Listen to “Make Space 33” on Spotify
And tell a friend!
The kernel of this week’s playlist is—or was supposed to be—Leikeli47’s “Girl Blunt.” But then there was that vocal explosion from Lyra Pramuk, and then I rediscovered Fatima’s voice—its consolation and its ferocity—and then I was back on Kollage, the 1996 album from Bahamadia, and then Bradley Zero, the dude of dudes, made a playlist for Sam Valenti's inimitable newsletter, Herb Sundays, with that warped Lenny Kravitz demo. I had to crib it. So here we are.
Years ago I heard Toni Morrison give a talk. When she uttered her first words at the lectern, when those first breathy syllables left her mouth and traveled through the microphone and out the speakers to 20-year-old me sitting in the balcony of a college auditorium, I was overcome with that ineffable sensation, that thing John Dewey describes as the cresting wave of aesthetic experience. Goosebumps. Flooded eyes. An overwhelming sense of being in the perfect place at the perfect time. All of it.
The talk wasn’t very good. It was actually pretty bad. Sort of awful. Babe Ruth struck out, too, I guess. But that voice. That voice.
About a month ago, the whole audio book thing finally clicked. There’s an efficiency to it. A chapter from a paperback before bed. A few more in my right ear as I walk the dog in the morning. All of those voices. Donna Tartt’s tic of drawing out vowels in her nasally reading of the The Secret History (No!). The multitude of personalities and hues and tones in the shifting perspectives of Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House (Yup!).
Yesterday, as my students took turns reading aloud excerpts from some very long papers they’ve been working on for some very long months, I was suddenly struck by the cadence and swing of their sentences, the lilting quality of one voice against the sarcasm of another. The sincerity. Then the irony. The humor. The anxiousness. The accomplishment.
In another class, we ended the trimester by reading Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” but it’s “Voices,” also from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, that’s on my mind.
What is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or
her I shall follow,As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps,
anywhere around the globe.All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practis'd and perfect organ? Where is
the develop'd Soul?For I see every word utter'd thence, has deeper, sweeter,
new sounds, impossible on less terms.I see brains and lips closed—tympans and temples
unstruck,Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to
unclose,Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth
what lies slumbering, forever ready, in all words.
All waits for the right voices. All waits for the right voices. All waits for the right voices.
Thanks for listening.
Your bud,
Ross
Art @ Jeff Brouws