"We Should All Be So Godforsaken"

I must be getting old, alas.

When I first started reading Pitchfork a couple years ago, every day or two I'd find an article about one of the bands I had loved in the 80's and 90's: a little Bauhaus or Dead Can Dance here, a little Cure or Depeche Mode there. This familiar material, echoes of my own past, eased my return to the world of contemporary music, somehow made it easier for me to get into new bands: the Decemberists, Voxtrot, Cat Power, DeVotchKa, Gogol Bordello.

From 1987 until about 1996, I had my finger on the pulse of new, alternative rock music. I was a DJ at KSJS during my first (and only) year at San Jose State, then again for several years at KRCC, a quasi-independent public radio station at Colorado College. In 1994, when I finally graduated with a bachelor's in English, I landed a job at the Colorado Springs Independent, where I started as an Arts & Entertainment reporter and soon became the A&E editor. All along, from DJ to editor, I had access to the newest and best CD's. Often enough, I was able to score free tickets to the shows I wanted to see. It was great. Near the end there, I even sang and wrote songs for a band that could have been a contender....

Then, when I left the Independent and devoted many hours a day to meditation (a habit that also didn't last), I stopped paying attention to new music. In fact, I practically renounced music as a vice. For several years I didn't listen to the radio, go to concerts or read CD reviews.

Then, about three years ago, something shifted. I began teaching composition at the University of Montana. Consequently, I was around a lot of college freshmen, the vast majority of whom seemed in no better touch with contemporary music than I. Sure, a couple of them wore New Pornographers T-shirts or attended the shows of my friends who were in a punk band. But, by and large, I found myself wishing the kids I taught would pay more attention to the cutting edge music of their generation. Because they didn't, I started up again.

Or tried.

Despite its shortcomings, I settled on Pitchfork as the venue for my re-immersion into the ocean of new music. The site seemed fairly comprehensive, if a bit monolithic in its tastes and style, and its staff occasionally published a killer interview. And almost every day, Pitchfork covered bands I knew. In turn, I listened to new bands, tried some new things. But, gradually, I've lapsed. I still check the Pitchfork cover page for news and reviews, more or less daily, but if there are no bands I'm already familiar with then I tend to ignore the rest. News of familiar artists has been so few and far between lately that I wonder if the bands I liked as a kid (Echo & the Bunnymen, New Model Army, James, and on and on) have, themselves, finally reached something like the age of retirement. Had I, in a quirk of bad timing (a hallmark of my life), simply tuned in for their final gasps? Possibly so. It's a sad thought.

Perhaps I would have been better off in my self-imposed exile from new music. Maybe I would have gone on quite happily listening to the same old albums in perpetuity. But once I started to partake again--and surely the physical side of this is mere coincidence--I began to feel old. Truly old. These days, foggy patches sometimes drift through my memory. My shoulder hurts for days whenever I so much as toss a tennis ball across the yard for the dog. My knees--no, my entire body aches when I forget to take my glucosamine and condroitin. I have gray hairs now. I take medication for high blood pressure. I'm pushing forty, though forty's still at arm's length. Etc., etc.

I'm reminded of Grace Paley's funny, heartbreaking short story, "My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age." In it, the old man starts talking about how God told us several times, back when he was still in touch, that he was indeed a jealous god--that if people were enjoying too much, he would simply take it from them. There's a particular line that sticks with me. It happens when the old man concedes that God grants exceptions, that sometimes he doesn't take a life too soon. I don't have the book and can't find the quotation online, but this is pretty close, I think--so I'll close with it:

"I've read there are three-thousand year-old trees somewhere in some godforsaken place. Of course, that's how come they're still alive. We should all be so godforsaken."