For Kath Bloom

Matt Stadelmann writes about the music that consoled him through a long, harsh winter in New York City.

Welcome to The Artist’s Survival Guide, where artists share the art that got them through. A movie, a garden, a song, a meal, a favorite dance class, the novel that’s been read several times over. For many of us, these things give us faith, they are where we find comfort, succor and direction. Maybe a shift in perspective. I hope this weekly column will do some of that for you, too.

For Kath Bloom by Matt Stadelmann

Well my baby cries when he's tired
My puppy howls with the moon
You can never be sure of the people that you know
When they don't want to show you their sadness

It was the final weeks of a New York City winter that had been an endless dirty freeze. This was a little over a decade ago. I’d been priced out of my apartment in the East Village and broken up with all within a couple of weeks that past fall. I was subletting a friends’ apartment on a corner of Prospect Park that I’d rather completely forget. 

I was destroyed by early March. It was worse than all the others. The cold had taken a piece of me and replaced it with nothing. I felt brittle and hollow and I always had a stomach ache. Every time I shoved through the apartment’s double doors with the foggy and scratched glass, I winced in the cold wind that whipped along the park.

I’m not sure it was such a good idea to be listening to this song so much. Kath Bloom’s voice is almost terrifying in the way it resonates with complex emotion and real agonizing sadness. The song – both her voice and Loren Connors’ guitar to match – warbles in and out of tune, veering from achingly beautiful to harshly discordant. It’s stunning. It’s almost too much. If you listen with headphones, you can hear someone or something in the background, a howling, a spectral keening that interweaves with the guitar lines. Is a ghost singing along? One that lives in the space between sound and recording? Is it all my imagination? The song exists right on the precipice of a crushing melancholy. Exactly where I was that winter. In a dying place and not quite convinced I was going to come back to life. 

I tried to follow the path that you're on
Something in me is stubborn, I keep going wrong
If you can forgive me now, we'll meet up in another land
When the breeze has killed me

The CD cover was a black-and-white photograph of what appeared to be a Manhattan avenue, with Xmas trees lined up on the sidewalk. It wasn’t clear if the trees were awaiting homes for the season or if they’ve been trashed and abandoned, but regardless, I felt a sense of inevitable decay. The cover spoke directly to the sound inside; Kath’s music is suffused with a deep sense of abandonment, of the aftermath of feeling too much for too long. But I think, even though it’s a painful song to experience, it kept a small something glowing inside me. In the years since I’ve often wondered why I love sad songs so much. What exactly do they provide? Maybe it’s refuge in the company of a stranger who also feels so much it's almost paralyzing. Maybe because, that winter, a voice in headphones was the only way I could find to not be alone. 

Kath Bloom

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Here’s the link to view the CD cover and download the music:

Matt lived in New York City for many years where he performed in plays and sometimes wrote them as well. Now he lives in Portland, OR where he writes stories and sometimes songs too. His music project The Glass Bead Band just released their first album a few weeks ago on Luftmensch Records. Here’s a link if you’d like to listen.

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