One of the things that I cherish most in life is when I'm reading book that just envelops me... When I feel like I'm deep-sea-diving in a world that the author has created, and my present reality ceases to exist for the time being.
Some books are ingenious in that they invite you to move in, to inhabit their universe from the very first pages and hold you in their grip until the end. Some grow on you after a while. The book that I'm reading (and have been reading for some time now....), Emile Zola's The Ladies' Paradise, took it's time wrapping it's tendrils around my brain. For a long time it felt tedious: do I really have to know all these details about the decor and the employees and the advertising and the fabrics and the clothes and the names of the streets and the daily and the yearly incomes and the blardy-blar-blars....of the department store that all the action happens in? Do I really have to know all of this information about what the characters eat for lunch, and even what they decided not to eat that day..? So much of it felt inconsequential. But now that I have finally plunged head-first into this world of the 1800's, it's like I'm having a fricking love affair with it. I'm obsessed by it, I can't get enough of it, and I want to hear every little observation Mr. Zola could possibly make: the tiniest blush, a faltering, hesitating footfall, the sideways glance, and yes, even any seemingly meaningless decor-detail he might think of. Bring it on! The only trouble is, I'm swiftly running out of pages to read...
Such joy art can bring. Even though one is unable in music to weave a story such as the one I'm describing, I have certainly inhabited and been sucked into many a song in my lifetime. And at best, full albums. Those are the true pieces of art in my opinion, where one is able to see the world, for a moment, through the eyes and ears of another person, the artist.
This is what I as an artist aspire to do. To give so much of myself in my music, that for a moment the listener will have an opportunity to inhabit the world as I see/hear it. We bring our own shit wherever we go and whatever we do, this is true; but in my experience some pieces of art, much like an orgasm, allow us to forget everything else, even for just a moment. That, my friends, is what I would call success!
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