A Narration of Melancholic Elation

[Listening to Death Cab for Cutie - The Stability EP]

On a weekly basis, I hop on the highway 24 to escape the mundane, bland, commercial suburban culture. Even after all these years, there’s a point in the journey that doesn’t cease to lose it’s thrill, awe, and impressiveness. It’s the titillation generated by wondering what the visibility will be like after passing through Caldecott Tunnel. The Caldecott connects Contra Costa County to Oakland and it’s also the route taken to reach San Francisco from the greater East Bay Area.

There’s definitely places and states that receive a further degree of extremity in regards to annual weather. I know mid-western states like Iowa move from below-zero (minus 50 to 70 with wind) snow-bound conditions to sultry humid temperatures during the course of the year.

But I don’t think there are many places we can speak of, where the current temperature can drastically differentiate with a twenty minute drive. I’m talking about a mere twenty mile expanse within the San Francisco Bay Area. “The City” as all Bay Area dwellers know San Francisco has a very mild summertime warmth compared with the rest of United States. It even gets quite chilly on numerous occassions from June to August and rarely is there an evening where a second layer isn’t necessary. I think we’ve all heard that Mark Twain quote a hundred times.
In a letter, he also wrote:

San Francisco is a city of startling events. Happy is the man whose destiny it is to gather them up and record them in a daily newspaper! That sense of conferring benefit, profit and innocent pleasure upon one’s fellow-creatures which is so cheering, so calmly blissful to the plodding pilgrim here below, is his, every day in the year. When he gets up in the morning he can do as old Franklin did, and say, “This day, and all days, shall be unselfishly devoted to the good of my fellow-creatures–to the amelioration of their condition–to the conferring of happiness upon them–to the storing of their minds with wisdom which shall fit them for their struggle with the hard world, here, and for the enjoyment of a glad eternity hereafter. And thus striving, so shall I be blessed!”

My hometown suburb of Walnut Creek rests twenty to thirty minutes directly east of the city. It’s fascinated me that even this short distance provides such a radical difference in living. When a heat wave brings scorching temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, the city stays at a lovely, moderate 75-80.

In a letter I recently wrote to my Uncle Samir( a mentor and part of the last breed of hand-written letter scribblers):

I would like to think that I live for the moment, but the truth is that I’m constantly looking at the horizon ahead, and not enjoying the place where my feet are currently planted. From the East Bay Area, where the swelter has been igniting. From this suburb called Walnut Creek, where corporate-burnt Starbucks Coffee, yuppified couples in SUVs, million dollar homes without any character, and upscale/useless retail stores reign supreme. It’s on the outskirts, that I sit atop the hills of Berkeley, gazing at the 2 bridges - Bay & Golden Gate. The Pyramid Building, Coit Tower, Alcatraz island all brilliantly distinguishable. I know the independent cafes (all with their own creative motif) in the Little Italy of North Beach, the countless enclaves of culture interspersed within the Mission District, and the numerous other communities of beauty in San Francisco. A city stretched only seven miles in length, but with more culture, diversity, political awareness, and depth than any other city in the States. Not because of the weather, but for the culture and people I need to be in this city. Since Walnut Creek has alwasy been predominantly Caucasian and middle to upper class, it doesn’t seem like gentrication has much room to navigate - the bourgeousie and corporations are simply in a process of further “beautification” - using the worker’s for a little more elbow grease (to give the town more shine and pretentiousness).

Vikrum and I were at Cafe Coffee Day in Bandra in early June, the day before I left to Singapore. Of course, like any two normal human beings we acknowledged our mutual envy for our situations. I was jealous that Vikrum was staying in Bombay for such a long time, learning Hindi and working. And he was jealous that I was going home to California’s progressive women and liberal society. We were discussing what I was looking forward to upon arrival and Vikrum asked, “Aren’t you looking forward to driving fast on the highway with your music on full blast?”

Indeed. I think that many can testify to the enjoyment of driving a vehicle with the tunes at high decibels and the windows resting below the elbows. I can’t help but feel sorrow for those with the a/c cranked up and the stereo cranked down.

Upon exit from the Caldecott, one is surrounded on the left and right by the hills of Berkeley and the palatial houses rebuilt after their previous lives were incinerated in the Oakland Hills Fire. With a curvacious decline, one’s car just glides along the turns. It’s exhilarating to think of the copious options to choose from after the tunnel: cruising past the Claremont Hotel onto Ashby Avenue, taking Telegraph or College Ave. into Downtown Berkeley , swinging around the 13 into Piedmont, or continuing on towards the impressive Bay Bridge.

The exhilaration caused by wondering what brilliant pocket of culture to explore today. It’s why I love the Bay baby.

In the start of my incline towards social ineptitude, I left San Diego and hit the I5 around noon. It was a blissful Saturday and I felt almost irate that I wasn’t flocking to the sand with 90% of Southern California that afternoon. But rather than add any more shades to my brown skin, beers to my belly, and superficiality to my mentality, I would find an alternative method to enjoy the cystal clear skies, beaming sunshine, and altogether flawless day. It would be because of a German musician named Ulrich Schnauss.

After possessing only three tracks, but loving their continual introspective exhilaration, I finally got the album (A Strangely Isolated Place) in it’s entirety from my homie Alex. I think the album title speaks for itself, for it is to be listened, disected, diagnosed, and digested by the solo being. And even better, by the “solo-wandering-traveler-being.”

Nothing is as mind numbing as I5- straight, flat, boring!

The i5 is a freeway that runs from the US/Mexico border in San Diego, through California, Oregon, and Washington, and ends at the US/Canadian border. Many would attest this freeway as being incredibly boring with nothing but flat farmland for the eyes to gaze upon. I would normally agree with this observation, too.

But not on this auspiciously-felt day. With the windows down & wind blowing in my face, Ulrich “singing”, golden hills radiating in the distance, light blue stretched across into the horizon, and an abundance of thoughts to sift through - What was the cause of unhappiness during this trip to SoCal? Why was I having so much trouble interacting? What were my next steps going to be in my future? As the hours rolled by, I spotted the family of windmills that inhabit the fields near the 580 interchange. They are truly a magnificent site because of their aesthetic quality and because they mean that less than an hour remains in before I pull up home to my driveway in Walnut Creek.

I just came across this music map - People who listen to Ulrich Schnauss also listen to blank.

Ryan Potts of Pop Matter’s writes:

The eight tracks present on Isolated are each swathed in elated soundscapes that are also grounded with a dynamic use of rhythm and percussion, as well as an ardent sense of melodic finesse.

Chris Shaffer of RainyDawg writes:

When people wake up in the morning, especially after long periods of confusion, dysphoria, and general melancholy, they typically need something to get them back in line. Something to show them that it’s okay, and that people out there still give a shit.

It seems like people need to compare an emerging artist with another one. Possibly it’s an older, influential band or an artist of the same genre with a copycat style. I guess we do it with everything - food, film, friends, places. I dislike it in a way, but it helps to create an idea about something unknown, in relativity, to something/someone already established in our mind. We have to relate this to a past experience. I have read a dozen reviews of Decemberists being compared with Neutral Milk Hotel. I think it’s a fair comparison to say, but they’re really so different.

Critics like comparing Ulrich to Brian Eno, Boards of Canada, My Bloody Valentine. But even the man himself admits to the latter in an interview with the Montreal Mirror:

“I think [My Bloody Valentine guitarist/producer] Kevin Shields is basically the last person in popular music history so far to have really changed the sound of music. I mean, every music genre in the last 10 years, if you look very closely, has something in it that you could trace back to My Bloody Valentine. I don’t think there’s any other musician on the planet of whom that can be said.”

My homie Gabe told me recently that he isn’t into too much new stuff. He’s gone back to the likes of Pavement, Neutral Milk Hotel, and My Bloody Valentine - bands that brand what he likes to refer to as the “lo-fi aesthetic.” I’m working on trying to capture the beauty of these bands.

Aaron Rietz, of Prefix magazine writes:

Schnauss’s best moments brandish an epiphanous flair, a feeling akin to Platonic revelation, escaping the limiting and familiar confines of the cave.

I think it’s the anecdote to a feeling of disgruntled disenchantment, causing an intertwining of melancholy gaze and perennial happiness.

So get in your car, drive off into the day or night, and into a stangely isolated place.