Paradise Circus: or what Massive Attack has to teach me about loving myself

So, after having spent decades bemoaning the fact that I have a vocal range hardly more than an octave, it turns out that I have a vocal range of more than two octaves.

What happened?  I started singing lower.

A few months ago, I bought the Massive Attack album Heligoland.  (I'll note briefly that I think this album is more mature and musically diverse than Mezzanine.  So glad that 3D and Daddy G have moved beyond Mezzanine's focus on dick-waving.)

The song in question is Splitting The Atom.  From Daddy G's bass to Horace Andy's near-alto, there's nearly a two-octave span.  I enjoy the song - including its vocal range - so much, that I started to sing Daddy G's parts at his pitch.  Then I'd sing Paradise Circus at Hope Sandoval's pitch (there's just one note that she reaches on that song that I can't quite get to).

So that's my vocal range: at least the middle of bass to the lower register of alto.

In an academic sense, I've always known that random physical characteristics do not determine a person's gender.  But I've long felt self-conscious about my voice, fearing that it's what defines me as so-called "male".  Singing to music has helped me wrap my head around that just a bit.  I still feel self-conscious about my presentation in general, but I'm getting a bit more comfortable with my voice, and no longer feel the need to artificially pitch my speaking voice up.

I speak in a baritone.  I sing in a baritone / tenor / low alto.  People will have to just deal, and if they use that fact to make a judgement about my gender, that's their problem, not mine.

Oh Trent...

Today, I listened to Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral (Spotify*) for the first time since 1996 or so.

The song I remember most clearly is "Closer". Probably because it's the worst song on the album. (I actually like most of the songs - just not that one.)  But I digress.

Trent Reznor must be one of the more self-unaware people around.  Here's a guy who, at least in the 1990's, pushed a message of nihilism and Nietschean man-for-himself philosophy.  Certainly he presented The Downward Spiral that way.  Yet, listening to that album after a 15-year hiatus, what strikes me is just how hopeless and hollow the narrator feels.  After expending himself on drugs, heartless and possibly abusive sex, and power games, he collapses in a heap of emptiness, exemplified by the title track and by "Hurt" (Spotify).  You wouldn't be blamed if you thought The Downward Spiral was actually a critique of nihilism, a statement that chasing after momentary pleasures (especially in a way that hurts others) leads you to a spiritual wasteland.

It seems that one person who had better insight into Trent Reznor's demons than Reznor himself, was Johnny Cash.  The song that is regarded as Cash's epitaph is his cover of "Hurt" (Spotify).  You just get the sense that Cash was looking back on his life and regarding the mistakes he had made, the broken-ness of his own life and acknowledging that he was far from perfect.  He turned the crackling ennui of "Hurt" into an expression of human sadness.  By doing so, Cash turned Reznor's nihilism on its head, leaving us with a message of hope.

Also: It's pretty cool that Johnny Cash evidently listened to Nine Inch Nails.

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