Accidental Addendum (Jacob's White Striped Thoughts)

Scroll down if you haven't yet read Liz's review of "Under Great White Northern Lights," because it rocks. I too will speak a few words about the White Stripes, the visions they fill me with, and about the documentary.

I'm a bad judge of the number of guitar chords that a given song has. I always think there are more than there really are. Let us please take "Hotel Yorba" as an example. I've always loved it's bouncing acousticism---like driving on dirt roads with trampoline tires, the brash drums hitting the windshield joyously. I would listen to this song and unconsciously assume it was a difficult piece of work. Why? I don't know. I guess the things I like are things I like because they're hard to do. "Look. That guy just did the splits. I am more curious than normal because it's harder for guys to do that than it is for girls." Etc.

But "Hotel Yorba" isn't hard at all! Its only three chords! The three most basic and fundamental chords in the universe! (Which are G C and D, for those of you who don't know basic, fundamental things.) And it turns out that most of the White Stripe's music is as simple as you can get---basic, fundamental, foundational, minimal. Please add any additional synonyms in the comments section.

Why am I bringing this up? Because one of the biggest things that comes out in this DVD is the liberty of simplicity.

How are the White Stripes simple? One way is in the two-person population of the band. Another is in the red/white/black color scheme the band adopts (half of the actual filming of the documentary itself is in black and white, or painted over with solid red overtones).

Another is in the way Jack is forever reaching backward to the music of the past---and not just back to The Beatles (like everybody else, though there's clearly a Beatles influence there). The South. The twanging guitars from the prairies of New America's ancient days. The soul and gumption of the blues, the weary and the weathered. Folk in its infant form, fresh from the fields, where there are no outlets to plug in your amp or refrigerator. To keep food cold, you carry it on your back to the north pole. To have music, you clap your hands or kick a rock and raise your voice.

So it's simple. But why is it liberating? I think it's because it makes everything possible again.

Jack plays a song for a collection of a hundred or so folks in a tiny western Canada town, one that looks like one of the patched-together ones I've lived in during my mission on Canada's east coast (though looks can decive). He plays a folk song for these folky folks in this folky land, and it's fitting. It hits on the heritage of the land, sounding like a coastal ballad (at least the east coast). In a country so big and yet so unpopulated, the song of the land---the curve of the hills against the ragged coast, the whistling grasses, the wild smoke and timber---is still so strong. It's a fundamental thing, and it's the only thing, and it's grand.

Jack and Meg's relationship is gorgeous---while traveling to locations or waiting to perform, they exist close to one another, and the air is filled with allowing silences. In interviews Jack is mouthy and Meg is almost silent. On stage they smash their drums and they shriek their guitars---and other times, "without a sound," they climb the frozen chunks of ocean packed against the coast.

I'm inspired by these things that seem like contrasts in the White Stripe's mindset. In fact, "Under Great White Northern Lights" is the reason for our new (used) electric guitar. After watching the way Jack White wields his own guitars, and after seeing the variety of guitars he uses, and after seeing how old and beat up and shabby they are, I felt like I could do it. Me having an electric was now suddenly valid. "If Jack White can play one, so can I." That's almost a direct quote from my brain, which is sort of absurd because Jack White is no novice---he KNOWS. Yet he's not really a genius... he's just smart enough to let go; just allows the music to bite him, eat him up. He's open to it no matter how simple it is. Freedom? Yeah.

There's a great moment in the first hour of the film. Walking directly from the naked frenzied energy of an amphitheater's dark stage, they are quiet. The sun is up high and white. They seat themselves in a vintage mob car. Jack delightedly remarks he "can't believe it's still light out." Meg smiles. Silence falls, they look out the windows.

Life is simple.