Warning: this blog comes with two fairly big lists of songs!
For Christmas, my lovely wife gave me a helmet in the general shape and color of an old school bowling ball. It has cool padding gizmos that velcro in and out to allow it to fit even my tiny head (though I use a lower tech method of sticking a small winter hat on my head and ratcheting the helmet over that). The helmet has vents and places to secure goggles and a very comfy chin strap. It also came with a fairly thick instruction booklet which on perusal turned out to be ways to hook up the cheap Bluetooth headset with the helmet.
The helmet is specifically designed for listening to music. It has cozy ear padding which upon inspection turns out to be two velcro-apart-able compartments for speakers; the wire snakes out the back of the helmet, and connects to the music player of choice (in my case the 120 gig silver and dark gray wheel driven iPod from a couple years ago).
Now I'd never worn a helmet, not due to some principled stand on my god given right to smash my brains out on a tree, but mainly because I skied infrequently. Ok and I'm cheap. Ok and it feels really good to be hauling down a hill with the wind in your hair. But last year I borrowed a helmet and you know what? If you put headphones in it, it creates a bitchin' little sound cave of your very own.
Of course this creates some dilemmas. Music on if you are skiing with others? If you are skiing with others with sound system helmets? If you are on a lift for some minutes with others? Music off at times just to remind oneself that this is what reality sounds like without a sound track? (Those of you who know me are laughing here, but go ahead; I can hear you anyway! Cuz for the moment I am not listening to the sound track of my life).
But there is another funny element to having a sound system in a bowling ball on one's head on the top of a mountain, or sliding/gliding down it. And that is selecting the sound track to the film one is about to star in. It's a ski movie, but not just. It's a film where the protagonist is alone in the mountains, and skiing is one way we get to hear his inner thoughts about all sorts of things.
I'm only half kidding here. The soundtrack element to it all, and the fact that often one is looking out at cinematically breathtaking scenes from unusual angles (feet dangling over the tops of tall pines; eyes surveying a giant bowl of snow from the vantage of a 7600 foot ledge), all contribute to the indie movie feel of it all. And I found myself going back and forth between that movie, and the "actual" reality in which I am listening to music and skiing. Occasionally other characters would come into the movie, and later I'd think about which ones would make the cut/be remembered, and which would be seen as not contributing to the overall unit of the experience/film. Yikes!
Sometimes I worry about the truism that everyone looks realer on TV.
Anyway, the helmet allows for all sorts of mergings: a meditative playlist can generate a meditative mood, and hence meditative skiing. A rowdy mix (Dandy Warhols, the Stones, some Hendrix, some Black Keys, etc) can lead to some speedy runs, pushing that big hard turn harder, exhilaration). I began my time alone up here with the following mix:
Quietage Playlist
Home Zero 7
Besos de Sal Federico Aubele
All Apologies Sinead O'Connor
Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying Rickie Lee Jones
Shadowboxer Fiona Apple
Peace Piece Bill Evans
Alone in Kyoto Air
Silky Delta Euphoria
Calypso Suzanne Vega
Surrender Kaskade
Casimir Pulaski Day Sufjan Stevens
I May Know the Word Natalie Merchant
Everything Is Free Gillian Welch
Little Green Joni Mitchell
Urge For Going Tom Rush
Kashf John Surman, Dave Holland, Anouar Brahem
J'ai dormi sous l'eau Air
Night Like a River HEM
I'm Going To Stop Pretending Eels
Spencer The Rover John Martyn
Treefingers Radiohead
Slow Down Morcheeba
Playground Love (Vibraphone Ve Air
Like Someone In Love Chet Baker
Windham Hill - 3 Gymnopedie
Thoughts On A Grey Day Fleetwood Mac
Bless the Weather John Martyn
In the Waiting Line Zero 7
This was a pretty fun mix for Tuesday, and made for a very chill afternoon of skiing and sitting on lifts in the ridiculous sun (I think it topped out at 50 degrees that day, total April spring skiing weather and snow conditions). In particular the instrumental pieces (Peace Piece by Bill Evans, Alone in Kyoto by Air, Gymnopedie by some Windham Hill musicians) were stunning. I remember being carried up up up by huge metal hands in the shape of chairs, and listening to Along in Kyoto, as the ground slowly fell away, the trees slowly shifted position on the mountain, clouds scudded and so on. The music set a tone that meshed wonderfully with the landscape, and took me out of my talky/thinky head for great swaths of time. And then the lift is done, you hop off and ski to the next run and make a micro-decision: change the music? Or keep?
Each of these songs, and especially the first ten which got repeated listenings, is now linked in my mind with a snowscape. And not simply that: a mindscape. Was I thinking of Arcadia? Desire? Cyborgs? Death? The quality of emotions? My Uncle Dan? My grandfather whose birthday I share? Music helps in some ways inform the arc those thoughts took/take, and helps me remember them.
I was alone in the mountains Tuesday, Wednesay, Thursday, Friday. Each day was utterly sunny, fabulously sunny. Some days were quite hot; other days stayed cool; but I will never forget those days of sking alone under that almost absurdly optimistic comb of bright sun and blue sky. So I of course on Monday night made up a new playlist dedicated to the sun. Here is what I played on Tuesday:
Ski Sun Mix:
Another Sunny Day Belle and Sebastian
The Sun On His Back Camera Obscura
Honey In the Sun Camera Obscura
Sundialing Caribou
Love The Sundays
Blister In The Sun Violent Femmes
Sunday Part I Cibo Matto
Sunday The Cranberries
Sunshine Regina Spektor
A Sunny Sky Trevor Hall
Sunshine Of Your Love Jimi Hendrix
Breath of sun kareem raihani and jazzy d feat. jimmy rage
Bright Sunny South Alison Krauss & Union Station
Sol Tapado (The Covered Sun) Thievery Corporation & Patrick de Santos
Standing in the Sun (Afterhours Chilled Mix) Brainiacs On Dope
The Sun Doesn't Shine Fatboy Slim
Rockport Sunday Tom Rush
Sunshine Sunshine Tom Rush
I Was Made For Sunny Days The Weepies
The Sunny Side Of The Street The Pogues
No Sunlight Death Cab For Cutie
The Sun Is Shining (Fire House Club Mix) Bob Marley
Sun Toucher Groove Armada
The Sun Doesn't Like You Norah Jones
Love From The Sun Gab.El
Breath Of Sun Kareem Raihani & Jazzy D
Blister In The Sun Nouvelle Vague
I Wish I Never Saw The Suneshi Beth Orton
Good Day Sunshine Beatles
Sunday Papers Joe Jackson
Sunrise Norah Jones
Sunday Table Pink Martini
In The Sun She & Him
California Sun Rancid
Sun Is Shining (Dub Version) Bob Marley
Sun Is Shining Bob Marley
Sunshine Rock Upsetters
Sunday Sun Beck
There is something wild about being the first audience for one's own mix; would it be a good ski mix? Would the sun theme augment the already wonderful sunny ski experience? Well, Right away
I knew that the first Camera Obscura song would become epic in my personal history; I've been singing it for days now. Ditto with Honey in the Sun, and the crazy duo of Blister in the Sun (that punky northwest whisper/plaint) and Sunday Part 1 (with Cibo Matto two Japanese hip hop artists aided by Julian Lennon). The Hendrix is a pretty unusual track, with Jimi covering the Cream song Sunshine of your Love and just killing it. From that to the chill track Breath of Sun is a true eclectic jump, and just when you've shifted from 60s blues jazz rock to Ibiza 2007 trance music, suddenly up comes the banjo and the dude from Union Station singing about fighting for the South during the Civil War...and you look out over these mountains and imagine them in the 1860s, and it is a whole different reality, let me tell you. The Tom Rush and Weepies songs were pretty forgettable and made the angrier songs (No Sunlight, Rancid's California Sun) necessary as brain cleaners.
I could go on: the different Marley takes on Sun is Shining (I think I sang "To The Rescue" pretty loud in the chair on Lift 2 because I saw a skier top and look around); the killer remix of Sun Toucher by Groove Armada bringing an urban set to the rural mountain with its suburban and rural patrons in their ski and board finery; Zoe Deschamel hitting those notes on the She & Him tune In The Sun. Each one was a surprise, then a provocation to thought, feeling, a merging of music and lyric with setting and weather and time of day.
A great film, impossible without my cyborg helmet.
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