tears on my kitty: christmas blubbering, part 2

I decided yesterday that I needed some new Christmas music, and set about browsing over at iTunes. I listened to samples of about five hundred different folks' versions of "O Holy Night," a favorite so dear that even typing the title just now choked me up a little. Still, even in that blubbery state I could find nothing that inspired me to make a purchase. Finally I clicked the "holiday" category and was presented with an array of new releases, including Sufjan Stevens "Songs for Christmas."

Now, I may try to pass myself off as musically hip from time to time, but though I do have a faint clue about what's happening in the world of new/interesting/alternative/Cool music, I am frequently long in the dark about wonderful offerings that the actual Cool kids have known about for years by the time I find them. I even catch myself resisting certain things just because they're considered Cool, and much of what the the Cool kids go apeshit over is not actually all that great, in my opinion. I could list several artists I don't particularly care for here to illustrate how discerning and inadvertantly contrary my tastes tend to run, but I won't, because I overdo it in part to make myself feel Cooler than the Cool, and it's really not good for me or for anybody to be concerned with anyone's else's tastes or preferences, whether to gravitate toward them or away.

This summer I finally noticed a song called "Chicago" by Mr Stevens (listen to a sample here--scroll down) which had been around for a full year before I let myself take it in. I had wanted to turn up my nose at the zillion overdubbed tracks, the pseudo-symphonic arrangement, the repetitive chorus sung by what sounded like friends and roomates. A Hip Hippy--whatever. But the song really caught my ear in the movie, "Little Miss Sunshine." It was a perfect expression of the better nature of that film. And damned if the lyrics and that straightforward real-person singing didn't pierce my ill-considered armor. "You came to take us... all things go, all things go... to recreate us... all things grow, all things grow..." Hmmm. But what really got to me was the part where Sufjan sings (over and over), "I made a lot of mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes..." Somehow his inflection got me right there, and put me in direct emotional contact with the part of myself that was acutely aware of how imperfect my choices in life have been and how desperately I needed to confess this to my own Soul. And somehow in that same moment of full awareness which this song managed to kindle in me again and again came immediate and total forgiveness. Redemption. I put the song on a short mix titled "War and Peace," and found I couldn't listen to it without crying. Weeping, really.

[But did I seek out other songs by the guy who was able to punch this nearly unbearably deep place in me and then set me down ever so gently back in my life, renewed and refreshed? Nah. And it turns out G loves this guy; he has two or three of his records on the iTunes file he shares with my computer. Sometimes I wonder what the heck is the deal with me.]

Well, to get back to my Christmas story, I was excited to see a Christmas album by this guy. And--Good Lord!--there were forty-two songs on it! I sampled a few, became further intrigued and cautiously optimistic, and clicked "purchase." I then spent the rest of the afternoon listening, and weeping.

Readers must be getting pretty bored with all my tear talk. It's a bit much for me, too, believe me. But I just had to share this discovery. He gets it. He GETS Christmas! It's pretty obvious that he's a Christian, which I'm not convinced is required but sure doesn't seem to hurt. Now, in the right frame of mind I could listen to Babs or Englebert sing O, Holy Night and be struck by the song itself (most beautiful song ever written? I could make a case - ) and be really moved. One reviewer of Songs for Christmas wrote, "As for the traditionals, who would have thought anyone could find sincere pathos in "The Little Drummer Boy"...?" Well, I for one am absolutely cut off at the knees the first ten or twenty times I hear that one every year. It kills me. Still, eventually I like everyone else will grow tired of all the hoopla, my resistance will strengthen as to a virus, and suddenly I'll hear only the over-slick heartlessness of most versions of my favorites, and I will want them to shut up, already.

This is not bloody likely to happen, however, with my New Favorite Christmas album. Banjo! Regular-person singing! Old English hymns! Old American hymns!! Piano! Actual Sincerity! This is not the maudlin, syrupy "sincerity" contrived and sickeningly overdone by so many Real Singers (definition: it's about them and their Performance--not the song, not the music, not the truth or spirit). I mean, come on--the guy manages to make "Jingle Bells" sound fresh and fun. Okay, it's a fifty-second instrumental. But still, it sounds like two people jauntily playing one piano, and it's actually really great. Plus, there are many killer original tracks. One, called "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!" is unbearably sad and exultantly beautiful to me. It conjures a complex, rich, and intense sense memory of childhood and Christmas Past in all its darkness and all its ultimate light, more than anything else on the record. But the whole record--though yes, a bit too long (though this is mitigated by the fact that it's technically five cds in one)--the whole damn thing with all its forty-two songs absolutely immersed me in a radiant constellation of precise memories, made crystal through hindsight and higher yearnings, for the entirety of its two solid hours. It split me open.

I learned how to weep silently as a child so as not to draw any unwanted and unhelpful attention. Sad but true. This skill comes in handy these days when I'm sitting here on a jag with my headphones on and G is working fifteen feet away. Don't wish to disturb! Yesterday afternoon I woke the sleeping kitten on my lap with the large teardrops I kept inadvertantly missing with the tissue and dropping onto her fur. She didn't mind the water, though she appeared concerned when she looked up into my face. I reassured her. Yep, it hurts. But in a good way. It was all okay. We are all okay.

Happy Christmastime, everybody.