Cathartic Destruction

For all of the music I created, I only recorded in a studio once, during college. I was in a ska band, and we saved up enough money to book some time at a local studio. During one of the songs, it was my turn to track the guitar solo. I went into the booth, put the headphones on, and played what I normally played. My band mates, listening from outside, were perplexed. When I was done, they asked, “Is that what you normally play?” I reassured them, “Yeah. It is. Trust me, it sounds good.” They still really didn’t believe me.

The solo is technically nothing special. I don’t do anything fancy; I just let the distortion and delay fill out the notes I play. Alone, it sounds like a jumbled mess of sound, attacking the ears with what sounds like chaos. However, layered with the other instruments, it intricately interlocks into a comprehensible piece that is still one of my favorite pieces that I have recorded. It is, to me, art. It’s not art that everyone will hear, and it’s not art that everyone will like. But, it’s personal to me for a variety of reasons.

I thought about this moment, and others, as I read Dessa’s My Own Devices: True Stories From the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love (2018). Almost every essay in Dessa’s collection speaks to me, both looking into my past and into the present. Even though I never made it as far as she has being a musician, her discussions of art and performing resonated with me. It could be because I look back on performing with nostalgia, especially as I get older, but it could also be because I felt the things she describes, specifically while performing.

In her opening essay, “Up On Wheels,” Dessa describes the feeling of performing onstage with Doomtree:

Stage was a place for all of the outsized feelings that didn’t fit neatly into daily life. You can’t scream in love or fury in line at the Walgreens pharmacy; you can’t roughhouse with grown men at the post office; and you can’t calmly explain to your parents that you’d rather sleep outside, under a stranger’s hedge, than in your own bed. But with a little songcraft, those dark moods were perfect grist for performance–we rattled up the biggest feelings…