Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Despite Pete Townshend's famously-reneged-on promise, rockers get old - usually with informative, if not interesting results. The increasingly inappropriately-named Sonic Youth's latest album The Eternal is a thudding collage of times and places that paints us a compelling picture of a group of aging hipsters who've internalised tragedy for no loss of rage.

What struck me about the sound of this album, with respect to the few before that, is how much more stable this sounds. It's not that they've lost their penchant for the two-guitar-noisebox-freakout (they haven't) - but where these were inchoate screeches of rage on Daydream Nation, lovestruck soundscapes on NYC Ghosts, and structural punctuation on Rather Ripped, here they are the self-assured sonic statements of a bunch of musicians past their age but not past their time. It's as if Thurston and Lee's wild noise generations have ceased to become acts of rebellion but instead have become a fully-fledged language that the whole band speaks with the ease and looseness of long-time native speakers. Where a younger Sonic Youth might have delved into more extravagant textural fuckery, this older and wiser band seems content at times to sit back, make noises, and revel quietly in the chaos.

The effect of this is perhaps more in keeping with the general feeling of the album - less personal than Rather Ripped, less political than Daydream, more focused and more song-y than NYC. In many ways it is a retrospective - 'It's been quite a ride/with you my sweet, here by my side' Thurston sings on 'What We Know'. And the creepy Kim Gordon tour-de-force that is 'Massage the History' is a powerful lament of past grief. It's no surprise that they're looking back somewhat - Kim and Thurston are what, 50? and no serious philosophy would refuse to look back and make sense of a past that must have been wilder than anything I can imagine.

Lyrically, Sonic Youth have always been dodgy - the half-written jive-verse served to signify a rebellion against the very foundations of language at its best ('Teenage Riot') and a somewhat misplaced grandeur at its worst ('Rats' - also, 'werewolf commando poison tongue?' Really, Thurston?). Here they've perhaps given up on the idea of ever writing traditionally good lyrics. Instead, they've written several highly functional songs that eschew irony purposefully. It's refreshing in some ways that they've given up posturing, and where the lyrics grate they at least make you think about what they mean, and they never mean nothing (I wish I could be/music on a tree). It could be the fan in me being charitable, but of all the strange barely-coherent inhabitants of the alternative universe, I find that these guys are probably part of the few who've transcended the need for songform and parse-able lyrics. They're still pretty terrible at it sometimes. At its best though, the lyrics hint darkly at meaning the way the music hints at structure and beauty, and never fail to bubble up from the texture at the right moments.

And that's important because primarily the Youth are a music band rather than a lyrics band, and the lyrics are fundamentally un-divorceable from the music, unlike say Paul Simon. I for one am glad that they've decided to stick to song form after the brilliant-but-almost-horrible sprawl of NYC Ghosts. As in all of their work, the actual music is the (very) necessary counterpoint to their lyrics. Now that they seem to be content with what lyrics they can muster, they can relax and let the music carry the lyrics to wherever the hell they want it to with the assuredness of master inventors. When Kim Gordon whispers grief in 'Massage the History', Thurston's wide-eyed guitar reveals a persona not broken by grief but coming out of grief looking at the world with new hope and old anger. That's a hell of an achievement for anybody, never mind a 50-year old rocker who's led the charge himself on several occasions.

I'm sure Pete Townshend is sorry that he wanted to die before he got old. Now nobody will let him live it down. He should also be sorry for missing the best thing that could happen to a rock and roller - growing old, facing down your demons and shouting your triumph and your grief to the sky. That will be the legacy of our generation, and that's what Sonic Youth have done here. Kim Gordon sums it up herself at the end of 'Massage the History' - 'Come with me to the other side/Not everyone makes it out alive'.

xmas 2010

It annoys me that I should have to talk about my feelings up here where I have made the altar of reason. But I suppose I disposed with the sacrosanct along with the sacred... so what the hell.

This year has been the best and the worst at the same time, the highest and the lowest of conditions. Just 11 months back I was still 3rd Sergeant Adam, waiting for my release into the civilian world. And then it was a storm of music and friends and preparations and saying goodbyes. And then it was a storm of newness, and those were days of ecstatic freedom and then it ended.

Now it's christmastime and I'm carrying a grief heavier than my heart. It is in part a grief for the past and the familiar that I have left behind and the unfamiliar that is in my lungs and forces a new death with every passing day. But it is mostly a grief for the futures that will never happen. These days are the fulcra about which the rest of our lives revolve. Every lost opportunity is met with its echo - a wave of grief propagating ceaselessly into the future. I grieve for one particular future that is lost, in which I prophesied happiness that is now lost to me.

There are other things: the bittersweet feeling of letting the old year die and welcoming the new one. There are songs and fireplaces, and family and the sounds of children. There are the voices of old friends and the faces of the new. All of these things are the messengers of happiness. I am grateful for them, but I still grieve, and when it passes it will not be a restoration to life but the first step in preparation for death. In the meantime, I mean to live, and that may require tears.

I'm a long long way from home

and I miss my lover so

In the early morning run

when the cold wind blows

when the cold wind blows

- Singapore army song

I did not anticipate being this far away. I did not anticipate being this alone.

On Rage

There is much cause for anger for an atheist. Everyday I am confronted with new evidence of the unbelievable stupidity and ignorance (not to say violence) that religion causes. People around the world are suffering from the effects of religion, not just because religion is misappropriated by Bad People, which it is, but because religion and its texts are engines of extremism, in the words of Sam Harris. No religion that professes a text that supports slavery and capital punishment to be the Word of God will ever be free of extremism. It is not Bad People that are solely to blame: religion is inherently to blame.

The causes for rage are many - not always a personal rage, I must admit. These are things that are to some degree removed from my personal experiences. But isn't the idea of sociopolitical and humanistic awareness basically the expansion of one's own experience to include the happenings of wider society? The concern (and indignance) is valid, I feel.

Yet there is, from another point of view, little cause for rage for one such as myself. I have religious friends who are as much human beings as anybody I know. The ideological hatefulness of religion shouldn't negate my mostly-positive personal experience of religious people and religion in general.

What I'm saying I guess is that as an atheist I should be on my guard against the sort of dogmatic hate-mongering that is the mark of extremism. Which is not to say that I should not be highly outraged whenever a human being's dignity is compromised over some laughable point of theology. However, the quality of outrage is not personal, if it doesn't happen to me. It is a specific outrage directed at injustice, not a spiteful and personal vengeance. It is too easy to be monolithic about morality and blindly apply narratives across the spectrum of my experiences.

I think that the acceptance of reason as a guide to living necessitates accepting the plurality of experience. No One Thing is true - if it is we are incapable of understanding. This might mean that I find religion reprehensible on one hand and deeply love my religious friends on the other. It doesn't make much sense, but at times the reality of feelings and experience don't make sense. It is only human to make the best we can of it.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

Leo Igwe at the 2nd Annual Conference for the Free Society Institute of South Africa

'To the question that brought us here today – is a secular viewpoint our best guide to moral clarity? – my answer is yes. The secular, not religious, outlook provides us a reliable framework for the expression and realization of moral excellence. The secular viewpoint is based on evidence, reason, science, common sense and human beneficence. The secular outlook is open to revision and improvement. Secular morality is a morality for this world and of this world, not for the next; it is a morality for our happiness and well being in the here and now, not in the hereafter. It is a morality for this temporary life not for an eternal afterlife in an imaginary paradise. Secular morality is a morality by us, from us and for us, not a moral decree of God from God and for us ‘wretched’ humans. Secular morality is informed by the quest to be good and to do good for goodness’ sake, not the quest to be good and to do good for God’s sake or for heaven’s sake or to avoid going to Hell.'

There is nothing more to life than chasing down every temporary high

For a unbeliever,

life is a rush from peak to peak

backpacking up the steps and slopes

then a wild toboggan ride through the valleys and up some ways

I beg you not to think that that's so sad

as you daughters of the faith are wont to do

one climbs and falls

(one climbs, at any rate)

and, ascending to each peak one isn't concerned with

breathlessness and aching legs

but the sun reflecting off the lakes and the trees.

it will pass, as you say.

after the last ascent I will ride alone into the valley of death,

that cold and windy place -

but There is nothing more to life than chasing down every temporary high,

I am happy to say.

I get stronger with each ascent,

and looking out from the hilltops I know that the sun is rising

and say to myself 'It is good.'

for abigail

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America