Back in the spring, a good friend asked if I wanted to be part of a group that would listen to two albums each month — one of them randomly selected from Rolling Stone’s “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time“ list and the other picked by a group member. Then we’d talk about them during a Zoom call. Kind of like a record listening party. I said, “Why not?”
I ended up in a group of men, all great guys, who frankly have a much more impressive listening repertoire and expansive knowledge of music than my own. Over the years, they’ve all had their hand in the scene in some formal way, either by making music, writing about it or producing professional designs based on it. Was I intimidated? Of course. Did I kind of bluff my way through at first? You bet.
But it’s been a wonderful experience. The conversations are always enlightening, and without fail, we give respectful consideration to what each person has to say. For my first pick, I chose Sufjan Stevens’ “Carrie & Lowell,” a beautifully rendered album about grief and the mythmaking that happens in families. The gentle-souled album, though, carries a very strong charge for me because I listened to it while my parents were still alive and struggling with failing health. It helped me feel things that I had compartmentalized into numbness. When I shared the complicated emotional landscape that I brought to the songs, the rest of the group listened quietly and thoughtfully. It was like a purging for me.
I developed a whole new respect for Lauryn Hill and her solo album because of this group. She accomplished with one album what many musical artists spend their entire careers trying to create: innovative art that vibrates with life and soul. I fell in love with Low’s “Hey What” because of this group. Folk rock with electronic distortion and disintegration? It’s cerebral and emotional all at once. I discovered the abundant joys of Tierra Whack’s 15-minute album “Whack World” because of this group. Yes, it’s 15 minutes long — and packed with storytelling.
I decided to participate in my friend’s group even though I felt unsure of myself. That isn’t insignificant. I think it’s simply easier to swallow your nerves when you’re young and highly driven to establish yourself and grow your social group. My reward for pushing through my impostor syndrome has been that I get to have a rich bonding experience over music each month with people I’ve grown to know and really appreciate. It’s part of a continuing education that I didn’t expect.
The process and payoff have been the same for the graphic novel discussion group I joined four years ago. A good friend runs it with a Chicago librarian, and he suggested I give it a go. Monthly discussions at the Map Room in Chicago flush with bar ambience and beer. I was not at all versed in the world of graphic novels and nervous about what I might say, but I ignored my fluttery gut and jumped in. I discovered that graphic novels are a remarkable medium for telling stories, especially autobiographical accounts — “Fun Home” and “Persepolis,” to name two. The visual language that graphic novels use, including panel layout and color palette, can be just as complex and moving as masterful prose.
We’ve covered a lot of ground, genre-wise. “Uzumaki” by Junji Ito stands out most for its unforgettable imagery: Spirals and vortexes play a prominent role in a Japanese town’s descent into madness. I felt out of sorts for weeks afterward, and I don’t consider that a bad thing. Pandemic fatigue has led me to indulge in a lot of escapist entertainment, and while I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with escapism, I know that I need challenging art, in its many forms, to keep me awake.
Everyone in the group is fabulous in their distinctive way, and we all enthusiastically connect over graphic novels, horror films and streaming TV. It’s become almost inevitable that after our meetings, I’ll shoot a text to my friend to gush, “I love our group!” We continued meeting virtually during the pandemic, and once we resumed our get-togethers at a restaurant, it felt like a family reunion. I couldn’t stop smiling.
One of the lessons of the pandemic has been that we need art to keep us tethered to our humanity and to remind us of why life matters. I’ve learned that it helps to have others show the way.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Colleen Kujawa is a content editor who works with the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.
