"Art & Vida" by Ian Mahan ft. Aaron Marsh, Sunday, June 13, 2021

Though he only has 45 monthly listeners on Spotify, I can see Ian Mahan joining the ranks of folk artists like Denison Witmer, William Fitzsimmons, Matthew Perryman Jones, and all the other NoiseTrade artists I've been listening to. I added this song a few months ago when I was looking for Aaron Marsh collaborations. After taking a minor dive into his other works, I feel like this is one of the reasons I write about music: to discover something new, something obscure. From his mellow interpretation of "Eye of the Tiger" to his piano/guitar melodies intertwined with the small-town-America feel of a boy raised in a small Illinois town, but who has moved to Colorado out of a dream or out of necessity, I hope to get better acquainted with Mahan in the weeks to come.

THIS TOWN IS CLEARING OUT. "Art & Vida" tells the story about an older couple who have witnessed the decay of the small town after NAFTA took the jobs overseas. It's implied that Art lost his job and was never able to buy the American dream for his bride, Vida. Yet, despite all of the hardship, Art is telling his bride that their love is in their memories and their memories keep the love alive. In the music video, we learn at the end that Vida has died. Not only has Vida died, all of Art's friends "are in the ground." The town is dying. The jobs are gone, but there are still bars. The kids and grandkids come to visit once in a while. We see a glimpse of death which started in the rustbelt, which spread to the Bible belt. It's what I grew up with. It started with the factories closing, then the economy was based on stores and restaurants, but those eventually died off. Walmart came in and became the biggest employer in town. Then New York tax and big farming made the small farms go under. My dad became a truck driver and moved us to North Carolina where the furniture factories had closed down and moved overseas. In Western North Carolina there are a few factories around still, but so much of the economy is tourism for retirees who spend their money in nicer climate. And that's no way to build an economy.

WE SKIPPED CHURCH BECAUSE THE KIDS WERE IN TOWN. When I was a kid, I wanted to move to the city. I was fascinated with the places and things that were so conveniently located. Of course, everything bigger than McDonough, New York could be considered a city. When we moved to Western North Carolina, it was a city of 16,000 people, more than double the population of the town I was born in. Some days my mind drifts away to meadows and forests. I used to believe that rich people lived in the city and poor people lived in the woods. But now I think it's opposite. Though my family became more financially secure, moving into the city, or into civilization, made us less free and more entangled to arbitrary norms of society. The bigger the city, the less free you are to be yourself because you have to play nicely with others. Still, it's nice in a city to be able to choose your tribe, whereas in the country the family ruled. And that was the reason why my family broke away from Central New York. And that's the model that made me break away from my family and come to Korea. But is it true freedom?

 

Read “Art & Vida” by Ian Mahan on Genius