Intellectual by default

Written Thurs 16 Feb 2012

I’m exhausted, both physically and emotionally, so my only resort is to operate in the remaining realm that seems to be functioning normally – my intellect. I always have loads of things on my mind at the same time, and today’s no exception. When I’m like this, I have to write. It gives me a feeling of creating order from the chaos.

Today I’m back in bed, the infection having spread to my chest, which means I’ve started coughing, which is really painful, as my throat is still sore. I still have no voice, and my biggest frustration is that I have no money to get to the doctor, so I’m medicating with the flu meds we had at home. I probably need a course of antibiotics to knock this infection.

Yesterday I did one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, ranking alongside some frivolous purchases and serious relationships (as well as some serious purchases and frivolous relationships!): I went to college, even though I had no voice! I “taught” six classes without speaking, using the chalkboard, whispering to one student who then spoke to the class, and getting them into small groups for reading and discussion. In the last class of the day, my voice started coming back, and I think that using it, even just a little, was an even bigger mistake.

One of the worst enemies of a vocalist is air-conditioning, and I teach with air-con blowing on me all day. It’s a dilemma, because the classroom is stuffy without it, opening the windows lets in hot air, so the obvious solution for the students is switching on the air-con, which is a recipe for disaster for my voice. In fact, I’m probably going to have to make a choice, at some stage – teach (there) or sing. I suppose the temporary nature of my contract takes care of that.

So far today, I’ve taken meds, slept a lot, read a bit, listened to the radio and listened to some music while lying in bed, unable to sleep because of neighbourhood noises.

The music that’s wrapped itself around me, entered my pores and started permeating every cell membrane in my body, for the past few days, is that of the late Amy Winehouse, particularly the album, “Lioness: Hidden Treasures”, a beautiful gift from a friend.

I actually don’t know where to begin, but since I started listening to this, I haven’t wanted to listen to anything else. In the few days since I got it, the music’s become such a part of me, that even when I’m not listening to it, it’s playing in my mind. I saved a few tracks on my phone and listen through my earphones (hate the stuff!) wherever I am. When I’m driving, I listen without the earphones.

Ok, here goes, with my very personal review. Firstly, it’s really hard to reconcile the sound of her full, mature voice with her petite physique. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, hers is a “big, black voice”! Secondly, the lyrical content of some of her songs suggest a life lived intensely, with considerable risk-taking and a depth of analysis that went way beyond her 27 years. Some of her songs you have to listen to when you’re really low in spirit, as I’ve been recently, because they provide the perfect musical score to your misery. J

On this album, the accompaniment is extremely old-school, like Motown, and I love it. Born it the early Sixties, I’m a complete sucker for this kind of sound. It’s amazing that I never got more into her stuff before. I’d hear odd songs played on the radio, and each time I’d think, “Wow, that’s fantastic!”, but that would be it. The friend who gave me the album wanted me to hear her version of Carole King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”, not realizing that the song that would BLOW me away would be her version of “The Girl From Ipanema”! It’s gutsy, it’s outrageous, and it’s subverted that whole tried-and-tested, jazz-standard interpretation of the song and thrown it out into the world as just another song, open to whatever treatment any artist wants to give it. She definitely situates it in the jazz world, but there’s more, like a cabaret-extravaganza kind of feel. I love it!

But two other songs on the album are the ones I’ve been listening to, almost non-stop, since Saturday, and they are “Tears Dry” and “Wake Up Alone”. I need to find the words to describe how these songs move me. If I’m not mistaken, she uses the F-word in “Tears Dry”, but slips it in so naturally, it just sits there, fitting in perfectly. Haha! Definitely a woman who did things her own way. This song has that 70’s feel, with chorus-girl backing vocals, heavy orchestration, and a drumbeat typical of that era. My son would know how to describe it. It’s a sound they’ve kept throughout the album. Sparse, trebly, stripped-down?

Another song on the album I like listening to is “Half Time”, sung in what I call a hammock voice – ultra-laid-back, smooth, from the solar plexus, also quite throaty.

One of the lines is : “So I sing the standard shit/It pacifies my ache”.

Listening to “Wake Up Alone” now. In six-eight time, very bluesy. Again, sparse backing, this time a beautiful guitar playing a mixture of chords, comping and arpeggios. I’m a huge fan of guitar and voice. The atmosphere of the song is heightened by the subtle sound of brushes, introduced after a few bars. The lyrics, once again, intense, heartrending, sensual, sexual, ending with the repetition of “And I wake up alone”, with special effects giving the voice an increasingly ethereal sound and the percussive instrumentation adding a sense of drama, eventually ending the song unexpectedly, with the musical equivalent of a gasp.

She also does a duet (Body and Soul) with crooner, Tony Bennett, where her voice sounds rich and velvety, with distinct traces of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.

It’s impossible to listen to the music of Amy Winehouse without feeling immensely sad about her unnecessary, premature death, last year, at age 27. As I continue to immerse myself in a book I’ve re-read throughout my adult life, “Women Who Run With The Wolves”, I’d hazard a guess that many of Amy’s struggles were the same as those of women all over the world, especially women trying to express themselves through their art, trying to inhabit a world with harsh expectations authentically. It breaks my heart that both she and Whitney Houston (who died last week, aged 48), two of the greatest vocalists of my lifetime, who gave the world such brilliant music, suffered the way they did, turned to drugs as a way of coping, and died as a result of their choices.

I feel these tragedies almost as acutely as if they’d happened to close friends; I believe there is a universality that connects us all, just because we’re human. Anyway, on a very personal level, I know myself well enough to understand that a pattern exists: whenever I’m not verbalizing my strong emotions, I get sick. So right now, laden with issues personal and universal, I’m sick.

I have a terrible track record of ignoring the lessons that life keeps teaching me and remaining stuck; able to intellectualise like crazy, but still remain stuck. Time to break that pattern! High time!