there is a space in my heart for mark kozelek from which he will never be dethroned. he does not deserve it, but that is because no one ever really deserves our love. there can be too many reasons one does not deserve our love though. the counter intuitive mathematics of deserving and love should not perplex anyone, there's no sense to love at all.
to see someone perform who has always been a spectre, the present unpresent to use a theological turn of phrase, is difficult. people can not live up to our ideas about them- because ideas are bound to nothing, where as people are bound completely to their limitations, person and/or circumstantial.
no concert by mark kozelek could eve be good enough, for he can only be himself, and he can only be himself for the time allotted. he could never be the mark kozelek that I loved, for that mark kozelek is not real- and he could never be himself, or as I wanted him to be, long enough, for he is a part of the life I have lived and will live- I want him to play forever.
this is not even to speak of the issue of song choices. some of my favourite songs of his are more than 20 years old- he could not play his catalogue, time would never permit. and to demand that he play older stuff as opposed to his newer work is to reject him as a person all together, it makes me no different than the drunken heckler who screams at the besieged rundown bar piano man "play it again!" which would be a disservice to him as the adored and me as the adorer. how many hundred times has he played 'katy song' or 'japanese to english'? it seems only reasonable that he is sick of playing those songs - I can only listen to them still because my affection for them is entirely unreasonable.
the out come of a concert like the on I saw on Saturday seems to be predestined to be disappointment. frustrating since it never could have been avoided, not even by that figure around which the experience of the concert fixates. (I will admit that I am left in a complete state of doubt as to who that figure is: mark kozelek or myself)
mark kozelek has received some praise, and a great deal more criticism in these last days. his style has long since drifted away from the crushing, over-dramatic, yet inexplicably lovely, 'slowcore' style that brought him his early, relative, success. his lyrics no longer seem like pages of some manic journal shared with the listener because mark kozelek is compelled through/by guilt or love or madness to disclose. no his lyrics now read more like clippings from newspapers or writings from napkins composed on a porch. the guitar work is more artistic in his new work, and the lyrics are more mundane.
in one of his many rambling, entertaining talks between songs he explains to the crowd that the reason he does not have a fancy new smart phone is because he wanted to 'be able to do this'. it is his segue in his song 'alesund'- which is beautiful and haunting and so difficult to perform that one can see him have to focus the whole of his will and ability to perform it. it is more than enjoyable, and would leave me stunned except every song is performed in the space that the song he did not perform could have occupied. if I am not shaken and fulfilled, it is not fault of his. and while my inclinations are to self incriminate - I can not quite say that it is mine either.
going to see a concert is a strange thing in conception, especially if the musician or band one goes to see is not the type to put on a spectacle/ why go? the best the musician can hope to accomplish is to sound like they did on their album, perfect, and I am not trying to belittle the ability to replicate one's album caliber music - anyone who fancies concerts will confirm it is no small or common feat.
so why did I go? knowing I would be disappointed, knowing he would play few if any of my favourite songs, knowing I would not get a spectacle. was it enough to have some fragile temporary experience with mark kozelek for myself? is the concert experience so selfish in its roots as that?
though his music has changed over the years, mark kozelek music has always spoken to me. he words seemed, insanely or childishly, to be expression of things I felt. (I will admit there is a confusing element to that idea, seeing that I almost always discover mark kozeleks music after its heyday, and due to the fact that he is 14 years my senior) he seemed always to be saying what I could not, or perhaps closer to the truth dared not.
maybe in that is a little truth, that I went to see mark kozelek so that I could hear him sing about the things I did not know I already knew.
he was halfway into a strikingly different version of 'richard ramirez', carrying the emotion of the song entirely with his voice; which I sometimes wonder if he has forgotten has always been his best instrument- when I found myself crying. not loudly, or in the guiltless way I often cry at the end of good movies- but in the revelationary way. for reasons I can not finger I realized something in the midst of that song.
mark kozelek has no idea what it is all about.
his lyrics and music have change not as some artistic response to changing cultural stimuli but because that part of him that used to write lines like 'we walked down the hill/I feel the coming on/ of fading sun/ and I know for sure/ that you'll never be the one/ its the forbidden moment that we live/ that fires our sad escape/ and holds passion more than words can say'. he doesn't see the world that way anymore - pushed by mystic and unimaginable forces. now he writes lines such as 'We didn't have very much to say/ she said that she'd come from some other place/ a town called Troyskirt, maybe Troysworth/ i was pretty distracted packing my stuff/ but I did make a point to ask her to stay/ but she said she had friends that she had to go see'. he is not struggling to make sense of the failed relationships and the fading loves, the seemingly unavoidable movement from love to pain, and back again. now he sees relationships as failed because that's the way the world is- there is no mystery to the 'why'- there only is. love fades because everything fades. and the lines or transitions between love and pain are so temporary on the larger scale and so subjective that differentiating between them at all is not some great human endeavor but a silly statement on one's current location.
mark kozelek has let it go. he's living and writing about the mundanity of experience - and if it sounds magical as it does at the end of 'I know its pathetic by that was the greatest night of my life' - its just coincidental.
I cried, because I missed my mark kozelek, and because I missed myself that could sing in off key affirmation of shared emotion and desperation about such things. I cant want him to be who he was anymore than I can hope to retain those things no one seems to retain. and while I cant be indignant about it, I suppose I don't either have to be happy about it either.
So I cried because mark kozelek has no idea what life is about.
and neither do it.
