Birth and Death and Ear Movies of Snow

Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson died this morning at the age of 55. He was, in my opinion, on of the most influential artists of the last few decades. The contribution he made to experimental music, sampling, and general f*cking around with sound cannot be overstated. I don't usually get choked up about celebrity deaths, but this made me feel like someone had just head butted me in the chest, and then I started crying.

Sleazy was a member of the bands Throbbing Gristle and Coil, and an early member of Psychic TV, and contributed to several other musical projects. Additionally, he was a music video director and an artist. I have a special connection to the music that Sleazy produced as part of Coil. First of all, I think the albums that he and John Balance created were freaking brilliant, though sometimes challenging to listen to. Some have referred to their work as "ear movies" and I think this is an great description. Peter himself said that said that he composed Coil songs visually rather than muscially:

"As long as I can remember, I've approached music from a visual point of view. Any technique that you can apply to a film, you can also apply to a piece of music. Our tunes that start off with a sort of film script or filmic picture are much more successful than the songs that start with a riff or bass line or conventional musical cue."

His music blew my mind and expanded the boundaries of what I now like to call "auditory art". When we think about visual art, we have film, paint, sculpture (although that can be tactile as well), etc. But most people only think of music as music, rather than the potential for something more.

The Snow was one of the albums on my birthing playlist, and it happened to be the album that the boy was born to. He was born towards the end of the album, and it was actually a great album for that particular point in time because the last half an hour or so of labor was hard for me to get through. Had I not been so caught up in GETTING A BABY OUT, I probably would have asked someone to skip past it when it came on, because I would have thought it "unbirthy". We were in the bedroom, and the music was playing in the living room, and I was at a point where there was NO WAY that I would have asked anyone in the room at that time to leave my side for even a second. The album is upbeat and electronic, and I was dimly aware of it playing in between contractions, but not bothered by it. It was exactly what I needed to find the energy required in those last minutes. Something more ambient and dreamy would not have been quite so effective.

After the boy was born, I wrote to Sleazy and told him my son had been born to his album. He responded and seemed delighted. I was touched that he had replied.

It was only months later when Hym and I were listening to the album again that I realized that the second to last song--the song that was playing while the boy was stuck and then likely still playing when he came flying out--was Answers Come in Dreams II. 

Because the music was playing in another room and because I was deep inside birthland, I didn't hear these words that are spoken more than once in the song:

Get ready to be delivered, and delivered in a hurry.

Indeed. What could be a more appropriate song for the end of a hard labor that culminated in a shoulder dystocia?


It was only tonight, as I listened to the song again, that I took notice of these other words, spoken only once:

Man has given a false importance to death. Every animal, plant, or man that dies adds to nature's compost heap.

RIP Sleazy. You gave us so much while you were alive, and now you'll return to the earth. Thank you.