01.
They towered like paper skyscrapers above the fake wood of the desktop. Books, several of them. And I was not even particularly concerned with which one found its place into hands and in front of my eyes. I was as apathetic as every 14 year old, I suppose. I listened to the superlative-laden back cover descriptions, but there was only one that caught my ear. Things Fall Apart. And I read it, too, but I honestly could not tell you what its pages were about. Although, I did not read it find out, either. It was that title, those words. It was something that stuck in my mind, or maybe it was something that was already there and just needed to be uncovered and dusted off. Whatever it was, I felt it.
It took me a few years to approximate exactly what. I’m still gathering the pieces and sorting out the fragments, but at least now I can capture a glimpse of it: everything is in a state of entropy. Like the title proclaimed, it all falls apart. Take a look at something around you - the paint on your walls, the floor beneath your feet, or even the computer monitor in which you read these thin black lines. Eventually, it will all deteriorate, decay, perish, crumble, and corrode. We are scarred by the forces of nature. Our computer circuits, our light bulbs, our cars, our alarm clocks, our record players - everything. Including us. This is something we cannot elude, something no technological advancement can distance us from. We live between nature’s invisible walls, and that is something we, as a culture, have forgotten. Rust, corrosion, disintegration - that’s just its way of letting us know it’s still there, still immovable. We cannot escape its grasp.
Then, just months ago, I read an article detailing CDs and their life expectancy. It was once thought to verge on many centuries, but, on the contrary, many of the first CDs produced in the early ‘80s were, quite literally, beginning to fall apart and become victim to nature’s laws. Twenty years they were given. Two decades and our prized digital medium of sound was beginning to deteriorate as the iridescent side of the discs became stippled with little holes. Records from half a century ago will emit sound perfectly, but the most ubiquitous mark of our digital era - those small silver circles - skip and scramble its information at an age of two decades.
I almost await the day when this process will conquer my four copies of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. It seems to be the only proper conclusion for a set of recordings that translate the law of entropy into six loops that eloquently decay into quietness. In itself, The Disintegration Loops exist as swatches of gorgeous orchestral melodies and few second samples of swooning symphonies that repeat into infinity. Basinski himself recorded them in 1982, but soon locked them away, allowing them to escape from his mind for the better part of two decades. As he rediscovered them in the summer of 2001, he began playing them back and converting them into digital audio files on his computer when something unexpected and inadvertently wonderful began to unfold: as the tapes rolled, the reader head began scraping bits and fragments of the magnetic tape away, allowing the minimalist loops to slowly unravel and collapse into silence.
The beauty comprised in these recordings is literally crushing. It overcomes me, utterly overwhelms me. Listening to them, I cannot even bring myself cry, even that would seem too inferior, too trite. I can only listen, allowing every fiber of my body to absorb the sound that is rushing past it. As the loops gently deteriorate, they result in appearing like sonic ghosts of their former selves; what once was an audacious, self-assured drone is reduced to an obscured whisper of its blurry pieces and lulling fragments. Some drift to a close at little over ten minutes while others stretch to over an hour, but each disintegration process encompasses a beauty completely its own, distinctive and inimitable. And each time I listen, I fall in love all over again, struck, as each echo begins again, with how these simplistic loops are truly the incarnate of beauty and elegance.
This process, however, is not the sound of death and demise; above all it is an affirmation of renaissance and rebirth, a celebration of life and its endless cycles. Moreover, Basinski never crafted, wrote, or composed the few strands of sound that cling to these four discs: time was his sole instrument as he merely allowed the inexorable force of nature to reveal itself in his music. This inescapable decay of everything does not, however, result in nothingness. Just as The Disintegration Loops slowly succumb and transform into silence, eventually we, too, as well as all of our surroundings, will convert into something else entirely, beginning the sequence again.
Specifically, when we are here no more, when we, and all of our possessions, inevitably crumble to dust, we will take on the features of the earth and invigorate another generation of life. That outstretched limb of a tree, that blade of grass. This is not a depressive statement or sad realization; conversely, it, too, is celebratory of life, sustaining and upholding rebirth and renewal through nature’s laws. Everything revolves in cycles - life, nature, and the sounds The Disintegration Loops are consisted of. This is not something to regret or mourn, instead, it is something to cherish, just as these loops do.
Now take this all away, strip these words of their meaning, and leave them naked. Do this and just listen. Basinski undeniably binds The Disintegration Loops with September 11th, as the cover art of these four discs are stills captured from New York’s altered skyline as the sun cycled through its sunset and that tragic day transformed into night. And for good reason: that morning, while the two skyscrapers were struck and began crumbling to the pavement, Basinski was transcribing these very loops. Yet, in spite of the image that stares up at me from The Disintegration Loops’ cover, these glorious repetitions taught me something else now vital to my existence: that sound, amputated from superfluous meaning and symbolism, is the world’s most powerful tool of communication, its most profound invention, its most imperative resource.
No words, no lectures, no videos, no pictures, no photographs, no lyrics - not even any melodies. Just sound. No other medium could have taught me what I have enclosed here, not like The Disintegration Loops have. What The Disintegration Loops personally encompass for me is something that no relationship to September 11th - or any other event, for that matter - could have tarnished. The warmth, light, and translucence communicated in these passages of sound are absolutely life-affirming, and that is something I can honestly attest to. The nights I have spent pondering, thinking - and most of all listening - to The Disintegration Loops are countless, and the personal epiphanies and revelations that haven taken place in its grips, while basking in its sound waves, have charted the path my mind has taken.
To the casual ear, however, these loops may appear overtly long, brooding, and uneventful. Although the minute details may take long exposures and repeated listens - much like letting your eyes sink beneath the surface of a Mark Rothko painting - it is also something you cannot and must not hurry. The Disintegration Loops take patience and hearing them for a few minutes does not even begin to eclipse the power they possess at the complete submersion of their full length. As our lives become exponentially more demanding and chaotic, no one, it seems, truly listens to music anymore. It serves as background ambiance or something to satiate the few minutes we spend driving.
William Basinski’s loops, inversely, demand your attention. Or else their all-encompassing beauty and grand scope vanishes, greatly diminishing its true power. Hearing each loop wilt and bloom again with each of its hundreds of repetitions, I remember to be patient, not to rush through life, or you will miss it completely. After all, Basinski waited twenty years before reassembling these very sounds.
Ultimately, though, The Disintegration Loops’ limitless depth and pastoral texture speak to me more than mere language could ever begin to convey. Of course, it is ironic that I communicate this to you in letters and paragraphs, words and sentences, but I hope this will stand as an invitation to hear this music the way I have, view life as I now see it.
Just as the sun bleeds into the darkness of night day after day, the cycles of nature are inexorable and relentless. Unstoppable, yes, but also beautiful, grand, and life-affirming. Without them, we would not be here. Nature’s revolutions and life’s cycles are literally the gears that keep our world turning. Their existence is so pure, so perfect, that we often forget their presence - it becomes invisible, something we assume. The Disintegration Loops remember completely, in fact, and through its four sprawling discs they whisper to me the beauty of inevitable collapse and the truth in imminent decay through the all-encompassing power of sound. And that is one thing I can trust, the one thing I can always put my faith in.
I started writing these pieces without much idea of where I wanted to go with it, or what I really wanted to explore. And I know that no more than a few sets of eyes actually read them. But the more I wrote and, of course, listened, the more I realize how it seemed more as challenge for me to articulate these feelings that swell in my lungs and rush through my bloodstream than anything else. An attempt to expose a small corner of the world that I live in. I do think I accomplished that.
I solidified the list that was posted here nearly eight months ago, and even since then it has changed significantly. I hope to continue this every year - revising and rewriting, all while posting more essays and me droning on endlessly about the music that I love.