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Many would call it masochism but I do not believe it is so. Simply put, during this period, I just can't listen to cheerful music, using it as a marker to cover what's underneath. Watching him crumble week after week in the hospital is atrocious; this state of affairs lays a veil of sadness on me that I try to shake off in various ways. A few aperitifs and evenings out are there but the overwhelming feeling is of listening to a scratched record; the melody continuously interrupted. And so I take the headphones and run until it gets dark.
If a child sees something unusual, they approach and try to touch what they do not understand. They open their hand and move closer to that leg that should be there and instead seems to be hidden somewhere. It is only with the force and constancy of those continuous reproaches from parents that over time we learn to disguise attraction, interest in what is different, transforming it into the art of pretending nothing's there, of hiding the dust under the carpet.
With increasing frequency, I am getting to know the oncology ward of my city; there are children who candidly ask why their relative has lost so much weight and no longer has their hair. Some take the corners of their grandparent's or mother's mouth and pull them up to form a smile; the one that has been on vacation for several months. They are disarming and bring joy because with that sincerity they make them feel like real people and not just objects to be pitied while crying. A visitor takes a few days to get acclimated and realize that behind that diversity, that monstrous pain, there is beauty.
Beautiful Freak.
After a couple of solo albums released in the early '90s, Mark Oliver Everett, much more simply E., releases the first album with the Eels. It is a CD that can flow peacefully in the car, I got to know it like that a few months ago, as a placid background while discussing this and that; instruments and voice are never excessive, often whispering and in some cases they seem to be gently knocking with the knuckles asking "may I disturb?"
Listening to “Beautiful Freak” in such a manner would, however, be rather rude on your part. The cover, in case you have the original CD as I do, immediately tells us that it is a very intriguing work featuring a crawling child scanning us with disproportionately large eyes. We are drawn to those tennis balls but then we bow our heads pretending not to have seen them because they almost embarrass us. A little monster with a disarming tenderness that will conquer us with its twelve songs without too much effort.
If I were an expert, I would say that the music of Eels belongs to the indie rock genre and refers to artists like Cake and Beck, with rather soft guitars even in the more rhythmic pieces like “Novocaine for the Soul”. I close my eyes and let myself be lulled by a sweet melancholy that lasts about forty minutes in which everything is gray yet filled with sweetness (“Susan's House”). These are short tracks in which the sound production seems deliberately muffled as if intending to age the product a few decades (low-fi). Intros like those in “Rags to Rags” manage to materialize the fine fall of rain swept by the wind that has been persistently present in my daily life for some months. A lament, now electronic (“Mental”) now more abrasive, takes the form of a distorted guitar (“My Beloved Monster”). This music wraps around me with a few distinct elements in each piece, differentiating each from the last. It's an album to be listened to without interruptions, devoid of lows and able to bring back memories of rare sweetness as if that music had been linked to us for years. E's voice can be rough (“Rags to Rags”) or a caress (“Monchild”) and the simple and uncompromising lyrics are an added value.
Beautiful melancholy in the form of music.
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