I’m at the office working my overnight shift all alone with my thoughts, which are starkly contrasted by the eerie silence in this place, making them all the more agonizingly difficult to ignore. I feel strange emotions lately, wistful sadness, and a sort of nostalgia that aches like an old wound. Time is strange. I need to work on writing more than just these paltry little journal entries. It feels as if I’ve got something inside of me that this meager mortal frame is having difficulty containing, something I need to get out of me, but I’m not sure if I can – or should- allow that to happen. I am afraid, and it’s hard to articulate why.
It’s been quite a while since my last post here. No, this isn’t over yet, but it is changing in ways I’m not quite able to understand myself yet. This blog began as a way to share and promote the music I loved and grew up with, as well as serving as a creative outlet, but the older I get, the more I feel disconnected from these things, and from humanity in general. I have been ruminating on this for some time now… But not everything that comes with that is bad. I’ve dredged up at least one fond memory from nearly a decade ago that still makes me smile.
I remember seeing Sunn O))) in Jacksonville back in 2016 with my friend Shawn (HeyDude!) in an antiquated movie theater called Sun-Ray Cinema which had been renovated and used sometimes as a music venue. Like any good movie theater, there were padded seats with armrests, and snacks and drinks were also available in the lobby. Sitting comfortably for the duration of the show didn’t seem a bad idea anyway, as I highly doubted that Sunn O))) would take the stage and jump into a furious breakdown preceded by a mosh call (though that would have been hilarious – just imagine: “This is it! This is your last chance! Open this pit up!” [insert generic hardcore breakdown]).
The opening act of the evening was a two-piece (I think) called Big Brave, which I had never listened to before but ended up enjoying, though I can scarcely recall the details of their set now, almost a decade later. What I do remember is vague, but I remember enjoying it.
When Sunn O))) came on they seemed to float onto the stage in a haze of smoke and feedback, cloaked figures limned with gloom and set against a towering wall of amplifiers as a backdrop, stacked double and triple high in places, enveloping the stage at length: even with earplugs, this was the loudest concert I had ever been to. The thrum of each note pulsed the very air, rattled me to my bones. Sunn O))) seemed nearly frozen as time and space vibrated around them, each motion deliberate and precise, as in a dim ritual of some old religion of a long bygone order, and truthfully there seemed to be some otherworldly power which hung heavy in the smoke-sodden gloom of that theater, piercing and resonating, suffusing and engulfing. The music was palpable, as were the various sensations of delight and wonder evoked that evening. It was so simple, just droning notes and chords, but amplified times a million and seemingly executed as deftly as music played a million times faster. Timing was everything; and yet, time was nothing. This performance remainse one of my favorite memories in many decades of live shows and underground art, and changed my perception of what music could be forever.
Towers of Rust 