i carry this music inside of me

Poet, writer, and musician J. Blake Gordon writes about his passion for the musician John Frusciante

 

But the way you make me feel
is all that's really real
you little duck house
                   — John Frusciante

 

         I think about John Frusciante every day.   When I think about John Frusciante, I feel happy.   And I feel grateful to be happy, thinking about John Frusciante every day.   I'm grateful he's alive, happy he's making music.   I think about his music all the time.

         Known primarily as a member of the rock group Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Frusciante has been an accomplished solo artist for more than ten years.   His first two albums, "Niandra LaDes and Usually Just A T-shirt" (1994) and "Smile From The Streets You Hold" (1997), are collections of mostly acoustic home recordings (some featuring Frusciante's late friend River Phoenix) of insanely beautiful guitar playing and fearlessly emotive singing.   Frusciante's voice is otherworldly on these records, with a distinctly feminine timbre and an impossible-sounding falsetto.   And when he screams, oh lord.   You just can't believe the way this man screams.   He can sound completely unhinged at one moment, gentle and hushed the next.   At times, a song will seem on the verge of falling apart, and then suddenly everything comes together in a way that makes perfectly unexpected sense.   I guess it's hard to explain.   These two records forever changed the way I listen to music, and I love them with all my heart.   After countless listens, I am still hearing new things in songs like "My Smile Is A Rifle", "Femininity", "The Other", "Your Pussy's Glued To A Building On Fire".   I carry this music inside of me.   Deep inside.   There's a song on "Smile From The Streets You Hold" called "Life's A Bath" and the main lyric is, "life's a bath, sex is water".   I've been thinking about what that means for years.

         An intensely disciplined and creative musician, Frusciante is a renaissance figure among singer-songwriters, endlessly reinventing musical forms and overstepping preconceived limits of compositional reason.   He has stated repeatedly in interviews that he communicates with the spirit world, and that the ideas for his songs come to him from other dimensions.    I believe that the spirits watch over and protect Frusciante's delicate nature, so that he may continue to create beautiful music.

         John Frusciante has had well-publicized struggles with his health in the past (struggles which, by all estimates, should have killed him) but today he is the model of modern fitness and clean living.   He disproves the common notion that an artist loses his edge in sobriety (though the case has been sadly proven otherwise by numerous others - I'm looking at you, Elton).   As Frusciante's health continues to straighten and strengthen, his well of inspiration seems to deepen, and his ability to translate purity of intention into the precision of melodic expression grows continually.   He has a house filled with records and guitars in the Hollywood Hills, and there he stays, reading books, listening to music, studying mathematics, exercising, meditating, preparing his own macrobiotic meals, writing songs and practicing, practicing, practicing.   I am fascinated by every detail of his life.   There are plenty of other artists, writers and musicians over whose assembled biographies and bodies of work   I obsess, but no one interests me more than John Frusciante.   Everything he does seems miraculous.

         In 2004, Frusciante produced seven records of new and original music: "Shadows Collide With People", "The Will To Death", "Automatic Writing" (under the group name Ataxia), "DC EP", "Inside of Emptiness", "A Sphere In The Heart Of Silence" and "Curtains".   Believe me, they are all masterpieces.   Created in collaboration with his friend Josh Klinghoffer, the records also include contributions from two members of the group Fugazi.   Each record has a unique sound.   Frusciante also wrote and recorded several songs for Vincent Gallo's beautiful and misunderstood film "The Brown Bunny".   For unexplainable reasons, Frusciante's songs were not actually used in the final cut of the film, though they played a crucial role in its creation.   These songs, which can be found on the motion picture soundtrack, are particular favorites of mine, and I'm always playing them in the car.   But I have so many favorites.   And I never tire of hearing them.

         "At the end of the day, when I sit down after doing everything that I need to do for the day, and I sit there in front of my speakers, and I listen to some beautiful music, it puts everything in place, and I feel like the whole world is perfect.   That is not stupid.   That is the most important part of my day.   It doesn't matter what I've accomplished that day or, shit, how much money I've made that day, or anything like that doesn't mean anything.   What matters is at the end of the day where I can sit there, put on a Velvet Underground record, and the world is perfect, nothing is wrong with it.   Everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be.   That's how I feel when I hear music, and that's how it's been my whole life."   —John Frusciante

         I know just what he means.   That's how it's been my whole life, too.

         (quote taken from Dallas Music Guide interview by Chris Steffen, 2004)