SOUNDTRACK: BECK-Sea Change (2002).
After the wild dance of Midnight Vultures, Beck entered the 2000s with Sea Change, a very mellow album. It is highly regarded by many, although it’s too mellow for my liking, which is unsurprising give my tastes. (Of course, if you’re in a mellow/sad mood, it’s perfect). Even though I feel like it is quite samey, a closer listen shows as much diversity within these songs as any of his thematic albums. And there are some great sounds that he throws on top of these tracks. Like the Radiohead vibe in “The Golden Age”
“Paper Tiger” has a kind of sleekness to it, with the strings and the bassline that keeps the track interesting. “Guess I’m Doing Fine” is a mopey song that has the potential to be too much ,but never goes that far. It winds up being quite beautiful. “Lonesome Tears” has strings that make it sound a bit like Air (the band). “Lost Cause” is the poppy side of this mellow album—it’s got a super catchy chorus (although is clearly not a happy song) and would be a great ballad on any other album—here it comes across as the peppiest number. “End of the Day” introduces sitar, but it falls a little flat in the middle of the disc.
“It’s All in Your Mind” is a pretty and short song. “Round the Bend” is easily the most depressing song that Beck has ever done. It’s also quite beautiful but, man what a downer. Oh wait, that “most depressing” award would go to “Already Dead” a very sad acoustic song which has Beck singing in an aching falsetto. The darkness is lightened somewhat with the sitar flavored “Sunday Sun” but it still has that aching vocal. And yet it ends with a total musical freak out at the end—noise and feedback and chaos which makes sense in the song but seems so out of place on the record—and yet it’s kind of a welcome relief. “Little One” has a more upbeat vibe (with big drums even). Although it seems to get lost by the end of the disc. As does “side of the Road” which doesn’t really have a lot going for it.
Any one of these songs would be a perfect mellow beck song. But at 52 minutes, the album is a bit relentless. I think what weighs down a lot of these songs is their length. The lengthy strings at the end of “Tears” is very pretty but with several songs pushing 5 minutes, overall it gets to be a bit much. There’s no “bonus” track on this one.
[READ: March 17, 2014] “Diagnose This”
This article by Heidi Julavits (whose novels I keep intending to read but have yet to so far), really appeared to me because of the conceit of self diagnosis. Whenever you go to a doctor, if you have searched your symptoms online (which everyone has) you always feel guilty about bringing it up—like you’re not supposed to investigate these free resources. Now it’s entirely true that looking up your symptoms online is madness—everything leads to cancer. Everything. If you are a hypochondriac, you should never ever do this, but if you are a reasonable person, you can use online medical diagnoses and, more importantly, message boards to see what other people have said about similar symptoms.
In this essay, Julavits talks about her own symptoms for what her doctor diagnoses as possible Ménière’s Disease, a rather rare disease that is more or less worst case scenario. And the doctor tells her not to look it up when she gets home (she looks it up in the parking lot). She doubts that this is an accurate diagnosis. But as she learns when she interviews several doctors and medical school teachers—doctors are not taught to learn gray area thinking. They have to save lives so they may jump to the most serious situation in order to prevent serious damage—even if that conclusion may involve tons of unnecessary and expensive tests.
Through the course of the article, interspersed with her research and findings and personal anecdotes (she thinks she is quite good at diagnosing medical problems on TV show), we see the diagnoses of her problem. I liked that she wrote these sections in a very clinical person-as-patient format, so even though we know it is her, the discussion is impersonal. And we can try to see it from the point of view of a doctor.
She investigates her symptoms online and finds more likely scenarios. One is a TMJ issue—she didn’t think that the pain in her neck was related to the hearing problem she was having, but they could all be connected. She goes to a couple of different doctors who vary quite a bit in their decisions—one who thinks physical therapy is a good idea and one who does not (you must read the article to understand why anyone would have physical therapy for an earache).
Julavits references When Doctors Don’t Listen, a book which talks about just what the title says—that doctors do not have a lot of time to really listen to what a patient says. Mostly this is because they have a “process” in which certain information leads to a diagnosis and it’s easier to follow what seems like the likely cause rather than taking every potential symptom into account. But Julavits says that some medical schools are changing that process and demanding that students follow more than the “A therefore B” model, by learning about narratives. They are tasked with listening to everything the patient has to say and trying to find out what is important to the patient and not just what is important to the medical texts. She gets to sit in on one of these classes, where the medical students talk about a novel. They all seem to diagnose the “patient” well, but Julavits also wonders if this will make them even more self-assured and less likely to question their own judgement.
She more or less concludes that what doctors feel that patients want is a diagnosis. She was once diagnosed with interstitial cystitis. But this is a disease that has no real diagnosis—doctors reach it when they have ruled out every other possibility. So it has a name but the name is meaningless. Indeed, some doctors don’t even believe it exists–the symptoms exist but they don’t agree with the diagnosis as a diagnosis. This is why I was interested in this article, because I have been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, the most useless diagnosis out there. I have found various forms or relief online because my doctors are useless (and I quite like my GP, even though I feel she may get things wrong more often that I’d like to admit).
So Julavits maintains that patients should do their research and not be afraid to bring that research to doctors. And doctors could learn to take this information and use it to give informed diagnoses—what search terms did you use when you looked of what was bothering you.
With the unlimited amount of medical knowledge available to doctors, it is really impossible for them to know everything. It also makes it easier for them to want to seem like they know everything and to offer diagnoses even if they don’t have all of the information. This is frustrating to patients and potentially expensive and dangerous. It’s time to let those vast swaths of knowledge assist patients and doctors together.
For ease of searching, I include: Meniere’s Disease
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