A few months ago I purchased Moby's most recent CD called "Destroyed" in a very cool CD and Vinyl store in Brussels, which has a surprisingly large number of these types of shops interspersed throughout the more touristy sections of the old center of town. Yet, that is what is curious about Brussels, one minute "huh?" the next minute "wow," and so it goes. Ad nauseum.
To put it bluntly, the first time that I listened to "Destroyed," I was less than impressed, in fact, rather disappointed. However, I let is sit idle for a couple of months, intrigued by the story behind the CD, but not yet ready to give it another chance. In the liner notes, Moby says that the majority of the songs were written in or about cities after hours, when he felt like he was the only one up, or even alive. Apparently he has bouts of insomnia while on tour, and these songs were the voices of those cavernous cities at night. As I said, intrigued, but hard to get the bitter out of my mouth.
When I returned recently from the US, however, I began listening to the CD with a different attention, not one that was attached to what I knew about Moby, but rather one that was just simply listening. In the past week, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I have now listened to "Destroyed" well over a dozen times in its entirety and I have learned to appreciate the nuances that I skimmed over the first time. Sometimes, we just need to put the CD or book down, or as Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, whatever it is that has us stuck. I was stuck on not liking "Destroyed."
While listening to it yet again this morning as I was contemplating the Huxley articles I have been reading, I decided to do a bit of digging on Moby. I knew that he had picked his nickname from the supposed kinship to Herman Melville, the august American autodidactic author of Moby-Dick, and that he was an extreme vegan and ardent animal rights activist as well as a believer of Christ's divinity, though is in direct opposition, much like Kierkegaard was, with the majority of those calling themselves Christian, though who like charity and mercy. This much I knew. I also have several of Moby's CD's including some obscure tracks cut well before he was the emperor of sampling.
And then, something rather odd happened. I was looking up information about "Play," his 1999/2000 CD which I bought about that time as well, and that jettisoned him into Stardom with 10 million copies sold after relative obscurity for a decade. And, on the track that I remember hearing for the first time on the radio in Austin, "South Side," I saw that Gwen Stefani of No Doubt was the back-up vocalist. Huh? Wow. I have listened to that song perhaps well over a hundred times and never realized that it was her on back-up. Well, had I ever seen the self-parodying, campy video, which I have posted below, this would not have been a question. It is kind of hard to miss that it is GWEN and MOBY in flashing lights, literally.
Now, this is no revelation worth calling upon the heavens for in epiphanic bliss, but it just goes to show how little attention we can pay sometimes to something that is right in front of us. The genius (and I don't use that word lightly, nor did he) of Huxley is that he takes the minutiae of life, that which is right in front of us, and brings it to our attention, and it is hard not to feel the one-handed clap of realization smack our forehead, wondering if indeed, "wow, I've could have had that V-8" after all. The Devil is in the Details it is said, and so is a whole other Universe of discovery, usually right in our own backyard, so to speak, if we have our eyes wide open.
To put it bluntly, the first time that I listened to "Destroyed," I was less than impressed, in fact, rather disappointed. However, I let is sit idle for a couple of months, intrigued by the story behind the CD, but not yet ready to give it another chance. In the liner notes, Moby says that the majority of the songs were written in or about cities after hours, when he felt like he was the only one up, or even alive. Apparently he has bouts of insomnia while on tour, and these songs were the voices of those cavernous cities at night. As I said, intrigued, but hard to get the bitter out of my mouth.
When I returned recently from the US, however, I began listening to the CD with a different attention, not one that was attached to what I knew about Moby, but rather one that was just simply listening. In the past week, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I have now listened to "Destroyed" well over a dozen times in its entirety and I have learned to appreciate the nuances that I skimmed over the first time. Sometimes, we just need to put the CD or book down, or as Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, whatever it is that has us stuck. I was stuck on not liking "Destroyed."
While listening to it yet again this morning as I was contemplating the Huxley articles I have been reading, I decided to do a bit of digging on Moby. I knew that he had picked his nickname from the supposed kinship to Herman Melville, the august American autodidactic author of Moby-Dick, and that he was an extreme vegan and ardent animal rights activist as well as a believer of Christ's divinity, though is in direct opposition, much like Kierkegaard was, with the majority of those calling themselves Christian, though who like charity and mercy. This much I knew. I also have several of Moby's CD's including some obscure tracks cut well before he was the emperor of sampling.
And then, something rather odd happened. I was looking up information about "Play," his 1999/2000 CD which I bought about that time as well, and that jettisoned him into Stardom with 10 million copies sold after relative obscurity for a decade. And, on the track that I remember hearing for the first time on the radio in Austin, "South Side," I saw that Gwen Stefani of No Doubt was the back-up vocalist. Huh? Wow. I have listened to that song perhaps well over a hundred times and never realized that it was her on back-up. Well, had I ever seen the self-parodying, campy video, which I have posted below, this would not have been a question. It is kind of hard to miss that it is GWEN and MOBY in flashing lights, literally.
Now, this is no revelation worth calling upon the heavens for in epiphanic bliss, but it just goes to show how little attention we can pay sometimes to something that is right in front of us. The genius (and I don't use that word lightly, nor did he) of Huxley is that he takes the minutiae of life, that which is right in front of us, and brings it to our attention, and it is hard not to feel the one-handed clap of realization smack our forehead, wondering if indeed, "wow, I've could have had that V-8" after all. The Devil is in the Details it is said, and so is a whole other Universe of discovery, usually right in our own backyard, so to speak, if we have our eyes wide open.
