Sex Isn’t A Sin: The Soundtrack
I’m not young and yet I’m getting to understand why someone would want to sleep with a singer or be a groupie with the hope of being more than one note. I’d easily choose to be either John Lennon or Yoko Ono, magnets in heat.
Levi Kreis does that magic to me and I’m not sure why. He sings in his gift LP to his fans, Bygones, “Handcuff My Soul” and I have a vision of myself being legal age and throwing off my leather coat while he opens the curtains to let moonlight makes us prayerful. Romantic, sure, but not as simple as a wet dream. There is something attractive to me when a singer means what he says, that somehow turns product into prophesy. The album is a gathering of older songs that Levi recorded before getting national attention and I enjoy the uncertainty of his choices that his voice nails (hello, Freud). As a poet and a teacher, I’m impressed when someone sounds like no one else despite the fact he or she may look alike, act average, or hide in plain sight. Levi, you are right to say proudly that you have “beautiful insights in my tongue.”
But there are other songs, all of them honest and like a diary about how hard the music business is. Talent alone isn’t enough.
He sings about blue eyes, about men younger than he is (or I’m bad at math, which I am). So none of these songs are about me, for me, but they move me because we are so used to generic psalmists. His voice is sexual (transparency: never met him and probably never will) but he makes me think of how body and soul are owed respect in this culture that is parsing us as blow-up dolls to be screwed by corporations. I’m not religious but when Levi says the word soul he reminds me of the first time I kissed a man and something in me understood the word homecoming. Discover him at www.levikreis.com. Levi has inspired me to write a poem and some lines are:
These images have short
shelf lives, but, for now, they are an electric poem I need to read aloud, that returns me to my life, to questions
Same-Sex Séances/ www.newsinspress.com
This is a great album and deserves listeners. Levi is obviously smart and determined to be his own man and how fortunate we are that he shares news from his journey with us. He makes sex and love seem conjoined, constant, and a cognizance of who we are when outside of the bed. “Bygones” is sometimes charmingly clumsy, but it is always convincing. He is someone I wish was my friend, someone I could come over to visit and tell him of last night’s mistake until we both laugh and talk turns to the mysteries of the cosmos.
Sex is interesting because it’s more than mechanical dancing, a debt, or affirmation. It’s about the music of the heart going faster, of straying into absolutes that embrace you, of percussion yielding to a kiss’ precision.
So as I listen to Waz, in his new CD, The Sweet Bye And Bye, I think, sometimes (well often) that I hate handsome men who are talented and deserve acclaim. He makes me have run-on sentences (and someone else I will probably never meet).
His CD is consistent and convinces me that aching sounds like a strength. In “Maria,” (my competition in some abstract way! I hope Waz has a sense of humor.), he says tenderly “I don’t think this world can keep spinning without you.” Vulnerability is becoming understood as a strength also. I love this CD’s lack of rush to sell me shit, how Waz in “Release” sings “everyone’s wondering about tomorrow” I must believe his gentle command to trust love in this age in which we are using hi-tech bombs and smart secret black budgets.
Waz has real talent, and reminds me of a poet who becomes a singer instead of publishing books (how jealous I am!). In his video song, “She’s Gone,” he sings “your were the one/you were the one” and he makes heterosexuality look glamorous and important. (transparency: I have his video on my own myspace). Waz proves that a soulful singer has a great left hook! I’ve learned never to underestimate the earnest one. This music makes me think of the poet Jean Valentine’s line (from “Once”):
When we broke up
His voice’s stridency strikes me as honest and rare, so that we are fortunate to have his music to break paths for us. The myspace site for him and his band is www.wazmusic.com. He and the rest of them make sex also about how hard it is to open oneself long after the nakedness, how it hurts to be in love but worth the gamble. I hate/envy him and love his music and he seems such a good person. Organic music is also about the singer and band respecting you and your own aching and love.
I wanted to write about a gay and straight artist to show how much we all have in common, that being myopic is a dangerous thing. Even though I’m not exactly as ancient as Rome (where its new list of sins is a virtual Pompeii that is splattering the world), sex matters because there is an honesty when one yields to yes. We have so many superior singers today than when I was 18 and I’m amused that the young think the 1970s were fun. They weren’t and confusion and repression still seems to exist. I always recommend safe sex because too many around me have died of AIDS and no drug yet will return the shine of them being themselves everyday.
Levi and Waz (OK, I’m pretending to know them and can call them by their know-me names) are working in a tradition that Bakhtin made clear for us: the body is an important part of all discourses, or should be. The heart, as always, provides the rhythm. |