Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Music and Memory, part Two

Oh man, I should know better than to mix beer and holidays and... this damn cassette that just wrecks my heart every time I listen to it. But it is so damn good, I simply cannot help myself. I came across it tonight while cleaning and rearranging the house for the big T-day feast tomorrow, for which I've been cooking and cleaning for a good two days straight.

It's an old cassette that was passed onto me, with Yo la Tengo's "Fakebook" one one side and the Old 97's Too Far to Care on the other. There was a time in my life when I played the living shit out of this cassette. I was going through a Major Breakup, another version of Separating the Stuff and Starting Over, and living in my own little teeny tiny place in the East Bay. It was my first time living on my own in a good many years and I hardly knew where to begin or what to do with myself. And I felt raw to the core.

Sometimes it felt liberating; sometimes it felt so lonely that I thought I'd simply evaporate. It was in this little dollhouse that I wrote my first country song, and a few more after that. It was in this little shack that Loretta Lynch was born. So much loss, and so many things starting anew. There were times that I didn't know how my heart would survive. And then again, even though it did, I still have those times.

Anyway, through it all, this cassette was my soundtrack. I would crank it up and feel alternately inspired and hopeless. And isn't that just the way life is?

Forgive me for waxing nostalgic, or don't. I don't really care. It's the holidays damnit, for better or for worse. Tonight feels a little on the worse side, but I have a feeling tomorrow will swing a little bit towards the better.

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