(no subject)
recently i've rediscovered my love for A Prairie Home Companion, especially the tales from lake wobegon. it reminds me so much of living in Michigan, which is funny because i don't think i ever listened to it while i lived there. the first time i remember listening was the weekend before my first graduate seminar. Rae and i were driving down to L.A. to pick up skye. we took route 1 the whole way so that we could see the coast. and in the midst of the curvy roads and epic views of the ocean, we were unbelievable homesick and terrified about starting our new life with our new creature. we'd gone through our cd's, not expecting the drive to take as long as it did, and started scanning the radio for npr stations. we found Prairie Home Companion and felt like we'd never left home, or what was home then. as we drove we kept losing stations and finding new ones playing the same broadcast, but at an earlier point. I think we listened to the same show for like four hours.
I really love california, but for some reason PHC embodies what I sometimes feel like I've lost by moving to this endlessly sunny, easy-going, incredibly beautiful state. I always imagine that the live audience came in from the snow, happy to finally have arrived at the warm theater. that they shook off their coats as best the could but that the bottoms of their pants are damp and that there are puddles forming under their boots. i remember winter in michigan as the hot apple ciders with carmel that i ordered whenever i had to walk home in the cold, usually after a movie or poetry reading. i remember the joy and coziness of coming home and having the feeling returned to my face. something about the weather there made the ways of coping so intensely pleasurable.
i also love the focus on the minutia, something that is also intensely michigan to me. all of my friends were poets and i remember being so amazed that they could take simple events or small discoveries and turn them into pieces of poetry that made every second seem important, or potentially life-changing.
there are so many things i love about california - i will never get over the loss of eucalyptus trees or hiking through the woods on the coast when i leave. and i appreciate the practicality, if that's the word, of the way my friends here think about the world. but i love having a few hours a week to romanticize a time and place in which i now barely recognize myself.
I really love california, but for some reason PHC embodies what I sometimes feel like I've lost by moving to this endlessly sunny, easy-going, incredibly beautiful state. I always imagine that the live audience came in from the snow, happy to finally have arrived at the warm theater. that they shook off their coats as best the could but that the bottoms of their pants are damp and that there are puddles forming under their boots. i remember winter in michigan as the hot apple ciders with carmel that i ordered whenever i had to walk home in the cold, usually after a movie or poetry reading. i remember the joy and coziness of coming home and having the feeling returned to my face. something about the weather there made the ways of coping so intensely pleasurable.
i also love the focus on the minutia, something that is also intensely michigan to me. all of my friends were poets and i remember being so amazed that they could take simple events or small discoveries and turn them into pieces of poetry that made every second seem important, or potentially life-changing.
there are so many things i love about california - i will never get over the loss of eucalyptus trees or hiking through the woods on the coast when i leave. and i appreciate the practicality, if that's the word, of the way my friends here think about the world. but i love having a few hours a week to romanticize a time and place in which i now barely recognize myself.