Jóhann Jóhannsson THE MINERS' HYMNS (2011)

I became aware of this film score via the Battleship Pretension and their musicologist West, the only person I've heard who's as apoplectically passionate about the fact that JJ's (discarded) score must be released for BLADE RUNNER 2049, as we suspect it to be superior to Hans Zimmer's. Not to get too far afield, this piece stunned me.  It is just about the most noble, resolute, elegiac composition I've ever heard.  There is a particular crescendo in the shortest piece- There is No Safe Side But the Side of Truth-- that nearly stopped my heart the first time I heard it.

I have a very clear recollection of our last music meeting at WSND my senior year.  I'd been pushing us away from the labels' weekly slog of uninspired indie rock (I guess four years of that had me unfortunately callused) and during our elimination game (easily the best thing I invented in college) I had the poor judgment to put forth JJ's FORDLANDIA, a wonderful but quiet album, perfect for wee-smalls-hours radio in my opinion. The other DJ's listened very politely, and then my co-director asked for consensus that Animal Collective had made the album of the year. All the seniors agreed. It was time to graduate.  Paths in woods, divergence, etc.

Notre Dame has one showy graveyard, on your left right as you drive up to the Golden Dome.  Fifteen foot tall Irish crosses, the whole nine.  Then they had a potter's field out back, on the way to the ladies' college.  Lots of kids had died of cholera and other communicable diseases, the priests often lied about mortality statistics to keep the school open in the early days.  It should have been shuttered multiple times.  But those were the times, kids died.  One of my DJs actually died on the practice field, filming drills for the football team on a cherry-picker in a windstorm.  The thing collapsed. Blood on Brian Kelly's hands.  It's tough to root for the team when they have that coach.

It is tough to live a joyful life and still know things.  I guess you have to make joy in places you could never imagine.  Resilience in keeping some ethics within an empire.  Is that enough?  Mostly no.  Art it is, then.