From my journal, written Wednesday October 25 2006:
…I remember once going to my grandparents’ house in Detroit. When they were still alive. It was small and dark and we went there on important holidays. At such a young age I could feel the force and the conflict. There was a slanted cellar door in the back that scared me and I didn’t know why. Inside smelled like cigarette smoke and trapped sunlight.
But this was a sunny day, I’d like to say in summer but it could have been spring. It was warm and probably a Sunday—the only day my Dad had close to off. We drove there and parked around the corner—why am I writing this? and why are tears welling up in my eyes?—we walked down the broken sidewalk strewn with gravel and broken glass. I noticed the grass was more coarse and wild with weeds where it hadn’t been mowed. The fences weren’t coated in green plastic, but a thick brown rust that felt pebbly to the touch and never fully revealed the silver underneath.
My memory involves my Dad and me but no one else. They were there, my grandparents, and maybe my aunts. We were on our way to Tiger Stadium for an afternoon game—an annual treat repeated every couple of weeks. Someone had bought me a whiffle ball set and perhaps to appease them, my Dad took me out back to the small yard bordered by the gravel alley which was partially obstructed and mysterious and foreign.
My Dad threw me the ball and I may have missed several times, even though it was an oversized red plastic barrel, made for children much younger than me. Finally it connected with the underarm throw from my Dad, and the hollow and perforated ball went sailing through the afternoon Detroit air until futility and gravity met.
As everyone who was there—who’s not here now—clapped and cheered I looked confusedly at my Dad and then started to run, slowly around the small yard, imagining and trying to emulate the shape of a diamond.
At some point I realized I wasn’t such a big deal. Literally. Though I’d been wearing oversized suits or size L (or, regrettably, XL—what was I thinking? growth spurt at age 20?) shirts and pants that I’d snagged from thrift stores or clearance racks for years, I finally came to the point that I realized, painfully, some things about myself: I’m a size M in most shirts, S in vanity sizes (I also learned what vanity sizing was at this point); I’m a 30 length in jeans, not 32 (and apparently rolling jeans isn’t allowed into your 30s); and I’m 5’9”, not 5’10” (though this one is still in contention.)
The fact that these realizations coincide with the dates of me getting married and moving in with my wife, I’m told, is pure coincidence.
The point, of course, is not how I’m measured, but in how I view myself. For as long as I can remember I’ve thought of myself as bigger than I am, in all respects. In fact, one ex-girlfriend even described me as a big dog in a little dog’s body. For whatever reason, I took it as a compliment at the time.
But otherwise it’s been both a blessing and a curse, allowing me to do things that I shouldn’t have been able to do while also placing a boulder-sized chip on my shoulder when I felt like I wasn’t getting the respect or recognition I deserved. Pride lives in the crack between stature and introspection the way a troll lives under a darkened bridge. It’s best not to provoke him.
To do so is, indeed, an attack on memory.
There are moments in our lives, though, where we can feel liberated by feeling bigger than ourselves. There are times where we don’t realize how short we are, how goofy we look, or how poorly we dance. We can graciously overlook how little work we put into a day or how many people at a party actually want to get corned by us (of course, it’s always us being cornered by them, isn’t it?)
This song is that feeling, encapsulated in a punchy 3min song on a punchy 34min EP. The fact that both feel much longer and complete is no coincidence. This is music that makes you stand up straighter, hit the gas harder, and feel better about yourself than you probably deserve to feel.
Analyze how you will the fact that people like us can only parse such feelings out in such small doses. I don’t have time for such criticisms.
It’s not too much of an exaggeration to note that I decided to teach college students because I love the feeling of a campus on Friday afternoons, right as the sun is dipping down and the excitement of the evening is still hours away. I can remember as far back as when I was a college student, walking around the old Ann Arbor HS, which by that time was known as the Frieze Building, and which was—quite visibly—falling apart.
Years later it would be torn down, but when I walked the halls as the Friday sun streamed through dusty windows, it looked golden and well-worn as the light bounced off the muffled, cracked tiles underfoot and swept up the hallway lockers that were well beyond their overpainted use.
Years later I’d walk around Notre Dame the night before a football game. Instead of walking down South Quad where people threw footballs and pre-gamed their pre-games, I’d walk through O’Shaugnessy where custodial staff would be leisurely mopping the floors before their weekends off. The smooth-tiled walls were a shade of sickly yellow, the way I remember elementary schools or mid-century churches. There was a solemnity to them, as if the silence and temporarily deadened echos still gave off an energy that smelled like school lunches and pencil shavings.
At Stanford (I still do this) I’d walk through classroom buildings that I didn’t even teach in. Instead, I’d look at the bulletin boards for foreign language courses and trips abroad pinned next to faculty office doorways that I’ll never walk through. Every now and then a stray grad student (because, of course, who would still be in a classroom building at 6pm on a Friday as a gorgeous sunset burned over the horizon) would pass me, averting her eyes as out of some kind of shame.
But I never felt that way. To me it was these quiet times where the university seemed most full of promise—so many smart, interesting people co-inhabiting a space where there are clean carpets and bathrooms that you can have all to yourself if you know where and when to look.
And at Michigan—back where I started my whole obsession, and where I later spent the most formative years of my career—I had what could be considered a Friday routine, which was just as thrilling to me on game weekends as it was in the bitter heart of winter.
Each Friday afternoon I’d trudge through rain and snow across campus to a little cafe with cement walls overlooking the School of Education. After several hours of studying and burnt coffee I’d walk across the streets and into the halls of the building that used to be an elementary school. From there it was through the gothic Law Quad and into the Michigan Union, usually just beginning to buzz as student groups, parents, and visitors were going over plans for their nights and their weekends. I walked each tiled floor, disappointed if I was interrupted in my public solitude. Once I was done with that, I’d reluctantly plot a course home through the Diag, Angell Hall, or at the local record store before going home, sometimes not to emerge again until Sunday afternoon.
Fridays are bestowed by Janus’s gift of looking both backward and forward. There’s an exhalation of relief and an inhalation of anticipation. For most of my adult life I’ve gone on trips each Friday: acting as a tourist in a foreign land that is just the same very very familiar to me. I consider myself lucky to live on or around campuses that can allow me to fade from view so easily.
I suppose anyone working at any job can feel the same thing in these twilight hours, but as a teacher, it’s wonderful to know that the same hallways I use for my job are alive with discovery well after I head home. It’s nice to know that where I leave off is where others just start.
This song by The xx is all of these things: a mid-beat opener that has all the finality of a late night, but all the possibility of a long trip. The lyrics “Being/ as in love with you as I am” is just a mantra to this kind of meditative dichotomy. They’re just the repetition to a feeling, a sense, of wonder and accomplishment in knowing that the work is never over. The work is who we are. The being.
A few weeks ago a friend and I hiked atop San Bruno Mountain, which is neither in San Bruno nor a mountain. Nonetheless, after some meandering wooded paths, we came out to a clearing that featured a perfectly formed rock jutting from the pebbly hillside. As we sat down, collectively we eased into a silence the way you ease into a bath that has cooled down just enough: hot, but oddly comforting. We could see the peninsula to our south, Berkeley and the East Bay, downtown San Francisco and lip of Marin to the north, and to the west, the entirety of the Pacific laying out before us, reaching all the way to a horizon that featured the caps of the distant Farallon Islands.
To say it was awe-inspiring is an understatement.
But what was most profound that day (for us, at least) was that this vista was available just south of the city that we’ve called home for over and almost a decade, respectively. We both knew this spot existed, but had no idea. It was a revelation to jointly find something so familiar, but yet so surprisingly foreign in our backyard.
It fit in perfectly with an ongoing conversation we had that day about how new the city of San Francisco felt when we first moved there, at different times for different reasons. And yet our experiences were eerily similar. Everything from the smells (eucalyptus in the Panhandle for me) to the sounds (the nightly din of the Mission for him) spoke of promise and arrival. Not even arrival, but the night before arrival. The precursor to the cursor.
Of course it’s a widely told tale now that I moved to San Francisco for the worst of reasons: a girl. And two years later I moved away from the city ostensibly for a grad degree, but less explicitly for the same reason: a girl. Chasing her in the former, escaping her in the latter. It’s so cliche that I’m to the point of feeling comfortable sharing it here (and various other places too, I should note.)
Which is what makes Sharon Van Etten’s song—and entire LP—all the more achingly beautiful. This reads like a diary that she has begun reciting out of a final act of desperation. She has nothing left to lose, perhaps the most important of which is pride. She sings things I could never say, and whether you think of her in this album as a secret sister or a navel gazer, there’s no doubt, at least, that she’s masterful in her delivery.
Though this song, in particular, is a droning, hypnotic confession, it’s also the excitement of promise (of arrival) and the weariness of caution, or defeat. They’re all there in the lines, “I loosen my grip from my palm/ and put it on your knee/In my way, I say/ You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city/You’re the reason why I’ll need to leave.” For herself, but for us, she wants to believe. She wants to smell those smells and feel that hope. But there’s a collective memory. There’s hurt in hope.
After having lived any place for long enough, we learn to live alongside the ghosts of our former lives. We pass by parks where we first held hands, and we look away from cafes where we learned it was over. We see the glorious sun that blinded us when we felt lowest. And then sometimes, on some random Saturday with a friend who’s stuck it out, even when it sucked, we climb some new peak that was always there, and we’re allowed to see it all anew. We’re allowed to be silent in an echoing landscape.
Let me start by saying that I know I have no right to complain. For more than a decade I’ve taught some of the brightest and most interesting students this country can produce, and I’ve done it in a career that I freely chose and was blessed to enter into so quickly and easily. And though it’s the teacher’s #1 cliched, self-defeating mantra, within the past two weeks I’ve received a long email from a student I had in class 3yrs ago and a gift from a student from just last year that both made my job completely worthwhile.
I know, then, that I have no right to complain. None.
But for those of you who aren’t teachers, let me try to explain this. For those of you who are teachers, well, none of this is new.
Imagine the last time you tried to explain something—anything—to someone you barely knew. Maybe you were explaining a computer application to a co-worker at the end of the day. Maybe you were relaying a recipe to a spouse over the phone while one of you was in the grocery store. Maybe you were giving directions to a tourist. Whatever the case, imagine that you put all of your effort into it, despite any circumstances that made it immediately difficult, or annoying. Imagine that you all but put your life on hold so that this person could take your abstract knowledge and magically make it their own.
Now imagine that you failed even after all of this effort.
Imagine walking away and feeling the disappointment and frustration that no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t transfer your ideas so that they made sense to someone else. Imagine taking it incredibly personally, blaming yourself for this lack of connection.
Imagine that happened to you several, if not dozens, of times a day. Imagine it was your job.
I could go on, of course: imagine low wages, 60hr+ work weeks as the norm, no contracts, living through jokes about summers “off,” reading scathing teacher evals from teenagers who barely showed up to class, 2hrs each way commuting, etc.
At some point it becomes the din all of us have heard before. But it’s true. Most of it. For at least part of the time. Especially the 4hrs/day commuting.
But, yes, there are great days, too. Days where you know you nailed it. Days where students amaze you and surprise you. Days where students from years earlier come back to say a simple “thanks” that means nothing to them, but everything to you. Those days happen, too. And, again, it’s sad but true that they all but eclipse the bad days when you’re struggling to find meaning.
But most days you’re mostly just tired. You leave home before first light, get home after final light, make dinner, grade papers, answer emails, and get ready to do it again the next day. That’s neither good nor bad, it’s just reality for what I could guess are the majority of teachers. Whether they love it or hate it, their days are a variation of this overtaxing existence. And yet if a student were to even speak half a question the next day, most teachers would finish it with a helpful answer.
But sometimes such existence just gets to you, as it did to me this last fall when I was—for lack of a better word—slipping back into a malaise that is colored a light shade of depression when it all seems meaningless. When the frustrations are high and the recognition is low. It was at this point that I discovered the new Aimee Mann CD, and while I wish I were writing this to explain how it saved my life, perhaps it’s enough to just say that I’m here writing it at all. And writing to say that it was worth it. It’s always worth it.
This is the first Aimee Mann disc I’ve bought since her masterful soundtrack to Magnolia, which remains—for me—all but the perfect film. I used to know entire hours of dialogue front to back, to say nothing of the words to all of the bittersweet songs that laced the high gravity plot line.
In the end I have no idea whether or not teachers have it any harder (or any different, really) than nurses, firefighters, or servicepeople of any stripe. But as a teacher, I can attest to what it feels like to care too much. What it feels like to get so invested in people that you’ll never see again that you can only take it out on yourself when the class or the semester is over and you’re left to wonder how the next class will be any different. It’s moments like these (and, of course, there are a lot of them) where a good student or a good song can make everything worthwhile.
That, I guess, and a box of chocolate-covered cherries from an ex-student every 5yrs or so. That makes it pretty good, too.
Though no one seems to have noticed, 2012 marked the 200-yr anniversary of the War of 1812, an actual bloody, official war against Britain that largely found us fighting against Canada and American Indians. The fact that we let this anniversary go by with barely a ceremony is not only a shame, it’s surprising. Consider this, the War of 1812 involved:
An officially declared war by the US government
No change in territory but over 2yrs of fighting
Britain wanting to make the state of Michigan an official American-Indian/First Nation buffer state between Canada and the US
The city of Detroit being surrendered
The creation of the US Navy as we know it today
Andrew Jackson battling in New Orleans long after the war is over
The iconic phrase, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours”
The penning of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
And, oh yeah, the burning of Washington D.C., our nation’s capital. Yeah, another country came over, burnt down the Capitol and the White House, but 200yrs later we didn’t, you know, really feel like remembering that.
It’s wild.
And fortunately my hometown is historically right in the mix of it. In the weeks before I finally left Michigan for California I visited two forts at the heart of the conflict. In Detroit, I walked sight unseen into the dilapidated Fort Wayne. The place was an awful mess of overgrown weeds and broken windows. I walked in catacombs in exact blackness, defined by their absolute lack of sunlight. The fort, positioned on the banks of the Detroit River, almost literally a stone’s throw from the Canadian side, is majestic and beautiful. Or at least it used to be. Now it’s an eyesore and a footnote in history: not only the site of confrontation in 1812, but also a staging area for WWII and where members of my Dad’s generation went to enlist for Vietnam.
In a lot of ways the current condition of Fort Wayne in Detroit mirrors the American condition of amnesia (or apathy) toward the history of the War of 1812, where the US was largely seen as the aggressor yet no visible gains were left after the fighting ceased. We never won nor lost; we gained respect, built a navy, and kept Britain out of our backyard.
Which is almost the exact opposite story I received on the other side of the border, at Fort Malden in Amherstburg. This historic site is in a park-like setting just to the east of the old Boblo Island on the Canadian side. It’s geographically south of the United States border crossing. Though half the footprint of Fort Wayne, it showcases a cluster of 19th century buildings, complete with actors in period dress, demonstrations, and what could be considered a much more nuanced (read: honest) appraisal of the American effort in the 200-yr-old war.
Upon visiting last August I was treated to the first view of the Americans as land-grabbers, anxious to keep the American Indians from gaining control of the Northwest (then Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.) If we happened to push them out and take over some of Canada on the way, so be it. And though Tecumseh is written about as a noble leader of his people stateside, in Canada I read descriptions (both in English and in French, of course) of his leveled approach to diplomacy and war when needed. I read about his loyalty to the British who promised to fight for his people. And the disappointment and betrayal he felt when the British decided enough was enough, essentially offering up Tecumseh and his nation as a spoil of an unwinnable war.
As the British retreated further and further into Canada (choosing to not attack the Americans on their own turf, and in turn, all but ceding Indian homeland to the aggressors) Tecumseh delivered a passionate speech to those in command that he refused to retreat, but could only feasibly fight with the help of the British. They demurred and were defeated. Tecumseh was killed, and the rock upon which he delivered his final emotional speech stands in the exhibit hall of Fort Malden, where people like me can rightly marvel at the courage and humanity that it represents.
That experience, which stretched into the evening hours when they locked the fort up for another day, was the last time I set foot in Canada before driving west. It was, I guess, a fitting goodbye to a land that I never before saw as a border between my country and another. The river was a separator only as much as a main street through a small town. And while I understand that history is complex, and that I may not even be here writing this now if events hadn’t happened the way they did, I can still do little less than sympathize with the First Nation peoples who were given the unenviable choice of being pushed off of their lands and forced to either fight back or passively await a much worse, uncertain fate. I can only hope that I would have been on the right side of that battle, regardless on which shore of the Detroit River it fell.
This song, of course, is none of these things. But it’s a grand return for Canada’s best rock band, which may very well be one of the best rock bands in the world. Already risking such hyperbole, I’ll only add that this song slowly builds like the “drip drip drip” of the proto-chorus, until it finally lashes out in a cathartic volley of sonics that—while not war-like—is definitely a needed kicking of dust in these otherwise stagnant times of historical appreciation.
PS—For more on the War of 1812, check out this GREAT podcast from the History Guys at Backstory.
What an odd fate to only know your city through your parents’ eyes. Through a memory that’s not even your own. Sure, I can relay stories of Tiger Stadium, Boblo, Belle Isle, and Clark Park stretching as far back as I can remember. But I never rode the street cars. Sat in Michigan Central to watch the floods of people coming and going. I never shopped at Hudsons or got a beer at Stroh’s.
Detroit is a memory for someone else. The city that I know, or think I know, is a pastiche of cobbled stories and glimpses from my family and from my childhood where I didn’t know the difference between a city and a suburb, rich and poor, or black and white. I remember broken glass and crumbled concrete. But I also remember running down alleyways and across empty lots. It was all a playground then. The Detroit I experienced as a boy was mine in a way that has slowly escaped my grasp as each year has trailed away.
And what should be done about such a thing? Should it be considered tragic? Like some ancient Greek curse: a hero fated to remember a time and a place only through others’ fond, vivid memories?
Or should it be considered a gift? A beneficent base upon which nearly any resurrection story can be built and stalwartly believed in. A starting point that gives you everything you need for your journey.
Admittedly I had never heard of Rodriguez until this year. I was raised on a steady diet of Motown when I was a child. My Dad, among many others, claims to have met some of the biggest stars before they were world-wide celebrities (his tale about meeting Little Stevie Wonder in the Fox Theatre elevator deserves its own post at some point.) But at no point had I ever heard of the little-known Mexican-American folk singer until I caughtSearching For Sugar Manat a late night showing in San Francisco this year.
That night, on a foggy September evening when I just wanted to get out of the house for a bit, there were two lights in the theatre: one from the projector and one from my beaming face. From start to finish I was thoroughly impressed with the harsh but fair treatment that Detroit got in the music documentary. The city looked cold in all senses of the word. But it also hinted at a golden time, even while race (and other) relations were simmering and boiling over, there was a culture that was so rich it’s only now—some 40+ yrs later—being mined for gold.
More than anything, though, it promised resurrection. It promised that nothing so valuable, nothing so gifted, and nothing so wonderfully full of love and talent can ever be buried completely. Eventually even the smallest fingernail will scratch the surface to reveal the beauty underneath.
Released in 1970 it may be silly to include on a best-of list in 2012 (and, ahem, now into 2013) but it was new to me, and a whole lot of other people, too. In fact, after seeing the movie I practically ran home and bought the LP for my new record player. Since then,Cold Facthas been in heavy rotation, and this song, in particular, has deeper grooves than the rest. It’s a perfectly poetic little song, full of wordplay, rhyme, and that odd mix of not-quite-resentment and redemption; as if the song itself were saying:
We hope for better things; It shall rise from the ashes.
There’s a certain feeling going into September and knowing that your team is out of it. I can remember fondly many late August nights driving from my final summer visit to my parents’ place and listening to the hopscotch local broadcasts of Tigers games going in and out of range. By that time in the year it’s just as easy to ride a bandwagon as it is to begin thinking ahead to next April.
In this way the Detroit Tigers are my birthright, my identity, and in no small way the main link between my Dad and me. It’s no small exaggeration to say that he and I spoke much less (even about baseball) before 2006 when the team surprised us all and made it to the World Series in Jim Leyland’s first year. Suddenly I was calling him nearly every night and reciting the starting rotation like a mantra. I was in California, so though there were no late summer runs down I-75, there was an unexpected trip back to Detroit in late October.
I didn’t even get tickets to the big show. For me it was just enough to stand outside the stadium for a few hours. To feel the excitement. To call my Dad after.
It’s difficult to explain, this fandom. I like Nick Hornby’s description best. Though I’m paraphrasing (badly), he explains that members of a team we care deeply about are like representatives in our elected government: we root for them because they are, in effect, an extension of us. They are doing work on our behalf. When they rise and fall, it’s (conversely) as if we do, too.
The connection to fathers, and to a city that needs defending, is just gravy after that.
This song, like air in early September, crackles and booms. It’s a dry log that hisses out its final hidden moisture before popping in a flurry of autumnal sparks that are as sweetly pungent as moist fallen leaves on the edge of the yard. I’m not sure it will ever make it into my normal—nearly sacred—late summer/early autumn rotation (consisting, mainly of Pearl Jam’s No Codeand The Tragically Hip’s “Morning Moon”), but it’s closely huddled right on the outskirts, the way a team lies just below the cut-off point of the postseason, which is itself such a richly evocative term.
However, even as playoff chances dwindle there’s a sweet recognition in a certain closure. The ability to choose when and where you’ll say goodbye. The sense of an ending. At least for a little while.
Sometime last year my camera broke. It was one of those single-shot Canon ones; the kind that have increasingly gotten cheaper, and hence increasingly been abused by their owners. Mine was bought as a birthday gift for myself on my 26th birthday. It took a lot of photos, and for a time I didn’t leave home without out, stuffing one back pocket with it, and the other with my phone. It broke, and though I don’t have an iPhone (and never will), I decided not to replace it.
The only hitch to this plan was that this summer I undertook my farewell tour to my favorite spots around Ann Arbor and Detroit. I even went to Canada. In the past I would have taken my camera to shoot photos of everything I was seeing perhaps for the final time. This year I obviously didn’t have that as an option. So I did the next logical thing: I recorded the sounds of all of my favorite places.
When I was younger I used a handheld recorder to record me strumming on a guitar or reciting poetry I had written in my bedroom. Nothing ever came of those recordings, but around the same time I stumbled upon an idea I’m still proud of: I began placing the recorder, microphone out, on my windowsill at night, recording sounds outside of my bedroom window for about the first two hours after I fell asleep.
As a result, I have analog tape recordings of night sounds outside of my parents’ old house. I can still hear crickets, the rustling of the crab apple trees, the click of the air conditioner going on, and even cars streaking by on the other side of the block. I can still, to this day, close my eyes and listen to those recordings to be transported back to when I slept in a tiny room just beside my parents.
So this summer I did the same thing. I took my recorder everywhere. Sometimes I narrated it, introduced where I was and what it was like, and others I just let the natural sounds paint the scene for me. I recorded the landscapers in the distance at my grandparents’ gravesites, BBQers on Belle Isle in Detroit, the gurgling of the fountain in Young Patriot’s Park in Riverview, and the lapping of Lake Erie at Pt. Pelee in Canada.
In some ways these sound recorders are more precious, and more evocative than any photo I could have taken. Those pictures, while valuable, would have been my attempt to capture a reality and place it away so that I could look upon it at some point in the future. But I never would. Or I would, but it could only do so much.
But these recordings are still alive. They still pop and hiss both because of the fading tape, but also because of the wind and the people around me at the time of each recording. They aren’t an expression of reality the way photos are, they are reality, the way we used to capture butterflies or lightning bugs when we were kids, and then trap them in mason jars. This is my trapped memory, my artificial control over something that is, was, and will always be.
In some ways this song is much the same. Of course I’m drawn to the lyric, “I don’t come from Detroit/ But her diesel motors pull me” but it’s more than that. There’s a peaceful resignation that is a theme in all of the songs I’ve chosen this year. It’s not optimism, but instead a clarity in singing aloud, “If I live the life I’m given/ I won’t be scared to die” to an upbeat harmony that strides confidently forward even as it’s fully aware of what’s been left behind. This recording, too, will always be alive. Years and lives away from here.
Beth Orton has a special place in my musical heart, always and forever. Back in 2005-07 when I lived in the Lower Haight across town, I would listen to her album, Comfort of Strangers, almost daily, or at least when I went on one of my pre-scripted walks. There I’d walk up Waller toward the “hidden” staircases near Yerba Buena, and I’d curve down steep hills, skirting the Castro, and crossing across Duboce Park for a glimpse of the very tips of the city downtown.
Comfort of Strangers would always meet me half-way: whether I was down or upbeat, it knew how to speak to me like a caring friend, like someone who knows exactly when to console or just sit in silence. Like someone who knew when it was OK to feel good for once.
It was her last album before this release.
Fast forward to Sunday, September 30th. It was a full moon. A Harvest Moon. My favorite of the year, and I was ringing it in by playing Neil Young’s title track of the same name. The one I like best is from his MTV Unplugged set. I was playing these songs on repeat as we did normal things married couples do: clean, eat, get the house in order for the coming week, etc.
At some point I went out the back door, which leads to a wooden staircase overlooking several backyards. The air was still and clinging to some warmth that had passed through in our late season summer. I looked up at the impossibly bright moon and knew I had to go back inside to get Shannon.
When she came back I put my arms around her and said, “Look at that moon, the Harvest Moon. Isn’t it beautiful?” She took it in, too, and then slowly separated from me. Still half-embracing, she looked me in the eye and said, “I have something to tell you.”
For whatever reason I panicked. I was sure I had done something wrong. My pre-adolescent instincts kicked in, and I worried she was going to break up with me. I honestly had no idea what she was about to tell me, but it filled me with dread.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
And just like that my dread evaporated into the early autumn air like the smoke from burning leaves: heavy, but then gone forever. I was instantly happy. I was instantly filled with love I didn’t even know I possessed. We hugged. I ran inside and poured a glass of Canadian scotch we had bought on our trip the year before to Nova Scotia. I was—and continue to be—fully engrossed in happiness of the news.
Later on, she went to bed, but I couldn’t sit still. It was light enough for a sweatshirt, so I lightly bundled up and headed to the water on a little walk. Before leaving I pocketed a can of Heineken in honor of my dad. It’s his favorite beer after an early trip to the Bahamas with my mom. He loves it, and I felt like I wanted to drink it in honor of him and in a sort of imbibing prayer, wishing that I’d be as good a father as he was to me.
I quickly made it to the Marina Green and found a darkened bench. Once there the entire Bay came to life in ways that it never had before. I still don’t believe it as it’s never been equaled in my time here. To the left was the magnificently orange Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond it the rolling dark hills of Marin. By this time it was well after midnight and the city was quiet. Straight ahead I could make out the silhouette of Angel Island and the twirling search light of Alcatraz. In the distance on my right I could see Berkeley and the expanding Bay Bridge. Just beyond that I could make out Coit Tower and the Transamerica pyramid. You won’t believe me, but I also heard seals squawking from the Wharf.
It was all as if the city, and the world, was telling me: “Chris, it’s going to be all right. Your child is going to be born into this. Into all of this beauty. Enjoy it.” As I looked up at twinkling stars (the first in weeks since it was the first night in weeks without fog) I said what amounts to a little prayer. I opened the beer and just dared police to come get me. I couldn’t wait to turn chiding into celebration when I told them I was going to be a Dad.
No one came, though, and after an hour I got cold and started home.
As I got up, I felt whole inside. And I had something of a premonition. In it, I was holding the hand of a little girl—she looked just like Shannon—and she let go to go run across the city grass as I stood back and admired her. It was a private moment that only the two of us could enjoy as the rest of the city slumbered just across the road.
As I got closer to home, I reluctantly re-entered the real world—though this time full of so much more promise—and put my headphones on, not clasping our doorknob until I had finished a complete listen to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” and a final glimpse at the moon shining down on me.
This song is like a lullaby. A beautiful, wondrous lullaby that portends only the best is to come. Lines such as, “Waking with you makes each day divine/ Well there ain’t nothing better to do with my time/ I will enter your lines of grace and read to you/ My see through blue” are not only heart-achingly sincere, but they’re also so simple, illustrating unending love in the simple act of reading to a child.
The song also reminds me of some old French waltz that I’ve yet to place. It’s so familiar, though, like a memory I stored away from somewhere, or a person whom one day I’ll love, but haven’t yet met.
Admittedly I was supposed to think Grizzly Bear was cool back in 2005, but I’m a little late to the party. Likewise, this is more of an album choice than a single choice. Just the same, I love how this song seems to effortlessly dovetail with Song #9 (2:54’s “Watcher”) and the sonic peaks and valleys it goes through that just challenge you to find an optimum volume that won’t be a whisper and/or blast out your downstairs neighbors. Speaking of which, this is overdue: Sorry, Florence.
When I began hosting my own radio show at Notre Dame (“The Poet Drain, on WVFI, The World-Wide Voice of the Fighting Irish”) there was only one show I had in mind to imitate: Big Sonic Heaven (Google it, you’ll be surprised by the passion of its fans, even 10+yrs later.)
Airing on Detroit radio through the late 90s and into the new century, BSH played the best in dream pop, ambient, and modern rock. You’d hear The Smiths, Jeff Buckley, Dead Can Dance, etc. It was the perfect way to end the weekend and start a new week. To memory, I believe the show ran from 10pm on Sunday to 2am on Monday morning: a full 4 hours of incredibly solid music, perfect to study, relax, or fall asleep to.
Sadly it went off the air right around the time I was doing my show at ND. However, I was incredibly happy to hear a clone upon returning to Ann Arbor 6yrs ago. 107.1’sSonic Bliss hosted by Mark “Copey” Copeland (who used to work for Darren Revell’s BSH) is everything that BSH was, and more. It’s commercial free, and by visiting their website you can see playlists, and download entire shows. It’s a treasure, and something I still listen to out in SF, albeit 3hrs earlier.
In line with these two—ahem, three—great shows, this is the one song I’ve added to the list this year that is more album-based than single-based. It would fit perfectly on Sonic Bliss and is just as good for solid background music for late night activities. The female duo on the disc dreams up sonic landscapes reminiscent of Cocteau Twins, and is as dreamy and dark as any Gothic thriller. Perhaps it’s not the “best in modern ambient…pop” as I used to say on ole WVFI, but it’s something incredibly close, and easily one of my go-tos when I need to space out and sit back.
I have a fear of missing out. Especially on sunny days, I’ll do whatever I can to drop work and head outside, walking a trail, soaking up the warm air, and simply trying to avoid taking nice days for granted. Yet growing up in the Midwest, where warm, sunny days can be a rare commodity, even during the summer, I spent a fair portion of my time in dark, air-conditioned basements. When I was younger I played with toys, slightly older with videogames, and older yet listening to music, such as my sister’s discarded CDs. One included Lenny Kravitz’sMama Said, which contained exactly one song that I liked: “It Ain’t Over till It’s Over.”
This summer I returned to my boyhood home, now owned by some other family. It looks more or less the same, but by the time I pulled up after dark, the windows revealed no signs of life. The lone porch light may as well have been left on for me. Maybe for that, and maybe for some other reasons, I felt an intense urge to go inside, to reclaim what was mine. I wanted to open the backyard gate, still painted a dark shade of beige that I had brushed on some 10yrs prior. I wanted to quietly open the front door, open the fridge, and watch TV at low volumes. I wanted to sneak into the basement and smell the musty fumes of a subterranean comfort I hadn’t experienced since I was younger.
I obviously did none of those things, but not only did I feel like I wanted to; I felt like I had a right. Like it was still mine, more than it could ever be their’s.
But as I parked outside of our neighbor’s house, I likewise looked at his house, darkened for other reasons. Passed away this past year, his home was still empty, a lone cart in the driveway ready to take away clutter that the family was left to throw away. I looked in at his darkened windows and felt saddened, but also full of purpose.
For as long as I can remember he kept detailed weather reports of every day. Every. Day. You could ask him for any day dating back to at least the early 70s and he’d be able to tell you about the temperature and clouds on that particular day. I’m not sure he ever had a purpose for doing so, but he did it regardless. It was quiet, solitary work.
I, likewise, am working on something: a novel of sorts. It’s a slow process, and one I’d rather not get into, but I can say it’s about trees. Or, about a man—much like my neighbor—who loves trees, and categorizes them for reasons that aren’t immediately clear, even to him.
Perhaps buoyed by that idea, I tugged on some branches outside of his house and put the drying ash leaves into my pocket. I walked next door to my old front lawn and tore away some sugar maples, dark green for the summer. I later drove around town and repeated this at all the spots that mattered most to me: small burr oak from my old elementary school, weeping willow from the town pond, etc.
It was oddly comforting.
No, it was intensely comforting. Like I was extending my existence. Like I was making tangible what had been lost to time.
Shad’s mixtape is brilliantly conceived: raps around his favorite songs from the late 1980s and early 90s, including one from Lenny Kravitz. The same song that thrilled me on chilly-inside/heated-outside afternoons is infused with a modern nostalgia on this short track. It’s as if he plucked the leaves from his childhood trees, and with them planted a new grove. It’s still his, even though time has swept it away, effectively telling him that it’s no longer accessible. His remix is a way of affirming the very title, the spirit that seemingly drove Lenny, and the intense urge that I fought back on a late summer evening just south of Detroit.
