Happy Day after the 4th of July. The USA spins onward as an idea but its system jumps the groove and skips, scratching painfully across freedom and hope. This music lover returned to Celia to hear her lyrics and sweet music again.
I heard Celia’s first album many years ago and admired mid-flight the skater of flirting and the song about not wondering how best to explain. Her lyrics blew me away. Her next albums were even better than the first. ‘You Just Gave Your Love Away’ seemed like a study in beautiful exasperation—sweet sadness and affection rolled in tough love. And ‘Big Brother’ in his exceptionalism is appealed to with gentle irony. The fool must try harder. ‘My Project for the New American Century’ is a truth held up as a worn stone. A truth troubled about, and worried over time through the fingers…and the self. I celebrate myself and sing myself, as Whitman said. It’s good to keep singing. It’s brave, and the only available attitude. I sing myself—not as a shining city on a hill—but as wisdom in the wilderness Celia learned a way around and through.
‘Unrequited’ is a gorgeous wreck. It becomes the center of attention under a street lamp of capital-S self. The nonsense and embarrassment give it an eternal quality. It’s an infinite loop of rejection. The feeling lives up to expectation every time, unbearably funny.
Transformateurs is made up of fine points which reflect a generosity that makes me play it again, Sam. I love gentle jazz. Can’t you see, baby, it’s all free baby? Innocence gained better than ever before. Freedom. Heroics arranged happily. The songs are odd and beautiful, fleet of foot like a deer aware of its grace. A universal whirled and spun into something crystalline. To listen is to lose chains. ‘Things You’ll Miss’ carries a weight of hurt in an arrangement that reveals depth of still water. ‘Time Traveler’ is isolation in a frightening chamber. One tries to avoid getting caught up in the spinning whirly-gadgets one uses to not know the state of things. One tries harder to wage more awareness, less avoidance.
And Vic of Araby! Nobody sees this listener with a better clarity. You are the only one. The goddess gaze penetrates as I stand in the unbearable exposure by a western sun. That’s the artist’s light, too. A sunbeam with no delay or break in its shining. A light more swift and intimate than this Universe knew before I listened to Celia. Such is the goodness of the self she sings.