Specimen Days: Home-Made Music

        In this entry, Whitman speaks not of an event, but of an experience. The setting of his journal entry is one where he is spending the night among the wounded soldiers. He hears singing, and decides to leave the side of the soldier he was accompanying for a moment, as he was asleep anyway. He gets closer to the music, and takes a seat by another wounded soldier, a Brooklyn friend. As he sits there watching the singers, and making sure his wounded friend can also see the singers, he has a beautiful experience. He realizes that even though these singers don't sing as great as the pro singers in the New York opera house, and weren't performing complex musical compositions, he enjoyed himself as much as if he were in the opera house watching the most grand of performances. He notices the way the wounded soldiers watched in silence, and how their attitudes changed upon witnessing the performance, and that the whole thing "was a sight to look around upon again and again."
        Whitman knows what he's talking about. Life is about experience. It's not about how much money you spend for the experience or where the experience is. What matters is what you take from the experiences life gives you. Lots of times, the experiences we remember most are not remembered solely for an event, but everything that accompanied the event, like the smells, sights, emotions, and company. Not every single thing has to be perfect for everything to be perfect... if that makes sense.
        Whitman could hang with the high-culture cats and the low-culture cats. Here, he is down with the low-culture, enjoying some pure entertainment in good company. He could have paid little attention to the whole experience though. A lot of times, the experience you have can just depend on your attitude towards things. I could listen to a CD of my favorite music and get lost in the sounds, but in the same way, I can also listen to my favorite vinyl records and get lost in the music as well. Beyond the hiss, cracks, and static you hear on a vinyl record, a very beautiful experience is to be had. Once, I was making some music, sampling off an old record, and my old roommate told me that he liked what I was making, but that I should get rid of "all the static" because he didn't think it sounded good. I realized he had a completely different perception of that static than me. Whenever I hear static on a record, I never hear imperfections, I hear history. And to me, it is as important of a piece of the experience as any other.
        When Whitman writes about the people, places, and experiences in Leaves of Grass, he often lifts them up from their perceived normality into a state of beauty. He can write about a farmer and treat the subject as if he were majestic. Like I said. Whitman knows what he's talking about. Whitman could pierce into the souls of things and find the beauty underneath any rough surface. Even in my music tastes, my favorite singers all have the roughest voices. I still think Eric Burdon from The Animals is one of the best singers ever. He laid some beautiful soul on those tracks. Doesn't matter how rough the voice was, it was beautiful. I can't even listen to the radio. Everything sounds too clean. I'm stuck on singers from the 60s. There's realness in the rough. Whitman saw that. I love to look for it. It's finding lessons in mistakes. It's finding character in scars. It's knowing that the girl with some imperfections is actually way more attractive than the one that looks like a supermodel. It's knowing that the wrinkles in your clothes just means you actually did some shit while you were wearing them. It's knowing that an amateur musical performance in a room full of wounded soldiers can actually be the most breathtaking experience. You know.

beautiful.