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A review by jonscott9
Popular Music by Kelly Schirmann
3.0
"The great Dream of our age
is to love what you are paid for
The great Myth of our age
is that this happens how we want"
I knew nothing of this writer-poet or this book ahead of delving into it, and I'm so glad for that. Schirmann makes the mundane into the marvelous, with the tasks, habits, conversations, thoughts and experiences we have adding up to a beautiful sum.
This isn't really about "popular" music, though there are winking asides and passing lines, but rather about internalized and interpersonal matters of the human condition. I'd give it 3.5 stars on here if I could, with the caveat for me being that I sometimes wanted a section of verse or a paragraph/section to go deeper or further with its thought. That might not've been the point; perhaps her point is to take it there yourself, for yourself.
The author name-checks everyone from Joni Mitchell to Frank Ocean to Joanna Newsom in the "liner notes" at the back of the book, which I read in a bit more than an hour as it flipped between chapters of poetry and prose.
The poetry has a gripping, stream-of-conscious-thought quality to it. I appreciated that, despite its intent, it didn't feel forced it read to have tried too hard.
I appreciated that Schirmann, like fellow poet-essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, weighed in on Martin Scorcese's 1978 music film, The Last Waltz. Both writers remain obsessed with it, a visual recording of a concert, the last one by The Band ("Take a load off, Annie!") that also features Joni, Mavis, and more musical luminaries. So now, even if it's considered something of a Thanksgiving movie, I'll turn to that with fresh eyes.
"Music is where we store our knowledge. We bury it there, all kinds. When we play it back we remember what we needed to internalize—our most obvious truths, the ones we could never really hear.
"Does art tell us anything that we don't already know, or think we know; anything that doesn't remind us of something else, something we've already heard?"
is to love what you are paid for
The great Myth of our age
is that this happens how we want"
I knew nothing of this writer-poet or this book ahead of delving into it, and I'm so glad for that. Schirmann makes the mundane into the marvelous, with the tasks, habits, conversations, thoughts and experiences we have adding up to a beautiful sum.
This isn't really about "popular" music, though there are winking asides and passing lines, but rather about internalized and interpersonal matters of the human condition. I'd give it 3.5 stars on here if I could, with the caveat for me being that I sometimes wanted a section of verse or a paragraph/section to go deeper or further with its thought. That might not've been the point; perhaps her point is to take it there yourself, for yourself.
The author name-checks everyone from Joni Mitchell to Frank Ocean to Joanna Newsom in the "liner notes" at the back of the book, which I read in a bit more than an hour as it flipped between chapters of poetry and prose.
The poetry has a gripping, stream-of-conscious-thought quality to it. I appreciated that, despite its intent, it didn't feel forced it read to have tried too hard.
I appreciated that Schirmann, like fellow poet-essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, weighed in on Martin Scorcese's 1978 music film, The Last Waltz. Both writers remain obsessed with it, a visual recording of a concert, the last one by The Band ("Take a load off, Annie!") that also features Joni, Mavis, and more musical luminaries. So now, even if it's considered something of a Thanksgiving movie, I'll turn to that with fresh eyes.
"Music is where we store our knowledge. We bury it there, all kinds. When we play it back we remember what we needed to internalize—our most obvious truths, the ones we could never really hear.
"Does art tell us anything that we don't already know, or think we know; anything that doesn't remind us of something else, something we've already heard?"