Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
Cosmic coincidence time, Stephen. I have in my Palm Treo's To-Do list a brief note that on August 27, I was inteding to lay down a bass-guitar track to, of all the songs I recorded of the MPS," ""Laughin' Atcha.""
Have I mentioned that the band is done with making music? I did, I know, but I was not clear about it. I bowed to reticence and things like that, and left room for ambiguity. Now, I'm being clear: the band is done with making music. It's a bit of a sad thing, I suppose, as much as any end is a bit of a sad thing. I suppose.
But: it was time.
And, just because it's sad doesn't mean it's bad. To come to an end even simply approaching an end offers new, and often beautiful, perspective. Right? Yes. At the very least: maybe yes.
It had been so long since I'd listened to those songs. So long, I'd forgotten how to play them. So long, I'd forgotten even how they went. Hearing them then was like hearing them for the first time, was like hearing them played by someone else. I was surprised. One song in particular, JA, really surprised me. I grew to hate "They Laughin' Atcha" for its repetitive opening riff. It was all I remembered of the song. I'd forgotten everything else, forgotten how it goes from that repetitive opening riff and transforms into something else completely, something vastly beautiful and full of wild urgency. It's a good, good song. Hearing it, I felt something.
The feeling had something to do with all of this, had something to do with forgetting and hating and remembering and perspective and all of this. Hearing it, I remembered something from the book I'm currently in love with.
In The History of Love, Nicole Krauss (or Alma Singer or Leo Gursky or Zvi Litvinoff or whoever the writer is, I really don't know) discusses "The Birth of Feeling." Someone writes:
Feelings are not as old as time.
There was a time before joy. There was a time before sadness, too. Each feeling has had its first time. There've been many firsts. And: there will be many more. We should look forward to them. Someone writes:
Even now, all possible feelings do not exist.
New feelings are born from new expressions, new communications, new understandings, new perspectives. It must be something almost unimaginable imagined, something so very close to unimaginable that it would have been, save its somehow being imagined. It can be scrambled eggs on top of leftover pizza. It can be Oreo cookies dipped in beer. Someone writes:
It can be a piece of music no one has ever written.
I think about this, and I smile. I smile with hope. Hearing it, I wondered if I was feeling something for the first time. And, if so, what is this feeling called?