People are more important than the songs you write about them. However, the songs that you write about them can be more important to people who listen if the people who listen never know the person that the song is about.
So, the people who listen have a strange relationship with both the person who the song is about and the person who wrote the song (without having to have met either of the people). But, without both of those people, the song wouldn’t exist, and the person who listens would be none the wiser. But surely they would find another song that could something similar. But not exactly the same. But they’d be none the wiser anyway I suppose.
I don’t know Ranier Rilke or Franz Kappus. But, if Rilke did not write poems, then Franz Kappus would not have sent his own to Rilke, asking for feedback. And then the two of them would not have exchanged letters. And then no one would have published the letters. And then I never would have found them, read them, and then, even without knowing these two fellas, changed and shifted in response to them. The relationships that we have with people have consequences that we won’t ever really know.
Letters to a Young Poet is a good reminder that people are more important than the letters that you write to them, but also that letters (and songs) give other people a window to peek into. Maybe they can take some small things from the letters/poems and put them to work in their own world.
I feel better today than I normally do the day after shows. I think it’s because I loved the sets that played after ours so dang much.
Go See Lowlights - Erin Mason is an important to many pieces of Columbus. She has one of the most memorable voices in Columbus. She is a harmonizing chameleon and can mesh with anyone. She writes some of the most inventive, decadent, and tumbling melodies in the city. And she sings them like she means it.
Go See Small Songs - I look up to Alex Burgoyne and Devin Copfer a bunch. They’re technically brilliant on sax and violin, but they never let that get in the way of evoking some real serious (sometimes ugly) feelings through them. They’re not staid or dodgy or uptight. They’re encouraging. They’re challenging. And they make some of the coolest, most evocative, and interesting music in the city. And they play seemingly everywhere at all times.
That’s all. It’s a Monday night. I took some pictures of my home over the past few weeks when the sun was bleeding in. Normally, on the day after I play music in front of people, I feel a very quiet sense of good. It’s not a plain old “happy.” But the coffee tastes better and home feels more like home. I think it feels like how these photos look. Normal and mundane things. But with a little bit of quiet shine on them.