And This, Mr. McLean, Is Why the Music Will Never Die

You know you can hear any song (almost anything: sorry, Nickelback) and do a bit of mental gymnastics with the lyrics so they seem like they were written about no one else but you and what you’re going through? You know, one of the classic reasons why good music is timeless.

But is it just me, or do we all have this thing where music lets us dwell in our past moments of loss? This dark side of music is not a totally uninvited intruder, either. We hear a song that was playing the day our mom died, but we don’t turn it off right away; rather, we reach for the volume and turn it up. We don’t mind hearing it; sometimes we actually want to hear it. We can deal with the painful memories that well up, but we can’t deal with the pain of forgetting. We remember the good, at any cost, even if that means a moment of pained recollection. For that brief moment, we’re involuntarily transported back to a time in our lives when things were different, a time when dreams we’ve long since seen fade away were just beginning to shine.

It doesn’t have to be about something as painful as losing a parent or loved one, either; music recalls feelings of all different kinds of life events. Any time I hear “Fred Jones Pt. II” by Ben Folds, I’ll instantly think of the four years I had with all the guys at my high school. Whenever I hear a certain song by Dave Matthews Band, I’ll think of my first kiss. And if anyone ever puts on “Tiny Dancer,” first I’ll pump my fist in the air, then I’ll remember the joys of my first longterm relationship.

But music can be a mixed bag. For all the good memories these songs recall, some of it still hurts to remember.

In high school, I can also remember getting made fun of for a stupid genetic problem and the pained awkwardness of trying to figure out who I was. Yeah, my first kiss was a sweet moment, but then what about the next few years when I wanted to recapture with her that innocent connection? And God, what an intense, helpless feeling it was to watch three years in a relationship end because she met someone new. Even though these things don’t cut as deeply as they once did, that doesn’t mean the scarred memories cease to exist. Sometimes a song evokes the good, sometimes the bad, but most of the time, it evokes both.

I got slapped in the face with such an evocation one day this week. Hard. When I was driving home from work, a country song came on the radio that months back I had somehow associated with a recent break up. No, they’re never easy. Before yesterday, I’d never told anyone about my connection with this song. I guess this was my little bit of private catharsis. And as I heard the first notes of the song kick in, my thoughts immediately swerved down that same road I find myself on so often, usually during the quiet of night. In that instant, all the ups and downs of the past year flooded through my head. I turned my head and glanced out the window, looking for answers I knew weren’t there. Everything again seemed so vivid and so real that I could have sworn that I saw her standing on the side of the road, a look of pure joy on her face that was the same one I fell so deeply in love with over a year ago. I held the glance a moment longer and realized that it was her standing on the side of the road, laughing and saying goodbye to a friend, at the same damn moment when Gary LeVox was talking to me about her through the radio. I drove off before she could join my moment.

As long as music (and art, poetry, fiction, etc.) holds such an ability to capture a moment of human emotion and present it in a way which becomes transferable to our own lives, music will never die. We become too invested.

In 1993, a terminal cancer patient named Jimmy Valvano gave an emotional awards show acceptance speech I will never forget. Among other things, he claimed that days which contain laughter, contemplation, and emotional release are the three — and only three — ingredients that lead to happiness. A day? I went through all three in less than 20 seconds, though I admit my half-hearted laugh did drip with a bit of irony.

Is Valvano right? Did this moment somehow enrich my Tuesday? Part of me thinks he’s on to something with this, actually. I hadn’t seen that look of sheer joy in her eyes for far too long. And for her, I was happy. Life’s funny (if not a bit masochistic) sometimes, no?

(Untitled): Part II

(cont.) Part I

At the end of the next tune — Fields of Athenry, I knew that one — the bartender put down his flute and made his way back to draw some rounds. The guitarist paused and took a long, relaxed swig from his pint before continuing on to the next song, hardly missing a beat. Like I said, there are never a lot of people in here. I live in a young, hip neighborhood — you know, the kind of place where legions of twentysomethings move to take their first real job after graduation. I’m not one of those hipsters, though. I wish I was. I like to say I was here before it was the cool thing to do. Really, though, I suppose I live here in spite of myself. But those people generally have no patience for a place like this. I hate to stereotype, really, but they seem to be looking for somewhere pulsating with new beats, somewhere dripping in sexuality and fancy martinis — the kind that you really would never know how order without the help of your girlfriend or cool bartender (but only after he looks it up), but the kind that when people see you holding it, it says you’ve got the secret to a good life. Not that there’s anything wrong with those places, looking good, or anything like that, but it’s just not my scene, you know? God knows there’s enough of those kind of places out there. Fortunately for me, they keep pubs like this relatively empty. Or even on the rare night when there’s a bigger crowd, everybody generally stays under control and never gets loud enough to disturb anyone looking for that quiet drink. It boils down to respect. That’s all. Respect, people.

And you know what is one of the best things about her? I respect her, and I don’t respect a lot of girls. Well, I mean, I do, really, but it makes it a lot easier to respect someone when they respect themselves. That way, you don’t have to spend all your energy in a relationship just trying to convince the other person to think with their head on straight and stand up for their feelings; instead you can focus on other things, like talking about how you feel about family, what we should do in Iraq, the best dance song of the 80s — you know, the important stuff. We can do all this so much more naturally because she already respects herself. God, I love her.

It hasn’t always been easy, though, I’ll tell you that much. The relationship, I mean. But that’s okay, I don’t know one relationship that’s roses all the time. In fact, there was a long time when I wasn’t even sure if we’d make it here. We broke up for awhile and I started seeing some other girls. And I had a nice enough time with these girls, and even lucked into dates with some tres attractive ones (God, I make it sound like there were a lot of them — untrue! I fundamentally lack game.), but at the end of any night with them, the only thing I really wanted to do was ring Mary and tell her about how she ate her pizza with a fork, or something silly like that. I knew Mary would find moments like these funny, but I saw this whole inclination as being slightly problematic for the health of any new relationship. And this feeling wasn’t a one time thing, either. Sigh.

So, a lot of life happened, blah blah. Mary dated some other guys, I think, but I don’t really want to talk about that. It was hard enough just thinking about it. We managed to stay friends through the whole breaking up fiasco, which so often can mean loads of grief and work, and for what? For me, though the process along with it was hard as hell, the ‘for what’ was easy enough. I just couldn’t imagine anything but. We all have people who we want to see stick around in our lives, no matter what. Mary is that person for me. Broaching friend territory was in many ways wonderful practice in self-flagellation — for instance: while I may have periodically wanted to, say, take her in my arms and hold her til morning, I knew that would somehow break the friend protocol — but all in all, I felt it was worth it. Or so I hoped. I didn’t want those bruises for nothing.

I’ll spare you most of the dirty details of how it all went down, but one day down the road, we started talking — you know, really talking, in the way we had before — over a bottle of wine, and, well, one topic led to another, until she looked me in the eye, let the gaze sit there in a silence for what felt like 20 minutes, and finally asked why we aren’t together. Wow, hands down, way the hell out of the park, No. 1 question on my all-time top 10 questions asked list. To OR from. I knew how to take it from there (Though I never expected the day to come, I’d been practicing the answer for over three years), and here we are today, diamond ring dying to jump out of my pocket.

Except, I’m not sure where she is. She’s usually not late for anything. I hope she’s okay.

…

(Untitled): Part I

The rain came down in torrents, soaking the already waterlogged spring soil, but not even a little unseemly weather could derail me from my quest that night. I walked into the bar and brushed the rain off my coat. A few disinterested pairs of eyes glanced toward me before settling back down to the emptiness before them. Thunder rolled gently yet steadily in the distance, providing cover for hushed conversations on the inside. I ordered a pint and took a seat at an empty booth along the wall.

Flickering tabletop candles cast shadows that danced around the room as I sipped my beer. The dark wood paneling and exposed timbers exude a warmth that any libation will only enhance. After a moment (as I had so many times already that night), I reached into my pocket and momentarily held the small box in my sweaty palms, making sure it was still there. I ran my hands through my hair, trained my eyes on the door, and waited.

I’ve never been here on a night when there were more than a just few people around, and that’s really most of its charm for me. That and the fact that there’s no TVs anywhere. Groucho Marx once said, “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” Amen, brother man. But anyway, places like this really give a man room to think, room to drink a pint and unwind. I’ve found that these moments of silence are sometimes the only thing keeping us afloat as we go on from day to day. Really, can you imagine a world without places of retreat? This is mine. But I wouldn’t really recommend it to you. Nothing against you personally, but suddenly having loads of people here, all looking for silence, would kinda defeat the purpose, no? You can find your own. I know you can. There’s so many out there.

I took another sip off the top, the creamy head and ruby body sliding into my mouth. I thought of the first pint we had shared together, with the first date awkwardness and sweaty palms quickly giving way to what so quickly felt like a true connection. Looking back at those first few months, everything had been so…natural. The passage of time so often supplies us with rose-colored glasses as we look back, but here there was no artificial enhancement.

We had grown to be good friends before I ever had the guts to ask her out, and I remember our first real date. God, how could I forget? After a perfectly good dinner on the town, I lost it. I really did. On a warm fall evening, we were lying next to each other on the grass in a clearing, just talking (as we did so well), and for some reason I felt it would be a good idea to supply a litany of reasons about how she absolutely amazed me. Nothing like a little first date honesty, eh? But as ridiculous as I felt that night (and God bless her for not getting up and leaving on the spot) it’s even more incredible to see my evolution from self-perceived loony to prophet. Every single sentiment I said to her that night has only deepened throughout the years. No kidding. In some weird way, without me realizing it was happening, that night I think a part of me saw through the twists of time and pictured us at this moment. At this crossroad.

I glanced down at my watch. Any minute now. A bolt of lightning momentarily illuminated the bar before it again darkened with a sustained roll of thunder. The door opened and in walked a man carrying a guitar case. He said something to the bartender, made his way over to the corner table, and sat down, content to quietly strum and tune his guitar. None of the handful of people in the bar took more than a casual notice of the man before going back to their quiet conversations. After a minute, the bartender brought him a pint and joined him at the table. From under the table the bartender pulled out a smaller case and deftly assembled what looked like a flute or penny whistle. After pausing for a moment to catch the guitarist’s tune, the bartender put the flute to his mouth and joined in, playing some slow melody that I didn’t recognize. A couple on the other side of the room quietly turned their chairs and intently watched the two harmonize, only communicating through the ebb and flow of the music. I smiled and took a long sip, savoring its intricacies.

Am I nervous? Let’s just say that my butterflies have little butterflies of their own. There’s no way to control — or even predict — how the other will react in these situations, but I just think that it’s the right thing to do. I’ve thought this for quite a long time, actually. And I’m not saying there’s some shortage of outstanding questions about our relationship and about our lives, or anything like that, but I just thing those are things we can sort through together, you know? To me, one of the funny things about love is that while it can scare the crap out of you by leading into some part of yourself you may not be entirely comfortable with, it also helps you out on the journey. I don’t know how better to explain this, but it seems to me that we’re better off by going through this process, even if we fall face first in the mud along the way. I kinda think God is the same way.

…

Afternoon Hooky

Yesterday, just as we were cleaning up nearing the end of the morning shift, Boss Dawn said I’d been working a lot lately, so she offered me the afternoon off. Taking a look out the window and seeing nothing but blue skies and coat-free pedestrians, it really wasn’t much of a choice. March days like that just don’t come often in Chicago.

I rushed home, obviously not having anything planned, but I wasn’t too worried about being able to find something. I made a few phone calls, but nobody else had my good fortune of being free. Suckers. So, I strapped on my rollerblades, grabbed a book, and headed south down the lakeshore path. After going a few miles, I found a secluded spot in the sun at the edge of a harbor and read my book. Glancing up from time to time, I could see across the water to the suddenly subdued Chicago skyline.

I don’t know everything about what leads to a happy, fulfilled life, but things like this must rank up there somewhere.

A Dark, Dark Night

Recently, something pushed me to revisiting a book I had read for class while I was in high school. The book, Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel’s Night, gives a straight forward account of the author’s trip as a 15 year-old Orthodox Jew in a small village in Transylvania to the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Night seems to be in a genre entirely to itself; Wiesel claims it’s a deposition of unvarnished truth, others have difficulty believing that such a young boy could recall every conversation and detail under the weight of such an unbearable pain. To me, the argument is mute. With what is known about the Holocaust, Wiesel’s story could be true, and that should be enough to haunt even the most callous among us.

Written with devastating simplicity, the short book never gives you even a moment to breathe. By the time I reached the end of it, sitting on my couch at 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon, I slammed the book down to the ground in anger and cried into the couch pillows. I don’t remember the last time – if ever – a book has ever had this effect on me.

As well as being an exposed, raw account of what may go down as the darkest moment humanity has ever seen, the book touches poignantly on the problem of evil. Namely, how can a just, loving, merciful God exist in the face of such calamity and calculated destruction? How could Elie, a previously pious Jew, continue worshiping an all-powerful, all-loving God that lets his mother and sister go up in smoke? Who lets another boy kill his own father over a scrap of bread, only then to be beaten to death himself for the same scrap? Here’s a clue: he can’t, and he has no qualms about admitting and lamenting his loss of faith. Really, how could anyone possibly blame him? Read the story, sit with this question, put yourself into Elie’s shoes, and just see how you might answer this question.

So what does such a strong, visceral reaction to a book mean for me? Five minutes of tears and then personal absolution? I sure hope not. Saying “never again” and then going about my day-to-day life? How sad that would be. Honestly, I’m not yet sure what my response should be. But the final sentences of the book, said after U.S. liberation, seal a lasting impression:

“I wanted to see myself in the mirror. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.
The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.”

CTA Storybook

Though Newton’s Fourth Law of Motion clearly states that you have a better chance to discover turtledoves crawling out of your buttimus maximus than you do to wait anything under half an hour for a post-midnight Red Line train, sometimes you actually don’t mind the wait. This was one of those nights.

Coming off St. Patrick’s Day — you knew that EVERYONE living in Chicago is Irish on this day, right? — I actually enjoyed sitting on that Belmont platform at 2 a.m. The mood was festive and light, and the fresh air actually felt pretty good. In a detox kinda way, at least. But another fascinating aspect of Chicago public transportation are the people you inevitably come across. And this, my friends, is where our story kicks off.

Sitting on a bench looking westbound over Belmont Avenue, I marveled at the line of cars that still filled the streets at this late hour. There’s always traffic in Chicago. But nothing really seemed too out of place. A handful of other people were on the platform with me. As a gesture of courtesy (read: to make sure I’m not about to get knifed), I generally try to make eye contact with the other passengers around me.

One of these people was Slightly Bulbous. Slightly Bulbous was a youngish, well, slightly bulbous woman with close-cropped brown hair. I gave her the customary view and head nod as she walked by the bench. A few minutes later, a man came up the stairs to the platform and sat beside me on the bench. This man, Cheesy Bread, uncovered two boxes of Domino’s cheesy bread and started to munch away.

After another minute, Slighly Bulbous made her way across the platform and stood between myself and Cheesy Bread. After staring at the man’s clutch late-night snack (damn it smelled good!) for a beat or two, with nostrils flaring like a crack addict, she blurts out, “I didn’t want any, anyway.” She turns her back to Cheesy Bread. Cheesy Bread continues to eat, never looking up.

With her back turned to Cheesy Bread, Slightly Bulbous starts to choke back tears. After a few moments of her crying, which eventually led to bodily spasms, I figured I should do something, seeing as Slightly Bulbous had parked it about 18 inches away from my head.

“Can I help you?” How could I possibly help her? Save from KO’ing Cheesy Bread and salvaging for her what was left of his food, my bag of ideas was empty. “No thanks.” Whew. But the tears kept coming, so I tried again. “Do you want to sit down?” “No.” Negative. Okay, fine, can’t say I didn’t try.

After another long pause, with her still standing there, and still no words exchanged between Cheesy Bread and Slightly Bulbous, she begins to kick his feet, defiantly yelling, “Don’t talk to me! I don’t even know you.” Just as quickly as she blurted out those random nonsensicals, she sat down between the two of us, closer to me than to Cheesy Bread, who had yet to bat an eye at the whole encounter. Just when I started to feel sorry for this poor guy being a victim of some psychotic woman, Cheesy Bread joined the fun.

“You don’t know. You don’t know how I love you. You don’t know how I care for you. You don’t know how I’d do anything for you. You don’t know how I want the best for you. You don’t know how your friends love you. You don’t know your parents love you. You don’t know how smart you are. You don’t know how pretty you are.” It went on like that.

Silenced, Slightly Bulbous sat on the bench, from the looks of it, thinking over Cheesy Bread’s rant. After more silence — and as I estimated how much a cab would cost me — Slightly Bulbous got up, sat next to Cheesy Bread, and put her head on his shoulder. AND STILL NEITHER OF THEM SAID A DAMN THING MORE.

God had mercy on me; the train finally came. I could have easily walked down and gotten on a different car than this deranged pair, but the whole thing was so oddly curious that I couldn’t take my eyes off it. So, I went in the train and watched as their magic continued to unfold.

Cheesy Bread took one of the rows in the middle of the car, put his back against the side window, and kicked his legs up over the seats. Without notice, Slightly Bulbous took a seat alone all the way in the back of the car! Cheesy Bread couldn’t have looked less disinterested in what was happening around him, but from a distance, Slightly Bulbous had her eyes trained on him like a hawk. After a few stops, Slightly Bulbous made her way to the row directly across from her mate (victim? partner in psychosis? torturer?), mirroring his position on the either side of the row. Now the two — again both within two feet of me, were staring into each other’s eyes, still refusing to try out the not-so-new innovation of verbal communication.

When the train reached Bryn Mawr, the two simultaneously stood up and silently walked off the train side by side. As the train pulled away from the station, I could only imagine what the hell I had just witnessed. Was it too late to make last call?

Three of the Many Reasons Why My Mondays Don’t Suck

A Reunion

Though I was in Millenium Park, firmly in the heart of downtown Chicago, I found myself alone on the metal bench that night. A handful of couples walked by, enjoying the warm spring air, but nobody really took much notice of me; they were far too caught up in their own evenings. Not even the security guards, chatting on their segways, disturbed my own little world. I was completely alone.

All my other friends were across town celebrating into the sunrise, but I knew there would come more opportunities for that. Graduation wasn’t for a few more days, and parties filled the week. For me, tonight was different. Tonight was the night I’d been dreaming about for months. Tonight was another kind of graduation, as I awaited the return of the woman who had shaken up much more within me than I even knew existed.

As I waited to get that first sight of her, my eyes darted and my stomach churned. In my head, I replayed the timeline of our relationship, still amazed at how rapidly – yet entirely naturally – our relationship had blossomed. My life will again and again prove one certainty: no significant life moment will ever be predictable. That said, I still couldn’t imagine a better first nine months of a relationship. What we had been through, especially the half of it spent at a distance of a cool 5,000 miles, was nothing short of remarkable. Remarkable, and in my mind, divine.

Then she stepped out of my mind and into the night. Backpack slung over her shoulders, suitcase rolling along behind her, her wavy brown hair rolling off her head, she strode confidently in the direction of dreams. Almost as a father would watch over his sleeping daughter, I saw her before she saw me, and a smile crept over my face. God, she was even more beautiful than I had remembered. My fears momentarily relinquished their hold on my heart. The bottom fell out of my uncertainty, only to be replaced by irreplaceable joy, the joy that I had for so long imagined.

As she walked up the sidewalk, her eyes arrived on my bench around the corner, across the grass field. Our eyes finally hooked together, and her progress halted. For a fleeting moment, we stared at each other, probably trying to verify that the other was indeed real. Then, her pace quickened. My heart jumped. She ran around the corner and down the sidewalk. Steps before she got to the bench, she dropped her bags and jumped into my open arms. We embraced. Tears and laughter flowed. Finally, a warm body (pressed against mine) behind the words that had daily filled my inbox with prophecies of love.

Hardly anything said, but so much communicated. At that moment, there was nothing more to say. The warm night breeze ushered in the May flowers, and my own flower had again taken root, locked in my arms. Indeed, it was a moment of unbridled joy; one of those moments where, for a brief second, nothing else in the entire world matters one lick.

Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we have these kind of moments. You know, the kind where you just know that even when you’re old and gray, you’ll remember more about it than you might about entire years – a tattoo on your soul that will never be taken off.