Ages & Ages

Ages & Ages at Bumbershoot, 2011

In what is officially our first post about Rocktober 2016, Portland's Ages & Ages will be performing at Vinyl on September 30 (Rocktober isn't confined to the calendar of October). 

Ages & Ages' new album will be called  Something To Ruin, and they've released a video for the first song, They Want More, which appears to be about materialism.  I'm reminded for some reason of Claude Levi-Strauss' account of a Japanese lady he had met who did her laundry every day for fear that she might die suddenly and leave her dirty linen behind.  Is it better to keep our old clothes and the old things that have hallowed out a place for themselves in our existence and become like dear deceased friends, or should we break with the past and wash our linen every day as an act of spiritual renewal?

In the Japanese tradition, it is advisable to burn old things, or at any rate get rid of them.  Abandoned utensils may change into supernatural spirits.  A traveler, who sought shelter in an abandoned temple, witnessed during the night the dance of an old wash bucket, a handkerchief square, and an old drum. "This is what happens when you forget to throw out old things that are used up," he reported.  

It is best not to hoard, but just keep what you need and leave the rest.