A gentle nudge that changes the course of your life

It’s fun to see how little seeds planeted back when I was young have blossomed over the years. Some music or story or words that someone shared with me, at the time just felt nice, but now after many years, I reaize they help set the course of my life today.

This week I will go see OOIOO, a band I’ve always had a ton of respect for but haven’t listened to a lot over the years as I float this way and that. When I first heard them I was just getting out of my emo rock phase and didn’t fully appreciate more challenigng or experimental music and so they remained on the periphary of my awareness until I saw they had a show coming up, something they rarely do.

There were a few songs that I absolutely loved, and those stuck with me.

There was one time these past 10 years their music became cery relevent for me.

When we were offered a room on the ocean to open a shop in Xiamen we were debating whether or not to do it. It would dry up our funds completely but it was cheap enough that we felt we could make it work somehow.

I couldn’t get an image out of my head… Staring out at the ocean, writing my novels, blasting OOIOO out of an open window that would draw in some curious passerby. It was specifically OOIOO’s music that I wanted to share.

It was “Mountain Book” in particular that was always playing in my visions ⬆️

At the time I didn’t even know what Gamelan was but this song felt otherworldly and the way it blended the sounds of human society and nature felt so inspiring to me. It later served as an initial push to dig a bit into Indonesian culture, but I think at the time it also helped me dig deeper into traditional folk sounds in general.

Just a gentle push.

I didnt realize any of this at the time, but when I started writing my own music, I always felt that I was failing to challenge myself. My songs were honest expressions but I felt that I was trying too hard to make them palletable and losing a lot of the raw emotion I wanted to express. I had a hard time digging deep because I was too stuck in my insecurities and lacked the ability to flow freely.

I’ve always felt that the best art comes from people who dig deep inside themselves and that requires a high degree of experimentation. They may try to smooth out the edges for the listener, but there is often a challenging aspect of the art…

I pushed and pushed until I finally found my own voice, and ar some point in that process I remembered OOIOO and how they experiment with noise and psychedelic elements with traditional music, something I myself came to want to do in my own way.

I realized they had planted a kind of seed in me back when I had first heard them. They haven’t been in the forefront of my awareness but their impact on me has been profound…subtle but profound.

Imagine a rocket ship flying into space. You push it a single degree to the right or left. At first you don’t see a big change in it’s course, it seems like it will just barely hit the original direction. But after a few days or weeks, you start to notice that it is headed to a completely different destination. Imagine a single entity having that effect on you 2 or 3 times in your life.

That is what this band, as well as a few other people and experiences have done for me, and I suppose it’s something we hope to do as artists.

I had heard OOIOO before I was even thinking about going to Japan but looking back now, they must have primed me for that initial desire to live overseas and get out of my bubble. It was challenging music for me at the time but it gave me a hint of the mysteries that lay beyond the fear of change and the beauty of the world beyond my current understanding of it.

It may have helped kick me on the explorers path. There are other ways such etherial music with drums that blur the lines between realities may have effected me but I suppose not everything needs to be shared in full detail.

One last sidenote, I know the connection between this band and the Boredoms, but I only JUST realized that singer YoshimiO is the same Yoshimi who battles the pink robots on Flaming Lips classic album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”

If you are curious about this band, I recommended the albums “Gold and Green” and “Gamel” to start.

Also, my audiobook just dropped on spotify literally while writing this article so if you have a premium account Go listen fore free and if you don’t you can find it on any other audiobook platforms you use.

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