I wonder sometimes if I could write a series of essays or short, biographical stories about every song that I love and how it's connected to me. This is one I found on some blog in early 2006 and put on a mix cd for myself. I carried around said mix cd (which included songs by Beirut, also my then-discovery, the song "eve of destruction" and instant karma by John Lennon) in my gigantic portable cd player so I could take it to the gym or listen to it while studying. My friends and I were music addicts, though, so sometimes if we were just sitting around I'd take out my player and just blare it through the headphones so we could all have at least some faint music. I remember the four of us being in the lame VC cafeteria one day in the fall, when the cold was creeping in, and I told everyone they had to hear a certain song on my cd to pass the time. I don't remember what that song was, because as soon as it ended You Are The Moon came on, which was my moody, dark and slightly depressed song of the time and I assumed most people I knew would not like my secret sad music, but my friend Josh immediately perked up at the sound of the piano. "What's that?" "...A sad song?" I tried to dismiss it. "I like it," Josh declared. My friend Jon pulled the headphones closer to listen. "I like it too." My friend Amanda, the psychotically happiest person on earth even liked it. So we listened to it on repeat for about fifteen minutes in the mostly empty cafeteria. Eventually everyone caught the Hush Sound bug, a bunch of my other friends-- also originally infected by You Are The Moon-- and I went to their concert. Still, I like to think I started it that day, not for the sake of receiving the credit (though I usually am obsessed with that. i admit it. it's a bad thing), but because I loved that afternoon.
That fall I was also very deep into the noir genre and wrote my first published-for-money story, Dead Day, as a response to that story (and a challenge. and a few other things. but anyway). Thinking about it, I had to get out my "quote book" wherein I, phasedly (no that's not a word), copy down striking quotes from books and poetry and films and wise people and such. Right next to the Jack Kerouac quote-- because yes, I was also into The Beat Generation then-- I found a tiny trove of hardboiled goodness. this was the first one:
"You've always been so good to me, you've taken care of me, you've been everything to me but what I was hoping you'd be. That isn't your fault. It isn't mine, either. It's just a miserable state of affairs..." -the burglar, david goodis
i believe i was reading that book that very day as i took the bus home.
life is funny.
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