It started after I spent a hour and a half over beer and food talking to my friends, healing from an anxious morning, in a place I had come to dread. We sat outside in the summer sun, ate burgers and there was music playing, and something about the man's voice snatched me away. And since then, the fragments of a song had started drifting through my head.
I would close my eyes and clench my fists and try to follow the music to the words. After all, I could google the words, but not the music. A site promised to try though - Midomi - you can record yourself humming and the site searches its database. Only, when I hummed out loud, what came out sounded nothing like the song playing in my head.
I couldn't remember the name of the band. I only knew it was a male singer, and they had kind of a lo-fi sound? The song in my head had crashing drums and a climbing guitar riff, and then soft spots, and that's tune I could remember. The words I had were "tonight we'll be crazy as coots" and "I kissed her". Not very googlable. I also knew enough that it wasn't a 'main' song, it was an album filler-type. So I had the album? or I listened to it on Youtube? Youtube history didn't yield much, except a lot of Bollywood music.
I opened my music folder on the computer and scrolled down the list of artists. It was some indie band with a name that didn't have instant recall value or anything, so I wasn't confident. Scrolling down, though, was interesting. So many names of bands that I had zero idea about, more song snatches floating by, some compelling memories enough to create a VLC playlist of my isolated, confusing and unhappy days in LSR/JNU, when I spent so much time on the internet reading that I didn't have real sex.
A familiar anxiety clutched me by the throat. Uglyuncoolalonefriendlessoutoftheloop. I thought about writing this entry, Lorrie Moore style. Then dismissed that. Moore does that thing with minute observations that adds so much texture and vividity. If I tried that it would look precious and stupid.
Then today in a friend's home I lay down on the couch, my uterus spasming on its monthly schedule. A sunbeam was falling across my toes, and once again I wondered at how this was my life - in a foreign city, living life as not-a-tourist, doing political things still, with people who I loved and seemed to like me back too. I closed my eyes and let that song float again, and this time it made me think of downloading TV shows with torrents (something I'm too scared to do here), and sweeping celebration music (Sigur Ros - Festival) and... ice hockey. The HBO Road to Winter classics have always had great music and I've found so many great artists to follow from there... And yup, there it was, on the HBO site. The Walkmen - On the Water, from the album You and I.
And the song in my head was 'Donde esta la playa'. The album is great. You should listen to the whole thing.
It took me two days. I tried a Sherlock style mind palace but I guess my brain is a depressing dusty library has a return time of two days or something.
I would close my eyes and clench my fists and try to follow the music to the words. After all, I could google the words, but not the music. A site promised to try though - Midomi - you can record yourself humming and the site searches its database. Only, when I hummed out loud, what came out sounded nothing like the song playing in my head.
I couldn't remember the name of the band. I only knew it was a male singer, and they had kind of a lo-fi sound? The song in my head had crashing drums and a climbing guitar riff, and then soft spots, and that's tune I could remember. The words I had were "tonight we'll be crazy as coots" and "I kissed her". Not very googlable. I also knew enough that it wasn't a 'main' song, it was an album filler-type. So I had the album? or I listened to it on Youtube? Youtube history didn't yield much, except a lot of Bollywood music.
I opened my music folder on the computer and scrolled down the list of artists. It was some indie band with a name that didn't have instant recall value or anything, so I wasn't confident. Scrolling down, though, was interesting. So many names of bands that I had zero idea about, more song snatches floating by, some compelling memories enough to create a VLC playlist of my isolated, confusing and unhappy days in LSR/JNU, when I spent so much time on the internet reading that I didn't have real sex.
A familiar anxiety clutched me by the throat. Uglyuncoolalonefriendlessoutoftheloop. I thought about writing this entry, Lorrie Moore style. Then dismissed that. Moore does that thing with minute observations that adds so much texture and vividity. If I tried that it would look precious and stupid.
Then today in a friend's home I lay down on the couch, my uterus spasming on its monthly schedule. A sunbeam was falling across my toes, and once again I wondered at how this was my life - in a foreign city, living life as not-a-tourist, doing political things still, with people who I loved and seemed to like me back too. I closed my eyes and let that song float again, and this time it made me think of downloading TV shows with torrents (something I'm too scared to do here), and sweeping celebration music (Sigur Ros - Festival) and... ice hockey. The HBO Road to Winter classics have always had great music and I've found so many great artists to follow from there... And yup, there it was, on the HBO site. The Walkmen - On the Water, from the album You and I.
And the song in my head was 'Donde esta la playa'. The album is great. You should listen to the whole thing.
It took me two days. I tried a Sherlock style mind palace but I guess my brain is a depressing dusty library has a return time of two days or something.
