Cicely Tyson, Just As I Am, with Michelle Burford, 2021; Spaceships over Glasgow: Mogwai, Mayhem and Misspent Youth, 2022;
This was not what I expected.
I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, as you may have noticed. When I do read memoirs, I do so almost exclusively for two reasons: first, when there are specific biographical moments or characters that interest me; and second, for insight into artists’ creative processes. There is little more fascinating than learning about how artists see the creation of their art, and how they understand both the process and what the meaning or impact of their art is once it is loose in the wild.
Cicely Tyson‘s 2021 memoir, Just As I Am (written with Michelle Burford), came very highly recommended, and my expectations were very high for the first reason above: not only was there likely to be insights into her long, tempestuous relationship with Miles Davis, but I was sure there would be dozens of other figures passing through Tyson’s world I was somewhere on the scale of curious about to fascinated by. And along those dimensions, it’s a fantastic read.
This next bit is hard, right: the only proper response to Cicely Tyson is awe.
As a memoir, for me, Just As I Am falls short, largely because the usual insight into her process, her art, and how she was able to be the irresistible, magnificent force she was is that she was blessed by God.
Nothing against that, of course. But it’s not very compelling at the end of the day. There is, despite the constant stream of encounters with massive figures of the late 20th century, despite the recognition of how important Roots was as a cultural moment, and even despite the details of her long and tortured relationship with Miles, an absence of revelation, of a point of entry into her artistic self.
So, worthwhile as history; worthwhile as a tribute to Ms. Cicely, not so worthwhile as insight into her spectacular talent.
If you know me, you know I loves me some Mogwai.
(For those wondering what a Mogwai might be, they are a Scottish postrock band that has been around for over 30 years at this point. Postrock, one of my favorite genres, is essentially instrumental music performed by classic rock band configurations, with a high focus on sometimes extreme variation in harmonics, melody, and pure volume. Mogwai–along with Sigur Rós, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor–are generally considered the founding fathers of the genre, although such discussions can always be somewhat controversial.)
So when I saw their founder, Stuart Braithwaite, was releasing Spaceships over Glasgow: Mogwai, Mayhem and Misspent Youth in 2022, I think I was among the first in line to reserve a copy. If I listened to music via Spotify, Mogwai would be top 10 on my Spotify Wrapped every year, I would imagine.
So my disappointment in the book is very personal. Spaceships Over Glasgow reads like a long prelude that should culminate in a substance abuse intervention followed by reflections on the music and the process that went into making it over several decades.
But we never get there. Instead, it’s a detailed chronology of a misspent youth, and a long list of drunken performances and borderline behavior, most of which is excused with a nod, a wink, and an appeal to certain brand of Scotsness.
The early chapters are more interesting, mostly as a chronicle of the UK post-punk scene of the mid 1980s, and, more specifically, as they contain some brief insight into how and why he was drawn specifically to extraordinarily loud music, to sonic experiences that could be literally felt as well as heard. But it really stops traveling that road very early.
The second half–which should be the most interesting, as the band slowly and somewhat shockingly begins to succeed, and as they explore and ultimately destroy a decently long series of artistic collaborations. Instead, it’s somewhat numbing: there are only so many times you can read, So we got pissing drunk and somehow pulled off a great show. We really were horrible.
And, finally, we have Dessa.
Dessa is a hip hop artist/singer/songwriter and founding member of the Doomtree Collective, a Minneapolis based artist community/record label/performance troupe. Dessa’s popular peak was probably a single on one of the re-imagining Hamilton albums, singing Congratulations on The Hamilton Mixtape, and her first solo album, A Badly Broken Code, is absolutely fantastic.
In 2018, she released My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love.
And, for me, it is by far the best of these memoirs and really the only one I can wholeheartedly recommend.
She is very smart, very wry, and very insightful as she reflects on what it takes to found and maintain artistic community, on the travails of touring, and perhaps most of all, on what it means to love and be loved, and what happens when that love isn’t entirely healthy, yet you still crave it.
Doing this led her to pursue research in neurobiology, working with a leading scientist in the field to map her emotions to the physical/electrical workings of her brain; it led her to leave and then rejoin the touring company of Doomtree; it led her to doubt and the rebuild her sense of herself as an artist. And through it all, she is unflinching, recognizing the impacts of her family of origin on her later emotional states as well as the issues that are uniquely a product of her own experience.
Of the three, Dessa is probably the least influential artist, the one most likely to be lost to history (she and Mogwai clearly are dwarfed by the immense shadow of Ms. Cicely; that said, Mogwai is an important figure in the founding and continued progression of a minorly significant genre); yet she is the best writer, and the most willing to engage with questions at the core of an artist and their creative process and output.
Throw in a painfully honest examination of the role of love and passion in those movements, and My Own Devices is a compelling read, end to end.
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