I wish you'd make up my bed so I could make up my mind
Music has the horrendous, wonderful power to put me back in the same place I was years ago. 2 Ryan Adams tracks played back to back for no apparent reason- "Come Pick Me Up" and "Stars Go Blue"- and boom...back in Coloma. There's the obvious longing, feelings of solitude that "Pick Me Up" brings- I remember on an odd night when my mother and I weren't screaming and I still lived in her house, I was very quietly getting hammered on a bottle of wine I had snagged from the kitchen, and writing angsty diary entries about my then-horrible relationships with my close friends at the time. I am still amazed at the incredible amount of questionable activity that happened in a very short amount of high school life. "Stars Go Blue" puts me working at the Public Library in the old structure. The building was a cramped, musty hole, a few feet away from railroad tracks that shook and rained dust bunnies every time a train went by. It was the first and only CD I managed to finagle my boss into playing while I was working behind the desk and break the monotony of "christian rock, The Eagles, christian rock, Sarah Brightman, three uninterrupted hours of christian rock..." Nothing I suggested was ever put into the shuffle. Bob Dylan was seen as potentially offensive at that time. Fucking squares. That track also reminds me of going to Niles Haunted House with Aj and Mary. I spent most of the night crab clawed onto a corner of Aj's sweater scared about anything that make me jump. The night ended and Aj put "Gold" in his cd player, and eventually this song came on while riding in his old black Cutlass (if make and model memory serve me correctly). He and Mary sat in front, talking or whatever, I can't remember the state of their relationship at the time, and I just looked out the rear view window and ignored everything but the stars and the music as we drove home.
There is progress. After three years and 8 semesters, I'm 6 credit hours away from an associates degree. I wince sometimes when I think about it, the main attributes to the snail's pace being 99% situations I could have avoided with different choices. Then again, I might be an entirely different person if I hadn't taken those directions, and I fail to comprehend what that would look or feel like.
