I’ve got stacks of CDs pretty much anywhere I spend a decent amount of time. I used to try to centralize them by purchasing larger and larger shelving units. Right around the time that the 500 CD-holder became insufficient, I flat out gave up.
So, now I’ve filled that unit, but stuck them in haphazard piles in the living room, the glove compartment of my car, my bedroom, and my desk at work. Each of these piles tells a small story. They are not necessarily interesting stories. At their most benign, they’ll give you the story of what I’ve been listening to recently. You can tell from the living room that I’ve been exploiting the 5.1 remix of “Dark Side of the Moon”, and that “Sand in the Vaseline”, the Talking Heads’ greatest hits collection, has been sharing time with “Speakerboxx/The Love Below” by Outkast in my bedroom.
I’ve got roughly a dozen CDs stacked neatly next to my computer at work. They really haven’t changed much in the past month or so; partly due to laziness, but mostly due to the fact that as a collective whole, they offer me any emotional outlet I need on a particular given day. It’s a bit like that scene in “A Beautiful Mind” where Nash looks at the wall of numbers, and certain ones glow and distinguish themselves from the surrounding elements: certain CDs just glow when I look at them.
We don’t really pick the music, the music picks us. We are passive participants; the best we can do is openly accept what they have to offer. Sometimes we don’t, and shun their gifts. Same works with people. You can want, desire, or love someone but, in the end, they have to choose us first.
That might sound a bit of a contradiction, so let me try to explain. When I say these people choose us, I don’t mean that they actively do so. It need not be on a conscious level, on either end. But something is clearly sent between two people. In the best possible scenario, this happens simultaneously, and, as such, what you have in the union of two people is the concurrent surrender to the signals that the other has been sending.
I think this is what people speak of when they talk about finding someone when you’re not looking. You are looking. You’re always looking. You just don’t know it. The human condition dictates, no, it demands, a social aspect to its existence. Just because you’re not hitting the bars, working the clubs, wading through Match.com, doesn’t mean you’re not looking. If anything, this lack of active seeking leaves you more open to external stimuli. You’re not working to make a connection, and you shouldn’t, because none of this connection stuff should be work in the first place. (I’ll explain that point in a bit, I promise.)
So I’m here on a Saturday, checking email after my workout, and scanning the CD pile to see if anything’s calling out today. It’s not always the case that something screams to be played---in that case, I just tune in to the radio. Those songs are confectionary---they are momentarily satisfying, but in the end, empty calories for the soul. These albums by my computer though, these are the real deal. Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”. Matthew Sweet’s “In Reverse”. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”.
And today’s glowing selection, Bob Dylan’s “Blood on The Tracks”.
Released in 1975, “Blood” is widely hailed as the renaissance of Dylan. Written off after a string of mediocre albums, Dylan came out of seemingly nowhere with what, to my ears, is one of the great statements of picking yourself up from an emotionally shattered place to one in which you can finally move forward again. Filled with acoustic guitars, quiet vocals, veering from intimate confessions to epic storytelling, it’s got the musical bravado of his mid-60’s work coupled with an appealing fragility that endears the listener. Many people will prefer “Blonde on Blonde” or “Highway 61 Revisited”, but for my money, the introduction of vulnerability on this record makes it my favorite Dylan record.
So, I thought I’d pull a few quotes from this record to illustrate what I tried to talk about before: in the end, we never choose whom we’re with; they choose us. This is a long one, so I’ve broken it up over two entries. Buckle up.
I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew…
“Tangled Up in Blue”
So there I am this summer, mind full of upheaval, trying to simple things like paying bills, going to work, running the route I’d discovered in my neighborhood. Eat my dinner, write a little, go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Consistency was the key. A checklist for life. Check each box when the task reaches completion. Divvy up the day into blocks of time. Make it not through the morning, just make it until 10. Then 11. Pretty soon it’s lunch, and after this meeting, only two more hours to go. An hour to get home, and an hour later, in the shower after the run. Two hours of television after thirty minutes of cooking, 45 minutes of writing, set the alarm, and go forth again.
Of course, that’s all bollocks. That’s not living life, that’s holding it at a distance. And I’ve got pretty long arms. They go with the frame.
We’re now, at this point, something like 2-3 months into singledom. And I still hadn’t quite figured out how to fill in the gaps. Not simply in terms of the empty spot in my bed. That was the least of my worries. I’m talking more about the simpler, but in the end much more profound, gaps in time. Time usually spent at dinners, movies, trips to the folks’, times on the phone. Even simple things like DVDs and television at home. All time that needed to be filled, lest I remember what I used to do with the minutes and hours before.
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn’t see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn’t care, pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
“Simple Twist of Fate”
So I went and tried to force the issue. OK, well, historically I had only dated friends, and I wanted to date again. Two months later seemed to be about right. Take off the inky cloak and all of that. After all, I had left her. Hadn’t left her for a person, at least, anyone specifically. More for an idea or an ideal.
Here’s how you don’t find an ideal: try really, really hard, because you’ll do one of two things. In the first case, you’ll want to see it in someone so badly that you’ll set yourself up for failure when they can’t live up to your all-too-high expectations. In the second case, you’ll apply expectations to someone who can offer you many things; just not what your preconceived notions have set for you.
All the while, your dreams try to show you this ideal. They never show her face, per day. Just a form. But every time you try to reach out for her, she disappears. And you wake up, 4 in the morning, because like Orpheus, you couldn’t wait. Couldn’t let things take their natural course. You had to see her face. And that overanxious impulse ruins everything.
Bird on the horizon, sittin’ on a fence,
He’s singin’ his song for me at his own expense.
And I’m just like that bird, oh, oh,
Singin’ just for you.
“You’re A Big Girl Now”
Having a publicly read forum such as this while all of the above has been an interesting experience, to say the least. Tears of a clown and all of that cliché stuff.
What it has been good for, thanks to your indulgence as readers, is a forum through which I can work through these issues. Not answer. Heavens knows I don’t have the answers. If I did, well, I’d package them and sell them to the highest bidder.
What I can also do, which is kinda fun, is write to certain people. I’ve been reading “The Da Vinci Code” recently, like most of the free world, and the notions of codes buried in works of art is pretty darn sexy. (OK, this website is not a work of art, but you get the gist.) The idea that hundreds, or thousands, of people can look at the exact same thing and yet, a handful can look beyond the surface and see something else that seems to have been put there just for them.
I’ve found codes in all sorts of songs. Sometimes they are in the lyrics, sometimes they are hidden in the bass line. In any case, these codes are unlocked simply by my personal interaction with this song. The unlocking of the code doesn’t produce an answer: it produces an emotional epiphany. You can’t put those types of experience into words, and you can’t share your experience in any meaningful form with anyone. Sympathy is possible, but not empathy.
I enjoy trying to produce such effects in some of you. The “you” is consistently changing, of course. And sometimes, the “you” is “me” and I only figure that out after I read over what I’ve written. Pick up almost any novel: you’ll notice the writer only thanks one or two people usually per tome. They want people to enjoy their writing, no doubt. But only a few people in the end really matter.
End of Part 1. Please proceed to Part 2.