J Dilla/Leonard Cohen/What are you reading
Good morning/afternoon/evening-
*Brief note on brevity- while I was away I realized one of my barriers to entry was that I don’t like explaining or giving background when I don’t want to. Creating too much scaffolding for the sharing was becoming arduous. So moving forward, when I don’t want to explain, I just won’t.
…It feels amazing people! EVERYBODY GET FREE!!!
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My friends like family Merrill and Nate of Tune-Yards (they have a new record coming out very soon-IT IS FANTASTIC, GET READY!!) gave me this J Dilla book for Christmas and reminded me that to stay inspired and excited about making music every day it is so helpful to be nursing a musician bio on the side at all times.
I ate it up for so many reasons and this is not a Scholastic newsletter nor Reading Rainbow (even though I loved and needed both so much) so I won’t get into why you should check it out, but please do.
What I do want to share is: a few weeks later here is what I think of almost daily: J Dilla would wake up every morning at 7 am no matter what time he went to bed and from 7am-9am he would clean his studio/work space and listen to records to sample. And then he would make music all day. Astonishingly disciplined and prolific. Incredible how he lived and breathed music.
Cut to: I’ve started spot vacuuming around my desk- not every day but a lot- with the small hand-held wireless, as I am too lazy to take out the big vacuum and unwind the cord from those rubber hooks and plug it in. But then with the little guy I keep seeing dust and debris in my periphery and scooting and broadening my zone so by the end I have wended around the whole floor space, stooped over with the tiny ass nozzle and the whole time knowing I should have just plugged in the big vacuum.
I finished Dilla Time and moved into this:
L. C. is my guy. I will be referencing my guy a lot, but for now I will say that reading his bio made me want to explore: more liturgy of all kinds, ( just once) waking up at 4 am and having a coffee and a cigarette before meditating, asking ants to leave in a stern voice instead of harming them, and writing a fervent, devoted lifetime on the holiness of god and sex and vulnerability.
It also made me feel less bad about taking five years in between albums. ;)
What musician/artist bios have inspired and motivated you all?
x
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This made me realize that I haven't read a good bio of a musician or artist recently. Some of my favs include Our Band Could Be Your Life, Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan, Trouble Boys (The Replacements), Hunger Makes Me a Made Girl (Carrie Brownstein), Girl in a Band (Kim Gordon), and Beastie Boys Book.
Do not recommend: Life by Keith Richards, Acid For The Children by Flea.
The Women in Me by Brittney Spears was surprisingly moving. I wasn't aware of her story or the terrible people in her life. I'm glad she is finally free of them.
Next on my reading list is Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna.
Thanks for the reminder to check Dilla Time out from the library. I just finished reading Neneh Cherry's memoir (A Thousand Threads) and my jaw was on the floor for a lot of it. Moreso because of the milieu that she came up in, less so in terms of creative process to be fair. But I'm always trying to channel a bit more wildness in the way that I work, and I definitely got some of that from her story.