I found myself in the middle
of an MFA creative writing program
listening obsessively to k.d. lang,
in particular these three albums,
Ingénue, All You Can Eat, and Drag.
Even though the first of these three
was released a couple of years
earlier, I discovered her in 1995.
How I came across this music,
I do not remember, but she was
the antidote to every hard rock
grunge bone in my body. I was
captivated, entranced, in love with
the most famous lesbian in music.
Maybe it was simply that I had
never heard romantic music this
smart in my entire life, and maybe
it was just that I had never heard
a singer quite this good. Or, maybe,
just maybe, on the cusp of my 30’s,
I had simply grown up, was an
adult now, and suddenly, developed
a taste for the mellow, the lounge,
the torch song, the romantic, music
that would place me inside my “feels.”
Ingénue is an exquisite, beautiful album
and a sonic masterpiece. It sounds
so deliciously good. And all of these
tunes just reach inside my chest
and squeeze. Constant craving, indeed.
Listening to it now, tonight, it’s just
as good, just as powerful, just as
sonically glorious as it ever was,
and it’s not the bourbon speaking,
I swear on a stack of k.d. lang records.
All You Can Eat has more swagger,
a super clean, punchy, tight sound,
less torch, more pop, but it’s still super
chill. I remember listening to k.d. lang
on my iPod, as a 30 year old man,
sleeping for the first time in my life
in a college dorm during the MFA
residency in Swannanoa, North
Carolina, at Warren Wilson College.
While all the heady learning from
workshops and lectures and readings
and the discovery of this incredible
community were all swirling around
in my head as I tried to sleep on that
crappy bed, I listened to Ingénue, All
You Can Eat, and Drag until I passed out,
blissed out, never more happy in my
entire life up to that point to be so
uncomfortable and thousands of miles
away from home.
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- Ingénue, Nonesuch Records, 2017, 25th anniversary edition on heavyweight black double vinyl. The second album in the set features the 1993 MTV Unplugged performance.
- All You Can Eat, Warner Records, 1995, (2020 reissue), on opaque orange vinyl.
- Sadly, I do not have Drag on vinyl–her album of covers, every song of which has something to do with smoking, while k.d., on the cover, is dressed like a man and puffing on an invisible cigarette. Such a great concept and a great selection of covers fantastically recorded and performed. I may have to get that CD out from the stacks right this minute.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 