I was listening to Flat Duo Jets today and remembered all the testimonials from musicians about the frontman Dexter Romweber’s special musicality. Jack White speaks about them in the documentary “It Might Get Loud”. In the touching documentary about Dexter, people such as Neko Case and the Original Sinners speak highly of him.
I appreciate “the musician’s musician”. People that never made it big, but that remain in the hearts of the people us normal folks listen to. I don’t personally connect to virtuosity as its own proposition, as it is with the Dream Theaters or Joe Satrianis of the world. I recognize their brilliance, but I’d always preferred to listen to Flat Duo Jets or Michael Hedges (or one of their compositions played by other gifted artists).
My all-time favorite musician is probably Carson McWhirter.
It must have been 2008 or so, and I was perusing a now-defunct website
called terroreyes.tv. Don’t ask me how I got there, I can’t
recall, but it seems to have been a guy with a camcorder and a great
connection to the Sacramento underground scene of the early 2000s. I
clicked on one of Carson’s videos, and was immediately blown away. The
guy was a genius, no doubt. The effortless musicality, the uniqueness of
the playing, the apparent effortlessness, and, most of all, the raw
power of the playing reshaped everything I thought I knew about playing
the guitar and music in general.
Despite collaborating with bigger names in the Sacramento underground scene like Zach Hill of Hella and Death Grips fame on his infamous solo album “Face Tat” (on the title track, no less!), he seems to remain largely obscure. I still listen to him religiously. Every track is a revelation, every track is different, none of them are mindless noodling or shredding.
I can’t help but mythologize a bit here: your favorite musician’s favorite musician has a weird obsession with this one song, and it might be one of Carson’s. It’s certainly obscure, but it’s a powerful legacy.
Talking about legacy feels vain. But I cannot deny there is a bit of vanity in what I do. I want to leave a legacy. It just doesn’t have to be mass appeal. But I want my work to be respected by people I respect. I want to be the programmer equivalent of a musician’s musician. I want people to go “huh” when they look at mae or cj or cspfuck.
I don’t want to compare myself to Carson. Mostly because my guitar playing is way less interesting, but also because we’re different people in different fields, and he’s someone I’ve always admired. But there is an aspiration in what I do to get at least one person to be as excited about one piece of my work as I get about his songs. And that they get inspired by it, to do something weird and wonderful themselves, that they get hungry to play with concepts that feel scary.
Sometimes I have moments of awe when something works out. I remember
mae
in particular: I woke up one weekend, having just had a deep dream in
which I had built the interpreter for it. I pulled up my computer
immediately, and within an hour and a half, the language was
implemented. I rode that wave for the rest of the day. It was
half-functional at that point, and remains so to this day, but the core
idea was implemented: maps are everything.
Those sparks are rare, and they don’t constitute the entirety of my artistic or professional practice in programming, art, or poetry. But when they happen, they’re genuinely beautiful.
But no matter whether intentional or gifted to me, all my projects may become part of whatever legacy I leave, and I hope they contribute to carrying the torch of curiosity, play, and hunger for conquering the edge of your practice, much like Carson did for me.
If you like his music, consider checking out his Bandcamp.