Hussalonia Song # 17: I Want To Be An Owl

I must begin by saying that this is one entry I have been especially looking forward to since this blog began. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of my absolute, all-time favorite Hussalonia recordings. It is a definite pick for a "Leonard Kirke's Personal Mix" compilation album, if one existed. It is also a tie with "Marvin, I Love You" for my all-time favorite robot song.

Every time the music begins on this track I feel totally pulled in to the world of the song. The production, the musicianship here is exceptional in all ways; I'm too unfamiliar with musical terms to know if I'm really applying this phrase correctly, but what comes to mind as soon as I hear it is "wall of sound." Really, it has one of the richest arrangements on the whole album, and one so fine you'd expect it to be reserved for a song sung by a human. Such is Hussalonia's commitment to honoring and bringing out the best of these robot performers. The piano, guitar, and that unforgettable banjo…all of them together are really incredible, really beautiful. It is also, arguably, the most idyllic, peaceful and lushly arranged of all of the robot songs on either of the Hussalonia Robot Singers albums, at least of all that come to mind at the moment.

Now, I like this song so much for its own sake, but there is also, at least in the back of my mind, a personal reason for enjoying it as well. You see, once upon a time, I too wanted to be an owl.

No, I'm not joking, nor have I gone mad. When I was a child, I have a distinct memory of responding to the question of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with, you guessed it, "An owl."

"OH REALLY?" I hear you say.

I can't recall what was going through my mind when I said this. Owls do eat mice, which I find rather unpleasant, and they do regurgitate fairly often I think, which is also rather unpleasant. Yet they are indeed strangely elegant looking animals. They seem to command respect, yet are aloof and not keen on bothering those who aren't prey. They keep to themselves and appear always alert. They are unique in appearance among birds, with an almost regal yet mysterious way about them.

I suppose that there is just something alluring about them, stemming from all these qualities, that would make one want to be one, and so I assume that is what motivates the robot singer. For the record, these days when I am asked what animal I would like to be, I usually say lemur. More about lemurs when I write about "Dear Hussalonia: Letters from Animals, Mostly Ducks." I would like to add that, ideally, if I'm going to be able to physically transform, I'd most prefer it to be a constant, reversible ability that also allows for multiple forms. That way I'd get to be an owl and a lemur. Reach for the stars, kids. Don't settle or compromise; get exactly what you want, if it is decent, or be happy without it.

The atmosphere in this song is very striking: "Everyone disappears when the sun leaves the sky / hiding from the dark / leaving stars and airplanes to wander the sky / and me to wander the park." I'm drawn in right away. I can almost feel that "cool summer breeze" and hear that "lonesome cricket sound." I can almost smell the way the house smells in summertime. It is incredibly evocative in this very sensory way. The style of the music might be considered country, and the sense of loneliness, freedom, chasing one's dreams out in the open has an almost Old West kind of romance to it.

Really, the robot singer is sad and inspirational all at once. A suit of brown feathers isn't the same thing as actually being an owl, and presumably this is a robot that can't fly. Yet at the same time, what else would we have him do? Give up? He may not be an owl, but he's got a nice brown feather suit, he's got a beautiful, breezy summer evening and a sky filled with lights. All things considered, it doesn't really sound like such a bad place to be. I actually find the scene the song conjures rather peaceful, a bit like a certain beach in South Carolina at night-time is for me.

One thing I find myself wondering nearly every time I listen to this song is exactly what sort of robot is singing. As I mentioned in the previous entry, I tend to assign some sort of specific role or form to the robot personas, if one is not already given, as is the case with the song that is the focus of our next entry. I can't think of what sort of robotic machine would be in a park at night. I suppose it is just your classic humanoid robot; heck, perhaps this one is an autographical song written by the singer himself. I will mention, though, that over time I've envisioned this song's narrator to be some sort of short, squat vacuum-cleaner type of machine, perhaps some kind of outdoor Roomba.

This is another song that I feel is ripe for some sort of visual accompaniment. Of course, there's always the danger, they say, of a visual interpretation of a song or story ruining one's personal vision of it, but usually I am able to ignore an outside visual interpretation of something if I dislike it and return to my own imagination. In this case, I'd love to see some sort of creative music video or something for this song. The setting alone could be worth the effort.

Still, music video musings aside, this song more than stands on its own. It is difficult to listen to it without being reminded of some personal dream, something that may never happen but you keep trying anyway. I've got a number of dreams like that, not just the childhood dream of wanting to be an owl. I take some sort of comfort in this robot, guileless and innocent as he is, doing his best to become what he wants to be. It might be comical, it might be sad, but it is also inspiring in some way. It strikes me as a reminder to never give up, even when one is left alone with a dream, even if there is little or no hope of it coming true; instead, one keeps pressing on. So I applaud this determined, joyous robot, alone in his own, lovely, dreamy little night-time world. So I applaud Hussalonia as well, for bringing me his song.

Hussalonia Song # 16: Neglect Has Turned Me Orange And Brown, But You Have Made Me Blue

I'm not sure if I'm just imagining the similarity, but whenever the vocal part of "Neglect Has Turned Me Orange And Brown, But You Have Made Me Blue" starts up just after the one minute mark, I'm strongly reminded of the Tom Waits song "Innocent When You Dream." Thematically I can't think of any such similarity, but something about the tune sounds to me at least slightly reminiscent of the Waits song.

This, "Abide With Me," "I Want To Be An Owl" and "Home On The Range" are my personal favorite tracks on this album, though this and "Abide With Me" are both very short. The vocal part of this song in particular doesn't start until near the end, and it only lasts roughly 45 seconds or so. Still, short though it is, it is short and sweet, as are much of Hussalonia's recordings.

While a robot is doing the singing of the tracks on both Hussalonia Robot Singers albums, I find myself imagining the different everyday appliances, imbued with some AI-higher consciousness, that might possibly be the source of the robot voice. Now, as I referenced in the previous entry, there is a fascinating explanation for the history of the Hussalonia Robot Singers, but I feel that the trio of singing robots are like so many great troubadours, singing for those without a voice. Johnny Cash became the Man in Black to sing for the poor, underprivileged, abused and those taken advantage of, Bob Dylan told us the stories of the Hurricane and poor Hattie Carol and Hollis Brown. The Hussalonia Robot Singers, however, tell us the stories of our modern mechanical servants, our toasters, blenders, and barbeque grills and all of the neglect and abuse they suffer.

When I think of a neglected machine turning orange and brown (and feeling blue about it) I think of a grill. Something, perhaps, went wrong with it. The burgers didn't turn out quite right. So you just tossed it out. It was a cheap-o anyway, you said; you found it on sale and then haggled to get it for even less, and that's all it's worth to you. So when the first sign of the most minor trouble appeared, you'd rather not waste your own precious time. So you toss it. It's time for a new one, you think. You leave it outside with a cardboard sign that says "FREE." It stands there by the side of the road, sign propped up next to the leg, homeless. The rain comes, the ink runs off the sign and the rust starts. Nobody wants it now. Then, it is finally picked up…by the garbage collector.

To think, of all things, it only wanted to be used, to do a good job for you, to help you make a delicious summer meal. Now it is the dead of winter and it rusts to death in the dump.

"It's only an object," you say, "it's not like it was a person I tossed aside, or even an animal. What's the big deal?"

Maybe nothing, maybe it is not a big deal at all. Yet…it might be worth considering, that perhaps there is some significance in how we treat the things. Things are "just things" to us, yet even the things crafted for a utilitarian purpose are products of human effort, products, perhaps, of one of many in a great, assembly-line human machine of production. It may be worth a thought, the idea of what it means to treat with such carelessness that which one's fellow human beings have produced. It was, I believe, the Czech filmmaker and stop-motion animator Jan Svankmejer that once remarked, when asked about the items he brought to life in his stop-motion animations, that he chose old items only, because in those he got the most sense of, I think he said, identity, or spirit from them, some sort of history inside them. After all, in all that we use, in all that we create, isn't there some blood, sweat, and tears?

Isn't there some spirit?

Hussalonia Song # 15: Abide With Me [A Cover]

Now we begin our exploration of the bizarre world of "The Hussalonia Robot Singers." In this entry I hope to cover such topics as the origin of the song "Abide With Me," which is the first cover performed by Hussalonia that I shall write about on this blog, my own feelings about robots, and finally a brief mention of how a robot song inspired me to study philosophy.

Prior to hearing this album, I'd never heard "Abide With Me," or at least I can't recall having heard it, despite attending a number of Christian churches in my youth. Most hymns never really got my attention as a kid; I only began to appreciate many hymns and traditional songs in adulthood after hearing covers by artists such as Bob Dylan who appreciate such songs and manage to give them the street cred that they deserve and that churches and local choir performances don't really convey, at least not to me. Since Hussalonia and "The Hussalonia Robot Singers" introduced me to this song, I've bought two beautiful versions by Mahalia Jackson and Hayley Westenra. The Jackson version ended up inspired a lovely short story idea that came to me while watching fireworks on the third of July last year. So I thank you again, Hussalonia, for inspiring my own creative efforts, albeit indirectly.

The song itself was written by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847 (making it public domain, for those of you following at home) as he was at death's door due to tuberculosis, or so says Wikipedia. Perhaps the religiousness/spirituality of the song isn't your thing, but I can't imagine not being moved by the sincerity and passion in the song, especially given the circumstances in which it was written. For those wishing to read and maybe even appropriate (for your own creative works) the complete lyrics of this public domain classic, Wikisource has got you covered: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Abide_with_Me. Hats off to you, Wikisource, and all of the lovely people out there who make public domain material readily available to us all. I would certainly rank it as one of the finest hymns/religious songs I've ever heard. Oddly enough, I discovered it via Hussalonia around the same time that I discovered another personal favorite, traditional-spiritual song, "Lone Pilgrim," via Bob Dylan's album of covers of such older songs, "World Gone Wrong."

The cover by Hussalonia/The Hussalonia Robot Singers, clocking in at only 42 seconds long, only includes the first verse. Nonetheless, in the album's strange way, it remains quite lovely. I should take this opportunity to talk about the album as a whole and my personal feelings regarding robots. In most cases, I hate stories that involve robots or normally inanimate objects as protagonists or supporting characters. The Star Wars films don't bother me in that regard too much, as C-3P0 and R2-D2 act primarily as comic relief and so I don't find myself mired in troubling philosophical questions about their selfhood. In the Star Trek series, which I became interested in only very recently (and no, I was not named after either Leonard Nimoy or Captain James T. Kirk, in case you were wondering) I feel that the character Data from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is actually quite likable and his android-hood is treated in a way that somehow subverts whatever would normally bother me about such a character, and other artificial intelligence-based characters in the series are treated in a way that I feel treats the elements of such characters that I normally find irritatingly taken for granted with proper respect. I do hate when the Borg are featured, though. I find the Borg disgusting.

I really can't embrace Osamu Tezuka's widely beloved "Astro Boy" series despite how much I enjoy his other works. In regard to inanimate object stories, I can't stand any of the "Toy Story" films or that blasted "Velveteen Rabbit" story. Things such as that just rub me the wrong way somehow. Oddly, though I generally dislike robot and inanimate object-centric stories, I'm drawn to stories with elderly protagonists, such as the film "Bubba Ho-Tep" and the animated film "Up." Go figure.

I do, however, enjoy both "The Hussalonia Robot Singers" and the sequel album "The Somewhat Surprising Return of The Hussalonia Robot Singers." That said, when I say "enjoy," I use the word loosely. Both of these albums give me the same grossed out, creeped out feeling that most robot stories do, and that usually is enough to make me hate them. Oddly, though, in regard to both inanimate object stories and robot stories, there always seems to be one or two exceptions to my general dislike that I really enjoy and which, strangely, I really enjoy for the exact reason, more or less, that I normally would dislike such things. For one of the few inanimate object stories I love, there's the animated film "The Brave Little Toaster." For robot stories, there's another "robot song" I heard years ago that indirectly led me to one of my most important passions in life, philosophy. That other, non-Hussalonia "robot song" is "Marvin, I Love You."

"Marvin, I Love You" was written, if memory serves, by Douglas Adams, and it was a comedy single based on his "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" franchise that included both a radio play, a television miniseries and perhaps the most well-known telling of the tales, the novel "trilogy" that wound up including six books. The song is mostly a spoken word piece performed from the perspective of Marvin, the "the Paranoid Android" who is played by the same voice actor from the television miniseries. The song involves the perpetually "gloomy robot" realizing that there is a message in his "dusty old databanks" that is, essentially, a recorded love letter to him; it is a woman's voice singing of her love for him. The woman, the only of the two voices that actually sings, is portrayed, oddly enough, by Kimi Wong. For those of you who aren't familiar with her, she was once married (I think at the time she recorded this track) to Richard O'Brien, the creator of "The Rocky Horror Show" and the cult film adaptation of that musical, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," in which he also played the character of Riff Raff and Kimi Wong, if memory serves, played one of dancing "Transylvanians" during the "Time Warp" sequence.

I first stumbled upon this song when I bought a copy of the "The Very Best of Dr. Demento," which I sought out after years of being told of the Dr. Demento show airing locally earlier in my father's life. This song instantly captured my attention and interested me greatly; something about it struck me as being very poignant, despite being, essentially, a "novelty song." It was comedic, and Marvin's downtrodden tone was itself comical, but I couldn't help but feel a little bit of real sympathy for him too. The synthesizer music was very atmospheric, and the mention of computer data being stored on "tapes" really brought to mind this 1980s-era retro-future world that I find oddly appealing as well. I should mention that one other thing I have a strange fondness for is obsolete technology. Old records, old tapes, old film, old recorders, old cameras, floppy discs, old computers, all of it has a weird appeal to me; I'm fascinated by the idea of things being recorded and created in formats that people lose the widespread ability to use and decipher. I've actually got a number of my old writings saved on floppy disks that I'm still saving despite not being able to use with my new computer. This song, the idea of a robot which acts essentially as an anthropomorphized computer regretting that his design is becoming increasingly useless, struck me right away as something perfect for me. I recall being unsure of exactly what the quality was about the song that I enjoyed so much but I knew it was something about the mix of the themes of aging technology, lost love, regret, and loneliness and synthesizer music. The combination was just perfect for me.

From there, I sought out "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. I ordered the first book of the series at a Sam Goody store (remember those?) and on the day I went to pick it up, I was informed by the clerks working there of two things: my order had been botched and the book wasn't going to arrive, and the author of the book, Douglas Adams, had died that very morning of a heart attack at the age of only 49. Despite this depressing setback, I eventually obtained the whole book series and enjoyed them thoroughly. A few years later a collection including his unfinished final book and a bunch of essays was released under the title of "The Salmon of Doubt." During a beach vacation in South Carolina, I read through the book, and was fascinated by his essays on atheism (he was a friend of Richard Dawkins, who might be more familiar to many readers) and felt a need to engage them in thrilling philosophical combat, just to be contrary, I suppose. I joined some fan groups based on "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (which, ironically, remain online mostly abandoned, becoming "obsolete technology" themselves, covered in ridiculous spam messages worthy of the absurd humor of Adams himself) and it was in one of these that a film was recommended to me. I had seen Hayao Miyazaki's brilliant "Spirited Away" (a film which reconciled me with anime) and asked in one of the groups for other excellent animated films to bed recommended. One such recommendation was for Richard Linklater's "Waking Life." The following summer, on vacation in South Carolina again, my friend stumbled onto that film airing on television; we both enjoyed it from the moment we saw it, and it wasn't until later that I discovered that it was the same film recommended to me in the group. A man in that film appears in only one scene and says "Kierkegaard's last words were "Sweep me up!'" That name stuck out to me for some reason. I resolved to investigate the man and his work but promptly forgot about it; less than a month later, I was browsing a Borders bookstore and, inspired by my considerations about atheism brought about by my reading of Douglas Adams, I took a quick look in the philosophy section. There, I found "Works of Love" by Soren Kierkegaard. This would prove a turning point in my life as Kierkegaard's work would reinforce a number of philosophical ideas that occurred to me during my readings of Adams the year prior and, with far more eloquence than I possessed, expanded upon those ideas. It is difficult to convey here in this single blog entry just how important Kierkegaard, as well as Adams in a different way, proved to be for me in the years since, but I suppose it will suffice say that all of these experiences were very significant, life-changing ones, and it's all thanks to my initial love of novelty music and a robot song.

After that lengthy digression, I must return to "The Hussalonia Robot Singers" and "Abide With Me." For the album as a whole, I certainly appreciate the way the album (and the sequel album) was constructed. They give proper weight to the relevant "robot issues" in a way that I respect, and I can find in them various shades of that quality that I so enjoy in "Marvin, I Love You." Also like that song, they keep an overall sense of humor, albeit a rather tragicomic sense of humor. The songs on both albums tend to show more willingness to enter darker territories than the Adams song as well, which creates a nice balance, but for me at least this makes many of the songs rather difficult to listen to on a regular basis. I can appreciate them, but I can't always "enjoy" them in the usual sense of the word.

"Abide With Me," specifically, is an unusual track. Not being an original, robot-centric song, it creates an odd clash of expectations, as one normally expects to hear such a song performed by a church choir. What are we to make of this choice of material for an album like this? Is it a social commentary, creating a critical comparison between religious humans and robots? Is it simply absurd humor? Could it be chosen simply to reinforce the sadness of the robot singers' existence and existential angst? Perhaps it is there simply because the Hussalonia founder enjoyed the song? Could it be all of the above? I suppose all of those things are possibilities, and there are probably other ways of looking at it as well. I prefer the simplest explanations, that this and "Home On the Range," the album's other cover of a traditional song, were simply personal favorites' of the robot singers' inventor. For that fascinating piece of history, I encourage you to read the explanation provided on the album's own page on Hussalonia's official website, The Hussalonia Internet Concourse. It is a most informative and entertaining read.

Though it is only 42 seconds long, and only one verse of a longer work, "Abide With Me" is still a personal favorite from this album. The sudden, inverted human choir sound near the end, finishing off the rising volume of the robot voices is a startling, unusually lovely finish to a bizarre recording, and an equally lovely yet bizarre beginning to one of the stranger albums in Hussalonia's catalogue. Much like "Marvin, I Love You" led me to other important things such as philosophy and Soren Kierkegaard, so this track led me to a beautiful traditional song which in turn inspired a very important (to me, anyway) short story. One must take time, once in a while, and appreciate these beautiful threads in our lives.

One final note: I bought this album on CD via CDBaby about a year ago, and I checked in recently on a whim and discovered it was no longer on sale as a physical CD. I'm honored to be one of the final Hussalonianites to have bought a copy of the album in physical form! For those of you playing at home, I noticed that "Percy "thrills" Hussalonia" is listed as having only a few copies left in stock as well, so get 'em before they're gone, kids.

Our next entry will be on "Neglect Has Turned Me Orange And Brown, But You Have Made Me Blue." Until next time, this dude abides, and I hope that you do too.

 

Hussalonia Song # 14: What Will Become of Me? [Third Appearance]

Well, folks, here we are: At last, the final track of "Ernest Evans Hussalonia." It's taken me just over a year to write about the entire album, a totally excessive length of time brought on by a tendency to become distracted from personal projects and by a broken ergonomic keyboard. Yet, here I am, here we are. Today is the first day of the rest of this blog.

In preparing to write about this track, I decided to reread my entries on the other two recordings of this song that appear on the album, and also listen once again to all three in succession. Surprisingly, I didn't feel ashamed of my previous entries, as I sometimes do feel about confessional writings, especially those available to the public. They really weren't bad little writings after all, despite the occasional typo and the bizarre or outright incorrect wording (I used "illusive" when I meant to use "elusive" at one point, though I'm not really sure the former word didn't fit just as well) and they made for a nice time capsule of myself from roughly one year ago. I can't say my situation has changed that much since. The only notable difference is that my solitude has made me rather stir-crazy this winter.

Since I wrote about my fears of dealing with soul-crushing corporate entities when it comes to my literary efforts, I've had one experience that brought those anxieties back to the forefront of my mind. Last fall, I submitted a number of my fiction pieces to a student literary publication at my university. I'd submitted a few plus an essay the previous year and all were rejected, and I didn't really mind. Somehow I'm able to take rejection of my most serious writing efforts rather well, as I have an ingrained belief that the more my work is rejected by and bothersome to others, the more I am doing something right. This year, however, in addition to a stack of fiction works, I was recommended by a very nice professor who taught a nonfiction class I was taking at the time to submit a brief two page piece I'd written for an assignment. He gave it an A and recommended I submit it to the magazine in his comments. I was flattered, of course, and I very much appreciated how supportive he was, and I still am appreciative of that. Still, the thing I had written, as with most things I write due to obligation rather than personal interest, was something I threw together with very little forethought and passion. I wrote it in, I think, one sitting (as I do with most of these blog entries) and just didn't feel much connection to it, despite it being based on a personal experience from my childhood. Upon his recommendation, though, I revised and submitted it and was informed that it had been accepted for publication a week or two ago.

On the one hand, I feel compelled to be glad to have any public recognition of anything I write, to have anything I've written published, and also to be grateful to my professor for recommending it. It gives people, especially family, at least some idea that I'm making some sort of definable progress with my writing "career." On the other hand, though, this also bothers me in a way much more extreme than the rejections the previous year; I felt fine with my own, honest efforts being rejected. Again, I've long had the feeling that if one's art is rejected, ignored, and seen as bothersome by others, there's a better chance that there's something right about it. Yet here, I got some sort of little recognition, but it was for doing something that others enjoy and that I have no personal stake in. Of all the things I submitted, the one thing that I had created out of compulsion to please someone else, rather than out of genuine desire to write on my own terms, is accepted, and the others were ignored (the previous year I was given rejection letters for the things that didn't make the cut, this year the rejected pieces weren't even acknowledged, which I suppose doesn't really matter, but it stuck out to me nonetheless) and so it goes.

I suppose that the whole of this doesn't really matter, and that I should enjoy whatever inching towards material benefit it might have a slim chance of bringing me and not worry about any existential crisis it might create. After all, it doesn't stop me from writing the things I want to write. It just brings to mind the fear that I won't last long doing that, and that is where it begins to bother me. I am, I think, a rather contrary person, and it is the fear that I might become too agreeable that haunts me in consideration of things such as this. That part of my personality is one reason I've been enjoying the recent Hussalonia track "The Pleasure of Saying No" so much. It is most relatable. That, however, is a material for another blog entry.

Another thing I mentioned in the previous entries on "What Will Become of Me?" was my efforts at writing a potentially commercial, simply fun-to-write series. Since that mention, I've finished thus far a couple of novella-length pieces, three short stories and have just recently reached the halfway point of an origin story for the protagonists, and that is so far the longest single draft of a work I've ever written. Despite only being halfway finished, it is roughly 128 pages long. There have been some tough moments in writing it, and some long periods of not working on it, but overall it has progressed nicely and it remains fun to write. Once it is finished, I plan to offer at least a significant part of it for free online in order to see if there is any interest in it as a commercial endeavor. I've also begun correspondence with another illustrator with an aim for a possible graphic novel adaptation of the series. That project, at least, remains quite satisfying and in many ways refreshing from my less "fun" works.

Lastly for the purposes of recapping my previous entries, during my first exploration of "What Will Become of Me?" I mentioned the way that the track reminds me of that odd experience I sometimes have when, while in a depressed funk, I feel a sudden exuberance. I'm brought back to that initial impression on this third and final arrangement/recording of the song. The song's production is brilliant, with vocal tracks in the tempo of both of the previous arrangements juxtaposed against each other, creating a lovely duet of a single voice. While listening to this track, I can almost feel that strange elation that appears in the center of my bouts of depression, that odd sunshine during the eye of the storm, as the two tracks of that single voice sing in their own time. I am reminded, reflecting on those strange, strangely happy moments, of a sort of existentialist way of looking at things, of being both burdened and overjoyed with one's life, both circumstances and potential through choice. I am reminded of an experience described by one of my favorite writers and thinkers, the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard; he described it as "the dizziness of freedom."

The song's narrator says that he doesn't "care, how, when or where" but the urgency and the seriousness of the vocals seem to suggest otherwise. As I wrote before, this song's title returns to my mind in anxious moment, perfectly describing that emotion of uncertainty about the future. Yet likely one is best off just not worrying about it, as much as they can help it.

This thought, and this song, are a perfect way to end this entry on the final song of "Ernest Evans Hussalonia." As I said, today is the first day of the rest of this blog. Covering just one album took me far too long, but who knows, I may pick up the pace? Who knows if I'll ever catch up with Hussalonia's own output? Does it matter? What will become of me? I'll burn or I'll float, I'll scream or make not a sound, as the song says. Let's find out where this blog is going.

Bidding farewell to "Ernest Evans Hussalonia," we now say hello to "The Hussalonia Robot Singers," a truly fascinating album.

Until next time, I wish you the best.

Leo Kirke

Hussalonia Song # 13: A Farewell to Alarms

Writing about sound collage tracks has proven to be rather difficult. Actually, writing about the more traditional, music tracks has proven difficult as well. Nonetheless, I find that writing about a sound collage in a commentary fashion to be perhaps the most difficult thing thus far about this blog. So, for the second to last track on "Ernest Evans Hussalonia," I've decided to do things a bit differently. Normally I listen to a song multiple times, maybe three or four times, before writing about it, and then I play it while I'm writing, repeating for as long as it takes to finish the blog entry. For "A Farewell to Alarms," aside from one or two preparatory listens some time ago, I decided ultimately to play it only once during the actual writing of the entry, and rather than attempt a commentary style, I simply wrote free-form, almost-stream-of-consciousness, finishing up when the track ended. I say almost because I did sort of edit myself as I went along, but for the most part what you'll read is directly what came out of my mind as I listened to "A Farewell to Alarms." It may have some spelling mistakes and etc. but, like the other entries on this blog, I didn't go back and revise significantly, and nearly all the editing was done alongside the original writing itself, and so whatever problems I missed there remain present.

One thing to note about the piece itself: As what drew me to Hussalonia in the first place was a search for public domain music, and since The Public Domain EP remains one of my favorite Hussalonia releases, I've decided to dedicate the following bit of fiction to the public domain. It will be the first time I have dedicated anything to the public domain, though I have planned on releasing something that way for quite some time. It may not really be very good, in fact there really isn't much to it and it isn't very lyrical, but maybe somebody can do something with it. I enjoyed writing it, and I find myself drawn to the idea of creative efforts being inspired by other creative efforts, and so this may not be the only time I write some short, disembodied fiction based on a Hussalonia recording. I should also mention that this piece mentions a band called "The Regrets." I made this up as I went along, and I've never, as best as I can remember, heard of a band going by this name. I'm fairly sure a name can't be copyrighted, but I believe it can be trademarked, so if you're a member of a band called The Regrets, and I have stepped on your toes, feel free to let me know and I shall edit the piece to include a different name. Maybe something generic, like "The Band." Oh, wait…crap! Well, maybe I'll just delete it altogether if it bothers you. For those of you wishing to appropriate this piece thanks to it being dedicated to the public domain, I encourage you to make up a different band name at the end, just in case that's not something I can rightfully include in fiction without violating some copyright or trademark I don't know about. I believe that the only reason I included it as that it had, in my mind at the time at least, some sort of fitting, poetic quality that I enjoyed.

In the sense that this was really more of a creative exercise, the lack of focus or quality actually feels appropriate to me for a public domain release. If the public domain exists to foster shared creativity, then it makes sense to me to share in the normally solitary process of writing, which sometimes begins as it does here with the creation of a rough disembodied stream-of-consciousness prose piece. For the solitary writer this rough material would normally be revised and built upon and refined into something more aesthetically pleasing or philosophically stimulating or both, and that is an admirable individual effort. In the case of releasing a rough draft or rough piece into the public domain, however, there is the possibility that the same process happens more than once for different artists using the same rough source material. This makes an often solitary process feel a little cozier and less lonely. If, as it is sometimes said, all art is built upon past art, then it makes perfect sense to me to share rough drafts and sketches like this freely. I think that this really fulfills the mission of this blog to give proper due to every Hussalonia recording: what better way to honor a work of art than to create one inspired by it? Perhaps, as with some rough drafts created in the writing process of a single writer, no one will use this to create anything new, and it will fall flat and into obscurity. Still, much of the joy of art for me is in the process, and so there is no harm, no foul, and no regrets.

Title: "Outside in the Rain, Waiting"

Author: Leonard Kirke

Notes: Inspired by Hussalonia's "A Farewell to Alarms" and released directly into the public domain, though "A Farewell to Alarms" is not itself in the public domain and remains the property of Hussalonia. The following is not endorsed by Hussalonia, nor created in association with Hussalonia and does not reflect the original intent or context of the Hussalonia recording that inspired it.

The public domain material begins below, in italics:

"Cobblestones streets outside, and inside the concert is about to begin. I heard the band tuning up, rehearsing, and the rain starts to fall. They won't let me inside until precisely the time that the ticket says "DOORS OPEN." I have ten minutes left. Nearby a car alarm cries out into the night, and the rain falls harder, trying to drown out the noise. I'm being soaked; my clothes feel like they're melting into my skin, becoming dripping clay against my bones. Hansom cabs saunter by, the drivers whipping their horses to hurry, but the horses will not go any faster. I wonder if they enjoy the rain on their bodies, or if they just enjoy forcing their drivers and the Valentine's Day couples, currently their passengers, to get drenched.

Inside the hall I hear a dissonance, I wonder if something has gone wrong with the band. The church across the street is aglow, and there is chanting; it sounds like monks. Through the rain I can't see what denomination of church it is, or even what religion it is. I imagine that the monks are placing a curse on the band with their song. There is crashing and banging, and what I think is a large drum being dropped on its side. The hansom cabs keep slinking by; the procession appears endless.

It occurs to me that it has been over five minutes since I've been standing here. It is as if time suddenly sped up to accommodate me as I waited. A man at the door motions to me. I approach the warm light of the entrance hall. Pots and pans are clanging and crashing as they're carried into a side door, I suspect it is the kitchen. The horses continue to plod by. The monks are still chanting in the church. I enter, and I gaze at the poster on the wall: "Tonight Only, The Regrets!"

Hussalonia Song # 12: There’s No Such Place As Home

Ah, once again, it has been far too long since I've added an entry to this lovely little blog. In fact, this is the longest gap yet between entries since this blog began. I hope you can forgive me for my lack of focus. However, I make no promises towards improvement in that regard. Whatever happens happens, isn't that the way it works? I make no promises.

Hussalonia's one-release-a-month project for 2010 seems to have ended just two months short of the goal. The final two entries were one song each, but they were excellent enough in quality to make up for a lack of quantity. The final release of the year, "Through With Music," is a song I've listened to repeatedly over the last few months and one I've dreamed of making a movie of just to use it as an ending theme (making music videos and musical segments in movies is something I do frequently, if not constantly, when I listen to music I really enjoy, so don't be surprised if I mention that again) though I must confess I worry that the song might be autobiographical. I certainly hope that Hussalonia isn't really through with music; I've dealt with the retirement of several artists I've enjoyed over the last few years (including the retirement of the band The White Stripes announced the morning of February 2nd, including a statement that their music "now belongs to you," which frankly outside the context of dedicating work to the public domain I do not understand at all) and though I always try to meet the end of an artists' output philosophically, I can never quite shake the feeling of being bummed out about it, either. Still, if this is the end of Hussalonia's creative output, then I must take a moment and give proper thanks once again for all of the incredible music created over the years, and also I must mention the volume of it released entirely free of charge and further still the songs kindly dedicated to the public domain. My gratitude for Hussalonia's efforts is what this blog is all about, after all, even if I do neglect updating it for far too long. Whatever the future may hold, I thank you, Hussalonia.

One last note: As mentioned in Hussalonia's own News section on the Hussalonia website, a filmmaker named Stephen Aymond is creating a film inspired by Hussalonia's album "The Somewhat Surprising Return of The Hussalonia Robot Singers" titled, fittingly enough, "The Somewhat Surprising Return of John's Computer." Hussalonia's website links to a couple of his previous Hussalonia-based projects, and on this website: http://www.indiegogo.com/stephenaymond you can donate to his 2,000 dollar goal of financing for his film. It sounds like an excellent film, and the description reminds me of "The Brave Little Toaster," an animated film that I love. If you aren't currently low on disposable income as I am, please consider contributing to his efforts.

Now, on to this entry's song:

The home is where the heart is, that's what they say. Yet if this song is correct, and there's no such place as home, then what is in the heart? I've already confused myself.

This may sound rather dense and nonsensical, but I've long felt a strange sensitivity to time and place. It is rather difficult to define, but there is a particular experience that I think serves as the prime example of this. A close friend of mine, who experiences this same odd sense of time and space, calls it "the space-time phenomenon." It is, in short, the experience of being in a place where many people have just been but have not vacated. It is standing on a football field after the players and crowd have gone home after a game, or the empty gymnasium after the school dance is over, the theater after the end if the concert. These moments are the kind which proves most striking, but that strange sensation of time and place, of change, of ethereality, can happen in many situations.

I can recall the lobby of the student center where I struggled with staying awake as I arrived at 5 AM and waited four hours for classes to begin. I can recall it then, cold, in fall and winter, empty except for the few employees going around setting things up for the day, taking the covers off of the pool tables, turning on the TVs playing infomercials. I see one that I watched one other early morning months earlier, taking a break from a marathon editing session for a short film my friends and I created. That was just before I began at this new college. I can recall being at the old one; I can recall meetings with the class adviser who died earlier that year of a heart attack. I can recall sitting in that same area with one of my friends, checking email on one of the public computers and discovering that our short film was accepted into a film festival. Everything flashes forward; that friend has switched colleges as well, and once again I'm alone there at the end of a spring day, feeling aimless. Flash forward again, I rarely go into that building anymore, and I still feel aimless.

In the backyard of the house where I grew up I can recall playing outside as a child with friends who have since drifted away. I can remember reading "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac on the driveway and the cat that showed up and died under the porch, having snuck in there just before we went on vacation. I remember getting the mail in the front yard not long ago.

It feels, to use the old expression, like one never steps into the same river twice. Some places retain more of the same aura longer and more strongly than others; my great-grandparents' house, where I spent many days of my early childhood watching cartoons, feels like they never left. The ceramic owls are still over the same stove. The "Bless This House" sign still hangs over the cabinet. I last stopped by on my way home from college classes out of town, and when I went inside Barack Obama was on the news, after being signed into office on the television as I watched from the student center earlier that day. Hope and change was everywhere. In that house I found myself sucked into the past, into days of old lang syne, and it still smelled the same in there, underneath the cigarette smoke.

A place changes gradually and one doesn't notice until well after the fact, and when I notice such changes myself, when I reflect back on the then and now, the here and there, I feel overwhelmed, I feel dizzy.

I don't know if there is no such place as home; I'm inclined to think there is, but that places are consistent than they feel at any given moment. They say you can't go back again, but I wouldn't know.

The song, in any case, is another gem from "Ernest Evans Hussalonia." Much like "Everything and Its Opposite At Once," it packs a really huge punch in a very short time, with vocals that soar before you've even gotten used to seeing them on the ground. "Hold me down" is the request. The desire for someplace solid and for someone steady comes through in this song, a sense of helplessness and willingness to be led, but not without reservations that even outside guidance will really lead anywhere. Tom Waits once sang in "Anywhere I Lay My Head" that "Anywhere I lay my head, I'll call my home." That's food for thought, a possible alternative to this song's idea. Perhaps it is all relative. Perhaps, as in so much of philosophy, it is just a matter of words needing clearer definitions.

Hussalonia Song # 11: Everything and Its Opposite At Once

In planning this blog and deciding to attempt writing about every single Hussalonia recording, one of my motivations was a love of the underdog. In both my tastes in music and in other things, I've noticed a bizarre reoccurrence. If I enjoy something popular, generally my favorite part of it will be the part that nobody else enjoys very much, maybe even the part that most everybody else actually hates. For example, "Infidels" is considered by many to be a lesser Bob Dylan album, but it's my personal favorite. Though there are songs and other works of art that I don't particularly enjoy, I have long believed that most works of art simply have their place. A song that for most of my life I don't care much for might one day become my favorite. It may not remain my favorite for long, but for that particular day it is. Perhaps it will only be one person's favorite for one particular day, or even an hour. As a writer, much of what I create is crafted with the knowledge that my work may only have a very short period of worth, and very possibly only in the life of someone I will never meet. When I listen to a song (or read a book or watch a movie or whatever the case may be) no matter whether I love it, am ambivalent about it or even find myself outright irritated by it, I try to find what about it may be good and meaningful, even if it is only for a certain type of situation and a certain type of mood. Some songs don't make a strong impression on me one way or another (the last entry on "The Twist" contains a Hussalonia-based example, though some songs from this album made stronger impressions on me after I gave them closer listens for the purposes of writing about them on this blog) but I try to discover in what sort of mood, place and time that they might.

In the case of "Everything and Its Opposite At Once," however, I need not search far for a particular mood in which I would best appreciate the track. This one draws me in as soon as it begins, every time.

Somehow in the span of a minute and a half it manages to build a beautiful momentum, beginning right off the bat with a strong, catchy sound. I can't think, off the top of my head, of many other songs that have such a powerful, climactic sound that builds up so nicely in such a short time.

The lyrics match the rhythm very well, and I find that it keeps me guessing every time I hear it. The one the narrator sings about is the killer…and raises the dead, is a thief and the police, is mysterious, magical, and has the narrator under the spell of his or her clavicle, which is a line which particularly baffles me.

Who might this paradoxical person/entity be?

God? Jesus Christ? If you consider the Judeo-Christian view, God has certainly killed quite a few people, and Christ has raised the dead, plus there's the whole "like a thief in the night" thing. I'm unsure of God being viewed as the police, though there may yet be some argument there.

Bob Dylan? I have no idea why it would be Bob Dylan, but I seem to recall some speculation that he was the subject of that "You Oughtta Know" song by Alanis Morissette. If she can maybe write a cryptic song about Bob Dylan, why shouldn't Hussalonia be able to maybe write a cryptic song about him?

Johnny Cash? Kris Kristofferson said that he was a "walking contradiction," and that seems applicable here. I'm unaware of his ability to resurrect the dead, though.

Sting? He was a member of The Police. I'm unaware of his having murdered anyone, or having joined the band The Killers, but maybe Hussalonia knows something that I don't?

My nonsense aside, this is a personal favorite track of mine. I can't say that I have any particular insight on it, and aside from simply enjoying the music I'm not sure what in particular draws me into it so quickly every time that I hear it. I am always impressed that so much beauty can be fitted into a minute and a half. It is the sort of song that I'm frequently replaying, both to satiate my urge to hear what keeps looping in my head and in the vain hope that eventually it will become longer by several minutes.

I don't know who is "Everything and Its Opposite At Once," but I know that I love this track. Mysterious and magical, that's what it is.