Liking Music and What Music is Like For People Who Don't Like That Music
Plus: quitting Facebook and having anxiety appendages
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Things I kept telling people about this interview over the weekend
This weekend, Jill and I went with friends to dinner and to see Jonathan Richman on Saturday and then I had band practice on Sunday so there was a lot of socializing. And people asking who I was having on my show. I couldn’t stop talking about the episode that dropped today with John Cotter, author of the memoir Losing Music. It’s about his contracting Meniere’s disease, which is an inner ear disorder that can cause substantial hearing loss and vertigo.
John talks about running along the Massachusetts coastline and realizing that he couldn’t hear, or rather distinguish, the back and forth sound of the ocean waves. Only if he stopped and concentrated could he tune that sound in because at that point the brain is able to fill in sounds from memory.
He talks about dancing at a wedding and thinking the DJ made the odd choice of playing a wall of indiscriminate roar. He asks his wife what song is playing and she says it’s “Billie Jean” and only then can John hear the familiar components of the song.
John’s disease progression is atypical, doesn’t develop in the ways the disease normally does and a doctor tells him they won’t know why until he’s dead and they can cut him open and look at his ears. “Thanks, Doc,” I say in the interview.
I ask him in the interview whether the doctors offered any cure or treatment but all they could suggest was going on antidepressants. Which was a good idea because John got suicidally depressed. He’s better now, his condition is stable, and he has a hell of a story to tell.
Anyway. give a listen. This is one of my favorite interviews.
Great thing for your mental health: getting banned from Facebook
So goes the story of essayist Leah Borski, writing in Business Insider, about how much better she felt when going on Facebook was no longer an option.
At that moment, I realized the truth of my Facebook habits. I'd been posting and checking notifications several times daily for years. My brain babbled in the background about other people's posts and how I'd frame my own. That incessant mind chatter never shut down, even when the app did.
It was like working with a super slow computer where the frustration mounts and you're ready to throw it through a window. Then you finally realize there's a dozen apps running in the background, and that's why it's bogged down.
I’m still a little unclear on what she did to get banned. I also think there are lots of people who can’t simply drop Facebook due to professional obligations. And yeah it’s only one perspective. But I do think there’s something to her assertion that you can’t really turn off the idea of having one foot always in this artificially constructed parody of actual social reality.
Mental health as horror movie material
I mean, of course it is. How could it not be? Unless you’re one of those people who has always been Perfectly Fine but I don’t know a lot of those people and I suspect they’re not reading this newsletter all that much anyway.
In the new horror movie Appendage from director Anna Zlokovic, a woman’s inner thoughts take physical form and then there’s another fucking thing she has to deal with.
From Collider:
Appendage may be horror, but Zlokovic's main goal by the end of the film was to showcase that even as horrifying as The Appendage is — or how difficult mental health can be – ultimately learning to co-exist with it is a solid way to move forward. In Hannah's case, she's enveloped by shame, which Zlokovic acknowledges only exacerbates things: "[S]he’s locking it up in basements and closets, and she doesn’t want anyone to see it, and that obviously doesn’t work. And I think that contending with shame can make things so much worse."
What Red Hot Chili Peppers sound like to people who don't like Red Hot Chili Peppers
Bonus: What Pearl Jam sounds like to people who don't like Pearl Jam:
This week on Sleeping with Celebrities: Steven Page
You may know Steven Page from his solo musical work or his tenure as one of the founders and leaders of the band Barenaked Ladies. Of course, if you were around the Toronto suburbs some years ago and you knew Steven, it’s also possible you know him from his Bar Mitzvah. It was a lovely event and young (yet a man) Steven received many thoughtful gifts, which he is happy to enumerate for you, the drowsy listening audience. What 13-year-old wouldn’t love handsome coffee table books or coveted tickets to a production of Shakespeare’s Richard II?
That’s actually what RHCP and Pearl Jam sound like to me, and I enjoy their music. I mean, not my favorite bands ever, but not changing the station if they come on the radio either. Just another piece of my interesting brain, I guess.