I can already feel that I am running out of things to say today, though I haven’t said much of anything. I feel a stress in my trying to write, and I feel a tension in my gripping onto whatever I can. However, there still remains plenty to be said, and today I think I’m going to try and go the distance. A lot of distance still to go, however. But I am going to try.
Last night I spent a rather inordinate amount of time hunting for a different version of one of my favourite albums. Realistically, it was the right amount of time. It did feel excessive, however. But it was worth it.
I’m talking about Talk Talk’s “Laughing Stock.
So the version I have, which is the version I imagine a lot of people have, has two of the songs overlap with another. The first is with a brief snippet of the end of “Ascension Day” at the start of “After the Flood”, which, if you’re listening to the latter on its own, leads to it having this really harsh tiny bit of sound that really harms the start of the piece. The second is “Taphead” starting whilst “After the flood” is ending, which is pleasant, don’t get me wrong. It helps create this sense of continuation, as though the songs should be viewed as one piece, but my issue with it is that “After the Flood” doesn’t get to stand on its own, and it’s my favourite song on Laughing Stock, so I want to hear it unencumbered.
And now I can.
So the version of “After the Flood” I had (and still have) is the version I’m most familiar with, and the one I got used to. I got used to that harsh bit of noise, and I got used to “Taphead” being there at the end. And then I found out that there was a version where the songs were more segmented, and I forgot or missed it, and then I realised last night again. I think. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but I ended up going on a hunt last night for the segmented version of Laughing Stock, and I found it.
This search took a while. It took a lot of time and it’s time I’m not getting back. There were other things I needed to take care of but I didn’t, and now I’m here writing about it. I was also worried about that search affecting my sleep. You know, when you end up invested too heavily into something and you need to start getting ready for bed that, by the time you stop and detach, you’re still wound up from whatever it was that you were doing that you don’t have time to settle and so it takes longer to fall asleep. That thing. That’s the thing that I was worried about. Somehow avoided it, though, so I’m happy about that.
But I dug around and acquired myself multiple versions of “After the Flood” to see who had the version I was after. I had to do a lot of searching as most of what I was coming across still had a smidgen of “Ascension Day” at the end. Sure, I could have edited it off, but this I didn’t want to do. I wanted to have the songs as they were; without cutting and reattaching and all that stuff. So I kept on searching. I kept on digging.
It was quite obsessive, this search, but it did end up proving fruitful. I found a version that was its own song, and I listened to its start, and it felt weird. It felt odd to have it clean. I checked the ending, heard no overlap, went back to listening to the start.
The way “After the Flood” started felt a bit too sudden to me, and I know it was due to not being what I was used to. It still felt wrong, however. For a little while. Eventually it sunk in and I got the rest of the album, and I was happy. I was happy to have a different version of Laughing Stock as it meant I could hear it in a different way.
I’m listening to Laughing Stock right now and I’m enjoying it. Or rather, I’m experiencing it, believing I’m connecting with it. I’m hearing it in a different way, and it remains immersive to me. It’s still saying something to me, and maybe it’s saying it better.
I do like me a good bit of continuous music, but sometimes I prefer continuous pieces to be disconnected. So long as that thematic connection is still there, then does it matter? I don’t know. This is just sometimes how I prefer to hear some things. Sometimes I prefer other ways of hearing. Of listening and experiencing. For Laughing Stock, I prefer the former as the pieces seem to connect without being connected. They flow into each other without that overlap, but they allow themselves to be viewed individually and you get all these different tones and varying colours and shapes, and textures too. You hear all these varying moods, and it continues on until its end, finding fullness, finding sparseness and finding rest.
So I’m here, at work, enjoying Talk Talk and I’m finding myself running out of things to say, and in a way I’m glad because I get to sit here and write and think more about an album I like. It’s an album that still feels mysterious to me as it has so much to offer. It’s an album of music in the truest sense, and it carries itself well, after all of these years.
Right now it enters my ears, and I’m hearing things I haven’t heard before. I’m still getting things from it. How lucky am I? How good is this? How often does someone get to say they’re hearing something on one of their favourite records that they hadn’t before?
The time it took to write one thousand words: 17:51:45
Bit slower than I hoped and perhaps I relied on repetition a bit too much. I had to think a bit more for this one and that thinking works, but this could’ve been a shorter thing.
Written at work.
Stupidity Hole 