writing

Waking up, you don’t know where you are. Also? It doesn’t matter. But the urge to pull back the heavy curtain is strong because everywhere turns out to be somewhere and that’s exciting. Out the window are icy branches, a couple cinder blocks covered in frozen, damp leaves and just beyond, a parking lot. Nothing special, and yet…some chemical in your bloodstream, some neuron firing, tells you it’s special anyway. Neurons know best.

Sweet, oily motel coffee is presided over by some big, nice ladies, always. Morning is a universal phenomenon, whether we all feel good or lousy. You feel good, though, ’cause music got played last night and they feel good ’cause they’re big, nice ladies.

Outside is cold. Air is a universal phenomenon, too. We’re all in it together.

Your loved ones are in the van already, sleepy and funny. A noisy peace kicks in. Out the window, you race away from one city and race into the next. It’s exhilarating. Nobody could catch you even if they wanted to and they’re not even trying ’cause you’re invisible and invisible is perfect today.

It’s all perfect right now; this is your perfect day. No soul is ever measured by the love of those who don’t know it, love as numbers. The numbers that are so wildly hunted breeze in and breeze out, pale and fail. Duh-uh. Which is why we work for each other, and why we love that about each other and why we race past another icy field, great glass stalks, bending and straightening.

Violently crushing hundreds of periwinkles underfoot, I slip on a bank of slippershells, jerking an earbud from my ear, and suddenly I can hear the ocean and my friend at the same time. He wasn’t keeping up, honestly; I didn’t mind losing the earbud.

I mean, who can keep up with the ocean, but I only listen to my friends’ music (a seriously old guy thing to do, I know, sorry) and my friends can usually compete. ‘Cause a few of them are geniuses and because I love them. Sometimes, I watch the ocean and listen to a new soundtrack for it and the sound of waves – my favorite sound in the world – takes a back seat.

Lately, though, instead of oceanscapes, I’ve been listening to mistakes. Not mistakes made by people who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. These musical mistakes were made by people who knew exactly what they were doing. Or what they should have been doing. It’s dull and baffling, but nevertheless, interesting. How is it that you can wake to a calling, attract an angel to your shoulder who whispers in your ear and together spew forth…crap?

I’ve certainly spewed my share, which was the initial attraction to other people’s mistakes. I’m optimistic and obnoxious enough to think I know better, but…nope. Time and again, I make a noise I regret; usually after I’ve released the noise, let other people hear me sounding stupid. It’s discouraging: how is it that we can fall in love with music and then repeatedly step on its toes when we’re supposed to be dancing?

Maybe because nobody’s a genius; nobody’s ever been a genius. Genius isn’t something you are, it’s something you tap into. Duh-uh. We’re allowed to fly with music on occasion when it invites us, then take a piece home when we land. The flight is ephemeral, the musical piece (hopefully) timeless. These musical pieces are evidence of flight, not genius. And, I guess, a heart, brain and viscera that’re moved by flight.

I’m starting to believe that my friends’ musical genius is proved when they suck laughably; when they wait so innocently for their angel to whisper that they don’t bother to be hack, to sound cool, to manipulate our emotions, to try and fool us in any way. They just sit there making stupid noises.

Of course, it’d probably be better if we didn’t make any noise at all while we waited for music to lift the metal bar and invite us onto its roller coaster; if we played nothing when there was nothing to play. Maybe the best musicians have learned to do just that: to be quiet.

This essay recently appeared in The Quietus for Record Store Day.

Skimming through my dad’s record collection one hot, boring summer morning, I came upon The Left Banke. I’d heard of just about everyone else in his collection, so of course I assumed this last, yet-to-be-discovered band was gonna be exquisitely wonderful, was gonna shift my world on its axis. Never mind that it was my DAD’S record collection, never mind that it was pathetic to hope; I was absolutely ready for the excitement that every twelve year old knows is just around the corner.

And yet… all twelve year olds are so deeply steeped in bitter disappointment. “Please be good,” I whispered to these people from another era as I placed the needle on the scratchy vinyl, “please?”

God knows how it happened, but Left Banke came crawling out of the speakers, neat and tidy and messy and throaty and reedy and calm and visceral and…shifted my world on its freakin’ axis. Left Banke heard my prayer: they were good. They were GREAT. With a healthy respect for pop music and an intriguing twist on production (baroque? really??) they shook my ears up sweetly. What a lovely thing to do!

I sat on the floor and listened straight through – I don’t believe I had ever had the patience to engage a side B of one of my father’s records before – while Left Banke turned the wilting eighties sun into happy sixties sunshine. To this day, when I wanna restore my faith in mankind and pop music, I put this record on, my dad having gifted it to me when I left home. It turns wilting into happy, pathetic into enchanted, sun into sunshine.