The Sensitive, The Spiritual & Brian Wilson

One thing I've struggled with regarding social media usage over the years is watching myself and other people feel the need to announce their commentary on a current event, under the presumption that people have been waiting for you to break your silence and finally share your thoughts on the topic via the Internet. 

Brian Wilson passed away 3 days ago. I wasn't going to spill any Internet ink on this. But I've brought this up in conversation with multiple people. And apparently people in my actual life don't know anything about Brian Wilson.

As opposed to giving you a bunch of facts you can find on Wikipedia, I wanted to write this in his honor for very personal reasons. I know his work has been highly influential to tons of artists over the last 60+ years. But forget those people. Brian Wilson's work has been influential to me.

THE SENSITIVE, THE SPIRITUAL & BRIAN WILSON

I have my own Bandcamp page with a bunch of my songs scattered around there, with only a few I actually like. One of those good ones is a Beach Boys ripoff called "Shoulda Tried To Hold Your Hand." I've often wondered if I could make an entire album centered around that sound. Something The Beach Boys would have recorded in '65 or '66. 

On summer nights, my mind tends to reside in the thematic spirit of this music. Somewhere between dreaming of a girl you have a boyish crush on, or looking up at the skies at God in a state of yearning for purpose in your confounding life. Something about being outside in the night air after a sunny day. A lot of existential pondering and burning emotion.

At this point in my life, I often feel like I failed at adolescence and young adulthood. Feeling like I walked away from it unfinished. Like I didn't have enough fun. I didn't make enough mistakes. I didn't love enough. I didn't explore enough. I didn't find the stable, mature sense of self that was supposed to naturally come about. And now I'm supposed to commit to stuff as if the world assumes I actually live life with any emotional fulfillment whatsoever. At age 34, I'm still living in lyrics sheet for Pet Sounds. 

Let's go over some songs. Perhaps Pet Sounds songs like "That's Not Me" and "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" are the best examples of how that album works as a spirit guide for me. Honest to God, I was gonna insert an italicized section here with the most relatable lyrics from "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times," and realized I was just sharing the whole song.

I guess I'll give a brief shoutout to Brian's rather nonsensical opus Brian Wilson Presents Smile, which is easily my 2nd most-listened-to work of his. But let's get back to early Beach Boys, as that's more of an era for personal inspiration.

Ever since I was a teenager, I've been drawn to The Beach Boys' 1963 ballad "In My Room." I never had my own bedroom until I was 16, and I suddenly connected with the list of things that happen in that song: Dreaming, scheming, lying awake, praying, crying, sighing, laughing, telling my secrets, locking out all my worries and fears. I wrote a paper about this song in junior college and my teacher pulled me aside to tell me it was the best paper he read all semester.

The band's early work is full of sentimental melodies to the ladies, which is perhaps best represented on Side B of their 1965 album The Beach Boys Today! My personal favorite song here is "Please Let Me Wonder" and has Brian on lead vocal. Perhaps it's lame for a a guy over 30 (or even over 20) to be so drawn to a song that definitely sounds like a diary entry of a teenage boy with a dreamlike crush. But it's the "wondering" that always strikes me with this era of Brian's music. He questions life itself, which means he also must question love. If I had to work with Mike Love, I'd be "questioning love" too.

Sorry, had to. 

Anyways... Growing up in California, it was normal for my parents to play their cassette tape of The Greatest Hits -- Volume 1: 20 Good Vibrations on a summer drive to a NorCal beach. So my earliest Beach Boys memories probably begin at age 4. And naturally, I associate this band with going to the beach. But I've left all those childhood memories washed up in the sand. It's the coming-of-age yearning that lives on within me.

I've long felt the emotional weight of Brian Wilson's music in my own soul. I associate it with self-discovery and romance, both of which seem like impossibilities in my life. I also associate it with youth, which is half my life ago at this point. At some point, boys have to grow up. I sometimes wonder how things will be "when I grow up to be a man," but then I realize I've already been living on the other side of that. And now, the "boy" who wrote that song isn't alive anymore.

If you came into this blogpost not knowing anything about Brain Wilson, I'm sure none of this helped out at all. I'll always see him as a spiritual figure among my favorite songwriters. He drew a line between how I personally view modern art and God. I can only assume he was good man in real life. But in the music world, he was the best damn boy who ever lived.