1st English homework

Michael Paradis
Homeira Foth
English 1B
Response #1
In 1981's Eat Y'self Fitter, bandleader and sonic cosmonaut Mark E.
Smith does what the militaristically tight drumbeat everlastingly
refuses to do and breaks down, muttering scared over the duration of
the track and at one point claiming to have seen the Holy Ghost in the
screen of a computer. That he could find a third of Jesus in the white
space between the words and his cursor comes as no surprise to those
familiar with the drug fueled balls on the wall ethos of self
aggrandizing self destruction that defines Mark E. Smith. But what is
surprising is the Zen-like implication that it would be in the small
things, the mundane things, the ins and outs of a sewing needle, where
Smith has claimed to find his maker.
After all, for a man who seems to have spent his life trying to
replace the Church of England with the cult of Dionysus, one would
expect a little less respect for the everyday tit for tat, or maybe a
suggestion that god was in the music. In James Joyce's Sonny's Blues,
the point is driven home that within music is the human experience,
"…the tale of how we suffer, how we are delighted, and how we may
triumph". Personally, I am torn between the Zen position as expressed
by Smith and the ideas expressed by Joyce.
This is because I have had it both ways. Dub reggae and Ethiopian
jazz, American soul music and deconstructionist European punk rock
have taken me into Sonny's playing. I have no ability to manipulate a
piano, but I take my iPod with me to use as a PowerPoint in impromptu
lectures I give those I would be unable to reach otherwise about that
music, and therefore about me. I have taken the hard drugs,
disassociated myself from the known to know anything. The Holy Ghost
is there, human history and the essence of life springs from the tunes
like I need to tell Ponce De Lyon, but there is still something to be
said for the simple things.
And that is because to accept life in this society is to bring on a
shit parade of the simple things. Brick and mortar, bread and butter,
they are what happens between waking up and going to sleep. The music,
the ceremony, can only compress and reintroduce that, because in the
end it's all we really know and our art is based on what we know. To
live for anything other than the moment, as one convinced that god was
in the music would necessarily do the moment the music stopped, is to
lose sight of life. Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is accept
what is in front of us.
Reconciling these two positions is a constant process, and one I do
not think I will likely accomplish anytime soon. When I'm
self-reflective, I am Sonny's brother. When I'm happy, I am Sonny.
When I'm dead, I will be my soundwaves, making their way out through
space for god only knows to hear. Everything sounds spiritual to me