"It's Mighty Dark To Travel"-Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys

My friend Johanna suggested that I talk about "music for travel and transience." She is currently traveling in Europe and seems to be in a different country every time I talk to her.

Music for travel is something I've always been kind of interested in. I'm actually moving soon, and last night I had all these dreams about suitcases. Freud would probably refuse to analyze that one on the grounds that it is too obvious, and does not have enough to do with penis envy. (Someone told me the other day that I overuse the word "penis." Whateverrrrrr)

Anyway, I especially like listening to music in a moving vehicle. Each vehicle, in my mind, has a different personality or mood. I find that I often feel melancholy on buses, especially because usually I'm taking a bus at night. Because you're not driving the bus yourself (hopefully), there's a kind of helplessness to a bus, hurtling through the dark, that lends itself to thoughts about the passage of time. Specifically the whole thing where it's swift and irrevocable. But there can be a beauty in that, too, so music that is somehow beautiful can support that feeling and make it less aimless/desperate. My friend Dan sometimes recommends albums to me for bus trips, and one of his recommendations that I liked in particular was Grouper's Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. It was beautiful but also had the added plus of being great for all the states including and in-between awake and sleeping.

Trains can be a lot of things. Trains can have that sort of sad bus-feeling, but also there's a relaxed quiet, and sometimes a hopeful kind of "pioneer spirit" thing going on. Trains seem to go by big open spaces like corn fields a lot, and that makes me feel expansive, like there's a lot out there and a lot to look forward to. Classical music is good for trains, especially Aaron Copland. Or super old bluegrass. The Copland is expansive, and the bluegrass has that "chunka-chunka" rhythm that imitates the train. That shit makes you feel like you are IN A FILM, specifically one about the power of American optimism and what an incredible country we live in. But in the good patriotism way, not the crappy kind where people get killed and foreigners have bad mustaches.

I think cars are kind of my favorite, because there's a sense of being in charge. Listening to music while driving is pretty awesome, but even sitting in the back with the window rolled down can be exciting. Driving is kind of like dancing (a motion that you are in control of being paired with music) so I find that songs that are good for dancing are also good for driving. Missy Elliott, for example. Also, music that makes you feel like a badass---for example, The Rolling Stones or The Stooges.

Airplanes are not great for music because there's always that loud noise, and not much sensation of actual movement. But people listen to music anyway, just because it's boring on an airplane.

The last thing I want to say is about ferries and boats. A ferry is THE BEST PLACE to listen to music, because you can stand outside with the wind whipping through your hair and be covered in sun and sprays of water. I recommend a little melodrama on a ferry, like Arcade Fire, or "Born To Run."

The song I picked for this post is "It's Mighty Dark To Travel" by Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys. This would qualify under the category of "songs for the train." People call Bill Monroe "the father of bluegrass" because he helped to develop the style. If you don't know Bill Monroe, you should check him out. Bluegrass and country music, overall, really understand that whole mournful side of travel ("travel and transience," as Johanna put it)-- that movement reminds us of the passage of time, that the passage of time is inevitable, and so loss must also be inevitable:

It's mighty dark for me to travel
For my sweetheart, she is gone
The road is rough and filled with gravel
But I must journey on and on

Giddyup!

Ricky Skaggs tribute version, closer to the sound of the original recording

Bill Monroe performing the song with Jim & Jesse