I can only think clearly in the dark."

This sentiment is echoed in Wendell Berry's proverb-like poem “How to Be a Poet” (wit and wisdom go together well):

“...Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgement.” [...]

“Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in.”[...]

“...make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.”

Both Wittgenstein and Berry cut against the grain of popular priorities of content-creation, audience-building, beating the algorithms and cutting through the noise (again, to what end?). Instead, they throw open a window to the generous gifts and glories of a life lived in obscurity.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy’s work re-convinced me that art has power. That it is able, for those with ears to hear and eyes to see, to create or reveal a different way of inhabiting the world, of inhabiting one's own humanity. My introduction to Goldsworthy was a documentary by Thomas Riedelsheimer called Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time. I watched tall stone cairns being built on the beach, slowly and carefully, only to be disassembled by the gentle but unremitting incoming tide. I was transfixed by bright yellow leaves stitched together and set loose along a creak, moving like a lazy water snake, wending around rocks and logs and gradually twisting and breaking apart. Balls of bright red dust thrown into the air to form dissipating crimson clouds; delicate stick-curtains collapsing at the breath of a breeze; one-ton snowballs on a London summer day, melting to water and then to air.

As Westerners we tend towards a conception of beauty that is extremely specific, a precise and particular point in time: the crest of a wave, a flower that's just bloomed, a new car rolling off the truck at the dealership, a man or a woman at twenty-five... But Goldsworthy's work does something different. It includes these moments but also folds them into something larger. One begins to see the whole story of a thing, from its initial conception all the way to its inevitable fading or destruction, and all of it is beautiful. This changes everything.

I recognize in myself a preference for the promise of a thing more than the reality of a thing, but as I interact with Goldsworthy’s work my understanding of beauty is slowly and gently disassembled, like one of his beach cairns. It is replaced with a widened aperture, a more charitable and hospitable read of the people and the world around, and I'm welcomed into a more generous way of being.

Ornette Coleman — “What Reason Could I Give” (from Science Fiction)

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Jane Austin’s Mr. Knightley says to Emma Woodhouse, “If I loved you less, I could talk about it more...”

All I can say about this piece: I’m fully convinced that this is what angels sound like.

#dusted magazine #listed #joshua stamper #thierry de mey #john cage #prince and the revolution #jasper johns #palestrina #ann hamilton #mary oliver #ludwig wittgenstein #wendell berry #andy goldsworthy #ornette coleman

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theeverlastingshade · 7 years

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Fleet Foxes- Crack-Up Tour

A few weeks ago I got the chance to catch Fleet Foxes and (Sandy) Alex G at The Masonic Temple, and it was easily the best show that I’ve been to all year. Fleet Foxes released Crack-Up, their first album in nearly six and a half years this past June, and while it’s their most impressive and ambitious album to date, there’s never a guarantee that such risks will translate as seamlessly to a live context as well as they were captured on record, particularly if you haven’t seen the band live before. Their music has always straddled the line between sonically rich and deceptively simple, but on Crack-Up they push their sound to its logical extreme, nearly abandoning any semblance of accessibility for challenging arrangements and unorthodox song structure.

The show they put on did immense justice to the sprawling epics on display throughout Crack-Up, while still making time for their immediate classics. Fleet Foxes have evolved from a humble, bedroom adjacent folk act into a stadium ready baroque folk institution while managing to pull off the rare trick of making music that’s far more challenging than their past work and seeming to outgrow the cozy indie venues that they would have been playing in the past. Time has only tightened their dynamic, and while playing like they still had something to prove at this point, Fleet Foxes solidified their stature as one of the best live/studio bands in any genre working today.

(Sandy) Alex G opened for Fleet Foxes, and while not the most natural pairing imaginable, it was immensely fitting to see the two acts responsible for the two best indie rock LPs of the year thus far sharing the same bill. I saw (Sandy) Alex G headline a show with Japanese Breakfast last month, and the amount that he’s improved throughout that time is pretty remarkable. Since he was the opening act for Fleet Foxes he pretty much stuck primarily to cuts from Rocket. Despite not having his girlfriend Molly Germer join him live for vocals and violin on standouts like “Bobby” and “Witch” this time around, the band still sounded tighter than I expected. The only thing that really disappointed me about their set didn’t actually have anything to do with their performance. Their set was at The Masonic Temple, and it’s just a slightly larger venue than ideal for an act like (Sandy) Alex G. They were certainly able to hold their own, but it’s about as large a venue as I can imagine them being able to play at this point in time. The intimacy of a venue like El Club is really the ideal setting to see them live.

Regardless of the venue itself, their set was otherwise great. Alex G began playing guitar for some of his best acoustic work including the jangly Rocket highlight “Proud” before opting to sit behind a keyboard and sequencer for his slower, supremely melodic work like “Sportstar”. He closed with “Guilty”, a predictable but fitting choice that lost none of it’s smooth, alluring groove throughout their performance despite the absence of a live saxophone player. While the live renditions of these songs don’t quite capture the sense of wonder and imagination that the studio recordings provide in spades, they nonetheless provide an accurate glimpse of a group really beginning to catch their stride, supporting one of indie rock’s most promising blossoming talents. It’s going to be interesting to see how (Sandy) Alex G’s live show continues to evolve alongside what seems certain to be a satisfying future discography.

As soon as Fleet Foxes took stage, they predictably dove headfirst into an intense performance of “I Am All That I Need”, and I really couldn’t have imagined them starting their set any other way. Their performance captured the dynamism and urgency of their recorded version without missing a beat. The band onstage consisted of Robin Pecknold singing and playing acoustic guitar, a drummer, another guitarist, a bassist, a keyboard/synth player, and a multi-instrumentalist prone to switching between upright bass, flute, tuba, sleigh-bells, and maracas, sometimes within the course of a single song, and everyone provided vocals at one point or another with the only exception being the multi-instrumentalist. The band performed “I Am All That I Need” without sacrificing any of the song’s inherent majesty, and in doing so they set the tone for one of the most compelling shows that I’ve bared witness to to date.

As can be rightfully expected from a beloved band coming back into the fold for the first time in several years with an accomplished new album, they played the vast majority of their new record, with fan favorites sprinkled throughout their set. “Cassius” and “-Naiads, Cassisus” followed suit, providing a much needed bridge from the awe-inducing opener to the rest of their set. The floor of The Masonic Temple was completely packed, and after the band thoroughly took stock of the room’s energy level Robin cracked half a grin before sheepishly muttering “this will be fun” moments before the band leapt into “Ragged Wood”.Now it was certainly a little jarring to hear the relative simplicity of something like “Ragged Wood” following the sprawling, uncompromisingly dense work of the first three Crack-Up cuts, but it also really sent home just how vast the range of this band is. Their performance of “Ragged Wood” thoroughly impressed; the first half was far more rousing and inviting then their recorded version, while the second half captured all of the serenity and warmth with harmonies that never lost an ounce of their luster.

Fleet Foxes played like they had never really gone on hiatus, and throughout the course of the show it was staggering just how much they carried themselves like a stadium band. They played for nearly two hours, drawing from everything they’ve released up to this point save for their Fleet Foxes EP, and performed with an intensity that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from any contemporary indie band let alone a contemporary indie folk band. The set’s pacing was excellent, with breathers like “Cascades” slotted nicely between the joyous group sing-along “Your Protector”, which was much livelier and colorful live than it is on their self-titled, and “Mearcstapa” which begins with a lumbering rhythm section and light guitar strokes before being slowly built up into a breathtaking avalanche of strings.

Following “Mearcstapa” they played the next two songs on Crack-Up, “On Another Ocean (January / June)” and “Fool’s Errand”, and both managed to eclipse their recorded iterations. Eventually Robin was left alone on stage to play a few solo acoustic numbers, including “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” and “If You Need to, Keep Time on Me” which are both reflective ballads that necessitate the presence of only one musician playing with himself/herself, and both were much welcomed palette cleansers after the propulsive drive of “Battery Kinzie” and the gorgeous group harmonies that define “He Doesn’t Know Why”.

The band returned after a few songs, and, in a legitimately unexpected move, went right into “White Winter Hymnal”. It was immensely refreshing to get their most popular song out of the way and not have it relegated to the final encore of the night, and despite being one of the night’s weakest performances, there will always be an energy to that song that’s undeniable. Even more refreshing was the band opting to leap into “Third of May / Odaigahara” immediately following suit, juxtaposing their most popular song with the dense, multi-faceted first taste of Crack-Up that actually seemed, upon first listen, custom-tailored to alienate anyone who became a fan of them strictly because of “White Winter Hymnal”. “Third of May / Odaiagahara” was the exact opposite of “White Winter Hymnal”; thrilling, unpredictable, and grand in every sense of the word.

They played the title track from Helplessness Blues to close out their main set, and it’s grand scope was conveyed so earnestly that if you didn’t know better it would be easy to assume they had just written it. For the encore Robin returned by himself for a solo rendition of “Oliver James”, another song that derives its power from its intimacy, and he delivered that hushed intimacy in spades. The band then returned for a performance of the title track from Crack-Up to end the evening. While not necessarily one of that album’s best songs, it was the perfect song for them to close with; the somber clarinet that embellishes the song’s final stretch celebrating the birth of a new era for Fleet Foxes.

Nothing really could have prepared me for the superb show that Fleet Foxes performed. Though expansive and exquisitely detailed, Crack-Up, in all it’s maximalist glory simply can’t convey the depth of chemistry and unrelenting energy that the band displayed throughout the entire evening. They’ve come quite a way from the lush, pastoral soundscapes of Sun Giant, and while at one point could have reasonably passed for a bedroom act they now could soon be taking on stadiums. Despite their rich and impressive, albeit small discography, it still feels like they have no where to go but up. After a six-and-a-half-year hiatus, Fleet Foxes came back with their best album to date, and put on the best show that I’ve seen all year up to this point. Very few bands working today are as consistently rewarding on either front, let alone both, as Fleet Foxes.

#fleet foxes #crack up #sandy alex g #rocket

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the-dark-side-of-the-blog · 7 years

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Top 15 Best Album Closers Ever:

I contemplated doing a greatest album openers list ever but there are just so many that I felt a little overwhelming. Greatest closers is a little more rarefied but there are still some incredible tunes here and simply some of my favorite songs ever.

No 15) This Must Be The Place, Talking Heads: The song sounds somehow both exhausted and energized. Byrne’s vocals and lyrics give us a sense that we have finally got to the end of a journey but this at times wonderfully tired quality is juxtaposed by the low-key, but funky composition you can dance to. All in a days work for Talking Heads.

No 14) Eclipse, Pink Floyd: The final words of Eclipse, “there is no dark side of the moon, as a matter of fact it is all dark” play like the twist at the end of a movie. It is a final line so fitting that you almost question if it could be this perfect, is it not too glib, is it a bit too easy? In the end it is just right, it take a huge, expansive, ambitious work and concludes it with a minimalistic flourish.

No 13) Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, The Jam: When we discuss the great lyricists Weller’s name is all too easily forgotten. His lyrics are full of the wit and imagery that characterize so many of the best British songwriters. Down In the Tube Station at Midnight is as good a showcase as any for his descriptive powers as well as the bands punk-ish energy.

No 12) A Certain Romance, Arctic Monkeys: Whenever I listen to Whatever People Say I am That’s What I’m Not about midway through it I come to the conclusion that it is the most over-hyped album of the last 20 years, but by the time I get to the end of A Certain Romance I am reminded of why it is so beloved. Mardy Bum is very much my favorite song on it but A Certain Romance is not far behind.

No 11) Voodoo Child, The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Voodoo Child is not only an album closer but a career one as well. Coming at the end of Jimi’s third and final album this is the last official music we would get from the great man.Having said this Voodoo Child probably falls more into the category of just a great song, rather than a specifically great closer, yet at the same time it is a perfectly defiant final statement from Hendrix, even if it was not intended to be.

No 10) Bar Italia, Pulp: Bar Italia does not get the fanfare that Common People or Disco 2000 do but it is the perfect final track for the perfect album. Different Class is full of wit, sex and pizzazz, but Bar Italia strips lots of that away to give something much more soft but still with all of the charm and specificity that Cocker infuses the whole album with. The song builds a sense of urgency only to let go of it making it such a great closer.

No 9) The End, The Doors: Is there something too obvious about this song as an album closer, maybe but does that really matter when the song is this good? Immortalized by Apocalypse Now, there is something tragically poetic about Morrison musings on finality and impermanence. It is a song that as much as any comes to define the unrelenting darkness of that Vietnam era, but it continues to hold its power today, testament to its greatness.

No 8) Hurt, Nine Inch Nails: Johnny Cash’s cover is rightly heralded by everyone (including me on my 25 greatest covers list and Trent Reznor) as one of the great covers ever but we should not forget just how great the original is. The two versions feel so different that I feel very comfortable looking at them on their own merits (as you should with any covers) and Reznor’s original showcases such great musicianship and song-crafting abilities, while also being so raw. The song builds and builds, but the composition makes sure to never distract you from Reznor dark and beautiful lyrics.

No 7) Street Spirit, Radiohead: While people still, rightly, eulogize about the ambition and execution of OK Computer and groundbreaking qualities of Kid A, The Bends can sometimes go under the radar when it shouldn’t because it is a great rock n’roll record even if it is not a huge as the two to follow it. More than any song on the album Street Spirit points to what was to come . It is the song on The Bends that most sounds like it belongs of OK Computer. It is so eerie and it means that when you finish The Bends it sticks in your head, for all of the great songs on the album Street Spirit is the one that gives it really stick-ability.

No 6) Wild is the Wind, David Bowie: I’ve already written about this song recently on my greatest covers ever post, but suffice to say that this is one of the finest showcases of Bowie unique and incredible vocals. The song sounds of quite desperation and is the perfect way to end an album that was made during a very difficult period of his life but remains one of his crowning achievements.

No 5) Champagne Supernova, Oasis: I have a lot of issues with Oasis and the Gallagher brothers but What’s The Story is a really great britpop album. It is wall to wall with really solid songs but while Wonderwall remains an inescapable hit and Don’t Look Back in Anger is similarly ubiquitous, it is the final track that has always been my favorite. Champagne Supernova is a stupid song, Noel’s need to rhyme everything put a glass ceiling on the bands artistic potential and more than most songs this is full of the kind of faux-profundities Noel prided himself on, yet it just strikes the right chord. In an era where a lot of rock/pop was very nihilistic Oasis at least seemed like they wanted to live, even if the song has its share of melancholy and for that I can’t help but be drawn to it.

No 4) Moonlight Mile, The Rolling Stones: On many similar lists you will see Let It Bleed closer You Can’t Always Get What You Want come very high, but for me the best closer on a Stones album is the one off of their best album (Sticky Fingers). Moonlight Mile combines the haunting qualities of Wild Horses with some of the more southern rock inspired songs on Sticky Fingers to come up with the perfect song to encapsulate the rest of the album. It’s more understated that You Can’t Always Get What You Want, but also somehow bigger and it stays with me for longer.

No 3) Purple Rain, Prince: It’s funny, up until recently Prince’s music was not readily available on YouTube but you could get some live versions of Purple Rain and it always seems like Prince is on the verge of tears in all of them, such is the power of the song. Again it is just an epic closer, but nonetheless very intimate. Lyrically quite minimalist, but Prince’s vocals and guitar playing tell you everything you need to know. The song represents an artist at the absolute height of his powers and for all of that it makes my top 3.

No 2) A Day In The Life, The Beatles: It may not have the power of some of the others songs on this list but it would have been amiss of me to not have this on my list. The best ever showcase of the greatest songwriting duo in rock n’roll history, but more than Lennon and McCartney A Day in the Life is Lennon. Full of ambition, this is a song that fifty years on still feels oddly new and fresh and is truly timeless.

No 1) All Apologies, Nirvana: There are many great songs on this list but none resonate with me quite like All Apologies. Melodic, haunting and desperately sad. The words almost don’t matter, because Kurt’s vocals and the songs composition tells you it all. Yet the lyrics are just perfect “ I wish I was like you, easily amused”, encapsulating the very essence of every tortured genius ever. “All in all is all we are” communicating the helplessness and nihilism that Kurt was always fighting a losing battle against . It is just so perfect. There is a reason his music still speaks to groups of people in ways that no other artist does. When I consider whether In Utero may in fact surpass Nevermind, the main argument has and will always be All Apologies.

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