Another Place and Time

I believe that the best songs transport you to another place and time.

Your destination upon listening might be the place and time in which you first heard the song. It might awaken what you were thinking, feeling, and experiencing upon first listen. In this sense the song is constantly an automatic time transport back to the first listen. It is an echo of a moment in which you may have seen and felt the world differently.

The song may just capture the feeling of a specific moment, hour, day, or year in your life. The melodies remind you of thoughts and emotions from that era. Maybe it’s a moment you’re nostalgic for. Maybe it’s someone you pined for. Maybe it’s an angry metal song that evokes teenage rebellion.

Today I listened to Helvetesfönster by Ghost and it brought me back to a day in high school. Suddenly I was on a science class field trip to Paramount Carowinds theme park with my classmates. Or was it Bush Gardens? I took trips to both in high school and now have difficulty distinguishing the specifics of each. It was more than twenty years ago. I have a strong memory, but memories do fade.

This was before cell phones and smart devices. It was a time when one only accessed the Internet via a slow dial-up connection, when companies didn’t track us via the gadgets in our pockets.

I was content to sit and stare at the passing wilderness that walled each side of the road. I thought about how there was something special in that moment, sitting and staring, surrounded by peers who also sat and stared. I thought that our youth would end before we knew it, that we’d all move on and many of us would forget about each other, that we’d vie for good jobs and social status, and that ultimately we’d lose what made us genuine, if we were ever genuine to begin with. We’d have families and become consumed by their relevance. We’d have money and be consumed by its investment potential. We’d become what Holden Caulfield called “phonies” if we weren’t phonies already. We’d be fully absorbed by the rush of it all. We’d never again just be glad to sit and stare.

Sitting in absolute silence while a song plays and watching trees whir by a window somehow made the modern world’s anxieties seem trivial.

One of my favorite songs, Like a Stone by Audioslave, played on that bus ride. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the song, but the song was relatively new at the time. It seemed fitting to think about life while listening to a song about death. That was when we were capable of just listening to a song, when songs weren’t a means of multitasking or a drug for numbing our hatred of a moment pressing down on us.

Like a dream within a dream, I was listening to a song within a song, and it felt nice to return to a simpler time.

I wish to turn off the noise and just listen to a song again.

Bitter Nostalgia

I’ve spent a good portion of the last month feeling nostalgic. I’m nostalgic more for a feeling than for a period of time. Specifically, I find myself pining for the awe and wonder that youths feel when gazing at everyday things that we adults glance over. Awe for nature stales with time, and in its place stands our endless agendas. The act of stepping on an acorn, once an incredible feet, is just a smudge on the shoe. To go back…

I went to an amusement park last weekend. Six Flags Saint Louis. I’ve always liked rollercoasters. This may seem strange to those who know me because I am prone to get intense motion sickness. I’ve puked on a lot of rides over the years. I’ve vomited on my brother enough times that he won’t ride with me anymore. Those who join me at amusement parks either find this to be hilarious or disgusting, or both. If you’ve ridden a rollercoaster with me and I haven’t puked on you, I was probably close. You probably either loved it or hated it, or both.

I don’t know why I keep getting on rollercoasters. I guess I just like being upside down that much. They always throw my insides into disarray, and I keep returning to them regardless.

It was the same last weekend. I arrived at the park and quickly chowed down a funnel cake, then rushed to “The Batman”, a feature rollercoaster at the park. I would describe it as one minute of organ discombobulation. I was already sick halfway through the ride, and was unable to do much for an hour afterward. Damn, it was fast though.

Then my stomach got a little better, and I rushed to another ride, and then another. And finally my stomach had had enough. It had capitulated. “Ride one more damn rollercoaster and I will puke everywhere,” it told me. So that was enough for the day.

Yes, it’s cool being upside down. But the amusement park also taught me that not all nostalgia is good nostalgia. A lot of the magic I experienced as a kid at the park was gone. In its place I saw reality. Overpriced food that makes you feel like crap, hours of waiting in line while amassed by a putrid human stench, games designed to steal your money for prizes that will get thrown away at some point anyways. I guess amusement parks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Not all nostalgia is good. Sometimes it’s okay to grow up and see the truth. I still long for the eyes I once had that could stare enraptured at a simple flower or cloud for hours. But I don’t long for the feeling of being captivated by an amusement park.

Halloween month at Six Flags

Speaking with Ghosts

This morning I stepped outside my apartment building for my morning walk and noted there was a light drizzle. It was the type that you can’t see; you can only feel the tiny beads of water by walking into them. I had my umbrella but decided it wasn’t worth the effort to unfurl it.

A heavy mist hung in the air and shrouded the downtown building tops. Sudden and intermittent gusts of wind blew the drizzly precipitation into me. It was bracing.

I thought about the looming work emails and virtual meetings and time spent inert, starting at a screen, and suddenly I’d had enough. There had to be a Neverland somewhere.

I decided to speak with a ghost, so I closed my eyes as I approached the downtown library.

When my eyes opened I noted the sky was streaked with reds, oranges, and violets, and the sun hung low on the horizon. I looked around and noted that I was in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The Organ Mountains jutted up and stabbed the sky in the east with their rocky dagger-like tops.

I was near Echo Canyon Road, looking down at a dried-up tributary, an offshoot of the Rio Grande River. The sandy bottom was surrounded with two steep and rocky slopes that led up to the neighborhood street. Everything down there at the bottom was dust and sand, dead.

8-year-old me was at the bottom, running around in random zigzags and talking to himself, throwing rocks into the air and watching them fall. He was dead too. A ghost.

In spite of my ankle I maneuvered down the vertiginous slope to the bottom. Scree slid beneath my feet a few times. The granite rocks here are sharp, I thought, sharper than I remembered from my childhood. Better be careful.

The ghost eyed me with a skeptical glance and kept his distance. I kept my distance too.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“I’m you.”

”That’s impossible. I’ll never grow up.”

“You do,” I replied. “In fact you already have. You’re a ghost now. History.”

The ghost’s eyes widened.

“If I grow up, do I still read comic books when I’m a grown up?”

“No,” I said. “For a long time you don’t read anything. You lose the ability like everyone else. Instead of reading you worry about looking young and buying shit. You will read again eventually, but not comics.”

“I don’t want to read anymore?”

“Instead you stare at computer screens. You check emails. You compare yourself to other people. You worry about money and do chores you don’t want to because you’re told it’s the way to be successful.”

“Maybe I’ll get bitten by a vampire soon so that won’t happen. I’ll be forever and you’ll be the ghost!”

“You won’t. You’re a ghost because our history is written.”

“Let’s change it.”

“I haven’t figured out how. I’ll let you know if I do.”

“That sucks.” The ghost threw a rock with all his might at the horizon. “Maybe I’ll walk to the horizon then. See if there are any creatures there.”

“There aren’t,” I said. “You’ll wander another ten minutes, then get tired and turn back home. I remember this day too.”

”Then maybe I’ll catch some scorpions and tarantulas!”

I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “You’ll catch a lot of those.”

I checked my phone. It had no signal.

“What’s that?” The ghost asked.

“It’s one of the many deaths of us,” I said.

“So when do I die?”

“August 25, 1994. 1 pm.”

“Pacific Standard Time?”

“No, Eastern. You were born in Florida.”

“That’s right,” the ghost said. “We should hurry to the horizon. La Llorona haunts the river at night. She likes to drag little boys and girls into the water.”

“Yeah”, I said. “I forgot about her.” I cracked a smile.

“Is she the one that kills me?”

“No. She’s one of the things that keeps you alive.”

“Do I end up being an astronaut?”

“No.”

“A professional athlete?”

“Sort of. But for many years you become another one of those soulless adults who whines about their hair and clothes and worries about being late and paying bills and looking good for couples photos.”

The ghost laughed.

“Screw that,” he said.

“Yeah, screw that,” I said.

“Let’s get going,” the ghost said. “I want to see if there’s gold at the horizon. Maybe there’s a leprechaun too.”

“My ankle isn’t so good and I’ve been that way before,” I said. “I’m gonna head up this hill before it gets dark. But enjoy.”

And suddenly the ghost darted toward the horizon, staying within the depths of that dried up river valley, deftly maneuvering the rocks and underbrush to avoid scrapes.

I clambered back up the slope and to the city street. I took a deep breath. The sun would set soon, and La Llorona would emerge from the Rio Grande to drag another child into its icy night waters.

Tumbleweed bounced and rolled down the road, pushed by a steady eastern wind. Pushed from the Organ Mountains, that strange rocky terrain where trolls lived and clubbed human trespassers to death.

How do I get back to the adult world? I wondered. Then it hit me: I didn’t want to.

I looked at the horizon ahead, the path that the ghost took to get to it. At that point where the sky met the earth, something glinted.

Maybe it was gold after all.

I started walking that direction, though I kept to the pavement.