Manuel Polin – Elogio a La Luna
Look, singling out a group of people as being greater at one thing than everyone else is, generally speaking, not a kind act. But you can sort of get away with it provided that every other participant agrees and if it is true. When it comes to writing stories, especially in the form of novels, there is simply nobody better than Latin American writers.
I say this because, in fact, the difference between them and everyone else is ridiculous, and there’s nobody that would deny it. Where, for example, a Scandinavian or Japanese storyteller will merely have one way of telling you about the world that they are describing, Latin Americans have access to an astonishing amount of data on a number of levels of reality that exist at the same time. And, they can tell these stories in many other ways.
One of the best ways to tell a story is through music. But it is, surely, a medium that is hard to master. Manuel Polin has and packs what would otherwise be a simple, acoustic-based jingle, “Elogio a La Luna,” with coordinates to an imaginary world that the songwriter can see clearly in his mind at any time. This is spiritual music of sorts, fantasy music, and a story about worlds that occasionally end up being our own.
Lexi Steinberg – Epiphany
We’ve collectively managed to do what, throughout centuries, seemed absolutely impossible – we’ve all but killed off organized religion. Now, we’ve certainly achieved this recently; we’re free to take credit, but I don’t think that we should be too glad.
Something is bound to fill the hole, and it may well end up worse off. You’ll need other institutions to govern over people’s intimate moments. As for the people themselves, they will need some kind of spirituality.
It’s a bright new age for gurus of all types. Some of them sell revelations through magical stones, chanting, or expensive retreats in the mountains. But everyone who has killed off religion will be willing to pay.
We all need a few brief moments where we can feel that life is really more than it. We all want to believe that a greater secret will be revealed to us. Almost every single time, music must be involved in some way.
Lexi Steinberg’s “Epiphany” is built to be the kind of piece of music that affirms the myths that lie behind the world that we can see with our naked eye. This may be a song about personal relationships at heart, but it is imbued with sounds that seem to pour out onto you from heaven itself. What does it mean exactly? It’s hard to tell, but then again, religion was pretty vague, too. Maybe it’s just a special moment or special songs like Steinberg’s that confirm our deepest instincts.
