#mad rush

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Mad rush

‘mad rush’ by philip glass/ polaroid of mr. harry styles/ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)/ ’sweet creature’ by harry styles/ the building of the eastern railway station in budapest/ polaroid taken of the forests of the mecsek mountain in the summer of 2019/ ’aranyember’ by jókai mór/ ’invitation’ by mary oliver

This piece also has a piano version. I came across it on an album of Glass’ organ music that I picked up at the library. On the one hand I understand people who don’t like this kind of minimalism, where it is repetitive and also nothing changes or “develops” in the expected way. But I feel like they aren’t coming to the music from the right state of mind. When I listen to Philip Glass, the repetition, the slight changes in harmony, feel like they’re touching on a sense of melancholy that comes with living in this day and age. America, land of consumerism, where you spend most of your day sitting in front of a screen or going on the same commute, traffic signs and lights, the metallic coldness of the buildings towering over you, stores lit by fluorescence and organized aisles with recognizable brands. It’s easy to feel like there’s no point to it all, the repetition makes life dull and artificial. But I think minimalist music [especially by Philip Glass] elevates repetition in a way to get us to appreciate every day life that we take for granted [not like this is his intention, more that this is how I listen to it], like meditations, admiring the every day and simple pleasures that make life worth living. This tangent went on way too long and I didn’t even talk about the music. It was written in 1979 in honor of the 14th Dalai Lama’s visit to North America. There are two main ideas that go back and forth. The opening is a soft pedaling of the same pattern at different speeds over each other, like clockwork. The second is a louder, almost jubilant rewriting of the same chords as arpeggios, like a flourish from a Bach fantasia.

Watch Glass playing ‘Rush’ here in 2015.

Don't look at me. I'm having a moment here.