April 23, 2001
Hello, Jim,
I am about to send you the following messages via snail mail, because they accompany a pair of (non-commercial, non-demo) CDs. But the time sensitivity of my Rumblings recommendation (see below) leads me to e-mail my text to you in advance:
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April 23, 2001
Dear Jim,
I've really been grooving on your columns in the Pioneer Press about the local pop music scene. Not so much because I'm a pop music fan - jazz and blues are more my milieu these days - but because of the way that you infuse them with emotional depth and share with us your visceral reactions to the music you hear. For the past several months I've been meaning to write you and tell you how much I enjoy your writing, and how you share your love of music with us. There have been times when I've come really close to checking out a band that you reviewed, just because of the way you wrote about them.
But I was really moved to connect with you after reading your April 5 column about the lifting of the cloud of depression that had been hemming you in for the last few months. I've just now reread that column, and I could spend the rest of this letter quoting passages from it that really resonate with me. I think "resonating" is really apt imagery here - good music makes me hum and vibrate with feeling. And when two physically separate objects cause each other to resonate at certain frequencies, it's called "sympathetic vibration" - I think that's what happens when you really connect with a piece of music, or, better yet, connect with someone else who is also connecting with that same piece of music at that same time. As you said, at those moments we are sharing different and intensely personal reactions. Damn straight, when we connect that way, we ARE the voice of God.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your passion with us. I'd like to return the favor, by sharing some of my musical passion with you. Your religious references in that column remind me of an e-mail that I sent to a bunch of fellow music lovers in February, after being moved to tears by a musical experience. I am enclosing a copy of that letter for you.
The quote "Had it with the melancholia" at the end of your column is a perfect lead-in to the other contents of this package - a 2-CD recording I put together between 1997 and 1999 entitled "Bruce's Musical Melancholia." It started out as some self-reflections about music and my depression, and ended up (I think) being a testament to the healing power of melody, harmony, rhythm, and verse. I recorded using cassette tape and my stereo system, and just recently figured out how to separate my ramblings into tracks and burn my own CDs. I have begun to share this with friends who share a love of music. Two of them reported that they absolutely grooved to the CDs - not necessarily because they loved my particular musical choices, but because they really resonated with the transporting musical experiences I shared.
So I'd like to share this with you, to hopefully send back your way some of the good feelings that you have been sending my way through your columns. And, if it's OK with you, I'd like to add you to my "bunch of music lovers" e-mail list, to whom I plan to send my intermittent revelations.
Thank you for sharing so deeply with us, Jim. Keep it up!
Sincerely,
Bruce
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