This is not a love song.
I know I'm always getting nostalgic all over you.
But there was a scene in the old movie I was watching the other day that struck a chord in me. If I tell you what the movie was I'm afraid that it will only inspire a lengthy digression because it would be impossible for me to say the name of the movie without explaining it and talking about how fucking good it is and how it should be on everyone's list.
But there was a scene in the old movie the other day where Carl goes into his room, shuts the door, lies back on his bed and puts his pre-ipod-pre-walkman headphones on. The song that's playing is "Surrender" by Cheap Trick
The other day I was sitting at my desk, working, iPod coming through my stereo at random. This is always the way I work. Unless I'm angry about something, in which case I work in silence or I just get up in the biscuit and refuse to be productive at all. I curl up with my cat or maybe I watch a "Buffy" episode and pretend I don't feel sorry for myself. But lately when I'm working the music hardly even registers. Maybe it's because I'm focused on what I'm trying to accomplish. I wonder if I've somehow become almost immune to it, much in the same way that seeing so much violence on TV, or whatever, can desensitize a person. Maybe it's the blessing and curse of having so much goddamned music, plus having somewhat of a restless, edgy, and indecisive nature that I have to listen to all of it all at once. Maybe if I just focused on one album, one playlist for a while, I'd actually really hear it. Maybe not enough of it has much meaning for me. Maybe I don't know enough of the words.
A couple of years ago my friend Shming and I were talking on the phone and a Led Zeppelin song popped up and started playing through my iPod. I don't remember what song it was now. The Rain Song
"Do you hear what just came on?" I asked her. She heard it.
Shming and I met when we were in high school, hanging out with the same group of KIDS. These songs were on our collective soundtrack. Shming had the perfect description for the song and its attached meaning at that moment.
"This is like when we had sketchbooks," she said.
Shming and I don't talk all that often anymore. Our lives seem to have gone in different directions. So I felt all gooey inside when there was a message on my voice mail last week from her. She didn't say anything. She just held the phone up to a speaker because one of "our songs" was on. She played one verse and then the chorus and then she hung up. It was like she'd sent me a love letter.
Though its hardly an unfamiliar scene in a movie about kids, when Carl went into his room and escaped in to his music in that way, I was struck by the memory of music. I mean, the memory of music in that way. I thought about how long its been since I just laid back and really listened to something. For hours, seemingly. A whole album. Maybe two in one sitting. Would I get bored? Wouldn't I just think about all the things/people/work/to-do's I should/could/would be doing/calling/seeing/finishing? Why is it that growing up has somehow meant that the ability to be in the moment eludes me more often than not. I often wonder about that. And then I wish things were simpler. It's stupid. The whole thing.
The movie was "Over The Edge."
