Riding the bike home from work in the rain when it’s warm enough to be comfortable just-so, still soaked through in
places with a hat brim low and drops of it rollercoastering down the jaw line. I don’t mind. It’s when I get my
thinking and not-thinking done. I could use a little more not-thinking, you know. Where I’m nothing but whatever
my body is doing, a growing history of actions and nerve synapse repetition. Senses pair themselves back to a
primal state. Listen for danger(irrational drivers, yawning pot holes courtesy the winter) and trust my reflexes.
Pretty talk to say I’m nothing in that moment, a moving thing in a sea on a planet of many moving things.
Music. Nerdery: I email the title of songs and names of musicians to myself, so I won’t forget to do my homework–
the fun part, the digging and listening. I love hearing a song I’ve never heard before, like one from The Drifters
that’s been there for decades and all this time I never knew it. Just lived with this incredible composition of
sound out there.
I think of the scene in High Fidelity, when Cusak’s character is rearranging his entire record collection according to
chronological history, romantically. That’s a way to define a tie to music. Kind of like you can throw a random
activity/thing at me and I will toss back the song that should be listened to in the background. Sunny bus ride in
the a.m…right now I’d go with The Temper Trap. If I want to remember late night drives to Dayton, back when I
just went there for poetry? Then I play “New Drink for the Old Drunk” by Crooked Fingers. That sort of thing.
This kind of attention and habit I credit to my dad’s record collection finding its way into my life in junior high,
and the best friend musicians who can’t talk on the phone without simultaneously plucking the guitar.
Tait mentioned that he wrote down a list of his beliefs recently. What a perfectly sound activity. It’s a smart way to
see yourself through the eyes of your biggest believer. Part of who I am as a person has something to do with
what I place my belief in–flip that, and the sense of self becomes more relevant than ever. I used to spend a lot
of time trying to figure out why certain things were more important to me than others, and it seems the best
way to answer that is by living like it matters. There are other interrogatives to tend to.
Reading older writing and having an emotional response to the difference and distance, to my willingness to revisit
and even finish some–to lack the heart to throw most of it away. Desk and files full of parts of me, years I can
read to you in paragraph. Sometimes I imagine somebody else reading it back to me, and how it might sound.
Like the tremendous song from decades ago that I never knew about but existed before I even showed up. Probably. I can hear it like that.
