All that jazz
This is an intersection with the fabulous kathrynrose. Her companion entry can be found here.
~~~
I learned young that there is only one thing when words fail, when there's too much and too little to say simultaneously. Music fills out silence, and can say all the important things that I can't.
The Red Barn Flea Market was always hot on Sunday mornings, slants of sunshine catching dust motes in the dim and narrow corridors. There were tiny stalls to either side of the passage stacked high with things on shaky card tables or transplanted woodken picnic benches, and the occasional larger and more professional sales area with slatted benches or shelves. I was always overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff1 - all of it was treasure, or junk, depending on your perspective.
The treasure my father found was always at the music stall. That was one of the larger areas, eight feet long, and lined with long benches laden with old girl scout cookie boxes full of music. The boxes were labeled with magic marker, but the organization was loose at the best of times - here was a box labeled "a-m jazz" and there one that read "m-o rock", and you might find literally anything within them - a comedy album, a classical production, folk, anything. My dad would spend an hour or two every Sunday morning carefully sifting through the boxes, looking for something new to him, something awesome, some musical masterpiece.
He'd let me pick one or two albums - I usually chose by the art on the album; I started judging things by their covers at an early age - and he'd take home ten or a dozen records each week. We would always listen to the ones I chose first when we got home. I would sit cross-legged on the floor of the "den" - the room that doubled as my dad's bedroom - at my grandparent's house.2 My dad would sit on the scratchy brown pull-out couch3, doing something for work or reading a book, but I paid very little attention to him. I was in a world made of music, over-sized headphones cushioning my ears, flooded with sound and rhythm and words.
Between sides, my dad asked me what I thought of the music. Sometimes I shrugged and said I didn't know, or that I didn't like it much. He could usually see that coming, though - my head tilted and my nose scrunched in distaste as something dissonant or displeasing to my still-forming palette was presented to me. Mostly, though, I liked it. And there were a lot of things to like in his collection. He wa good at teasing out of me what exactly it is that I like, helping me to understand my own opinions beyond "it was neat" or "that was fun".
He continued my musical education when he drove me to school - I could have taken the bus. I took it on the way home, but those mornings with my dad were the best times. Sitting at a stop-light, he would stop the mixed tape after the first few notes of a song, and say "guess who!" challenging me to name the band. I got extra credit for the song name, too. It didn't take me too long to figure out that his favorites to challenge me on were songs BY "The Guess Who" or "The Who". 4
The first time I brought home a boy for him to meet, we had a pleasant if slightly awkward dinner, and then my father stood up and said "well." I smiled encouragingly at my date, as my dad went over to the shelves of music, carefully selected an album, and put it on the turntable, placing the needle with precision at the start of a song. Of course, I recognized it from the first few notes. I smiled and joined my dad out on the porch, looking up at the night sky together as Warren Zevon sang about werewolves in London. My somewhat baffled date trailed after us, and leaned on the railing beside me. He jumped, startled when the chorus started and my father and I howled in unison up at the moon. He left in a hurry after that, and I was ok with that. If you can't howl with Zevon you're not going to understand much about me, anyway.
Some days now, I feel like I don't know how to talk to my dad. We sit in awkward silence on the phone, sure that there's something we need to say but unsure what it is. Do I tell him about taking the cats to the vet last week? Or the movies I've seen recently? It all seems so trivial, such a waste of time.
In those moments, we have the music. We trade CD mixes, printing off long liner notes, linking the songs together thematically because we can just trust that the recipient will get it even if the reference to 'travel' is in the name of the album the song came from rather than the lyrics. I try to get him into Voltaire and industrial music, and he asks if I'm still into folk and offers up some more names that I really ought to have in my collection. During our visits in person, we'll sit together on the couch and play songs for each other - him on the stereo he put together, through the speakers he built by hand. Me, playing songs on my phone or laptop, things from my must-have collection. We laugh about the time he blasted "night on bald mountain" towards the church near us - they did have it coming, with all those early morning bells.5
We may have drifted apart some, time and change and physical distance making the easy camraderie we had strolling through the flea market together on Sunday mornings firmly a thing of the past, but we're together every time I put on a pair of headphones, every time I turn the stereo up a little louder. And I still rock "name that song", especially if it's The Guess Who.
~~~
1. Really, the Red Barn Flea Market would have made an excellent place to roll a katamari. So many things!
2. His shelves of music were on the wall beside my grandfather's gun racks, and my dad took a certain pleasure in playing a lot of 60's war protest songs in that room.
3. That couch made three moves with me, all the way up to North Carolina eventually. May it rest in pieces.
4. This wicked sense of humor led to me doubting the existence of the wah-wah pedal for YEARS. He first told me of this mysterious thing while we were listening to a Jimi Hendrix song. "That's a wah-wah pedal" he said. "Suuuuure it is, Daddy." "No, really! That's what it's called!" "Uh-huh. You really expect me to believe that's an actual thing? Pull the other one."
5. And the peacocks. They kept peacocks and let them roam onto our property. If you've never heard a peacock mating call, for what it's worth, it sounds like a woman screaming. And they try to hook up with one another at all hours of the night.
~~~
I learned young that there is only one thing when words fail, when there's too much and too little to say simultaneously. Music fills out silence, and can say all the important things that I can't.
The Red Barn Flea Market was always hot on Sunday mornings, slants of sunshine catching dust motes in the dim and narrow corridors. There were tiny stalls to either side of the passage stacked high with things on shaky card tables or transplanted woodken picnic benches, and the occasional larger and more professional sales area with slatted benches or shelves. I was always overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff1 - all of it was treasure, or junk, depending on your perspective.
The treasure my father found was always at the music stall. That was one of the larger areas, eight feet long, and lined with long benches laden with old girl scout cookie boxes full of music. The boxes were labeled with magic marker, but the organization was loose at the best of times - here was a box labeled "a-m jazz" and there one that read "m-o rock", and you might find literally anything within them - a comedy album, a classical production, folk, anything. My dad would spend an hour or two every Sunday morning carefully sifting through the boxes, looking for something new to him, something awesome, some musical masterpiece.
He'd let me pick one or two albums - I usually chose by the art on the album; I started judging things by their covers at an early age - and he'd take home ten or a dozen records each week. We would always listen to the ones I chose first when we got home. I would sit cross-legged on the floor of the "den" - the room that doubled as my dad's bedroom - at my grandparent's house.2 My dad would sit on the scratchy brown pull-out couch3, doing something for work or reading a book, but I paid very little attention to him. I was in a world made of music, over-sized headphones cushioning my ears, flooded with sound and rhythm and words.
Between sides, my dad asked me what I thought of the music. Sometimes I shrugged and said I didn't know, or that I didn't like it much. He could usually see that coming, though - my head tilted and my nose scrunched in distaste as something dissonant or displeasing to my still-forming palette was presented to me. Mostly, though, I liked it. And there were a lot of things to like in his collection. He wa good at teasing out of me what exactly it is that I like, helping me to understand my own opinions beyond "it was neat" or "that was fun".
He continued my musical education when he drove me to school - I could have taken the bus. I took it on the way home, but those mornings with my dad were the best times. Sitting at a stop-light, he would stop the mixed tape after the first few notes of a song, and say "guess who!" challenging me to name the band. I got extra credit for the song name, too. It didn't take me too long to figure out that his favorites to challenge me on were songs BY "The Guess Who" or "The Who". 4
The first time I brought home a boy for him to meet, we had a pleasant if slightly awkward dinner, and then my father stood up and said "well." I smiled encouragingly at my date, as my dad went over to the shelves of music, carefully selected an album, and put it on the turntable, placing the needle with precision at the start of a song. Of course, I recognized it from the first few notes. I smiled and joined my dad out on the porch, looking up at the night sky together as Warren Zevon sang about werewolves in London. My somewhat baffled date trailed after us, and leaned on the railing beside me. He jumped, startled when the chorus started and my father and I howled in unison up at the moon. He left in a hurry after that, and I was ok with that. If you can't howl with Zevon you're not going to understand much about me, anyway.
Some days now, I feel like I don't know how to talk to my dad. We sit in awkward silence on the phone, sure that there's something we need to say but unsure what it is. Do I tell him about taking the cats to the vet last week? Or the movies I've seen recently? It all seems so trivial, such a waste of time.
In those moments, we have the music. We trade CD mixes, printing off long liner notes, linking the songs together thematically because we can just trust that the recipient will get it even if the reference to 'travel' is in the name of the album the song came from rather than the lyrics. I try to get him into Voltaire and industrial music, and he asks if I'm still into folk and offers up some more names that I really ought to have in my collection. During our visits in person, we'll sit together on the couch and play songs for each other - him on the stereo he put together, through the speakers he built by hand. Me, playing songs on my phone or laptop, things from my must-have collection. We laugh about the time he blasted "night on bald mountain" towards the church near us - they did have it coming, with all those early morning bells.5
We may have drifted apart some, time and change and physical distance making the easy camraderie we had strolling through the flea market together on Sunday mornings firmly a thing of the past, but we're together every time I put on a pair of headphones, every time I turn the stereo up a little louder. And I still rock "name that song", especially if it's The Guess Who.
~~~
1. Really, the Red Barn Flea Market would have made an excellent place to roll a katamari. So many things!
2. His shelves of music were on the wall beside my grandfather's gun racks, and my dad took a certain pleasure in playing a lot of 60's war protest songs in that room.
3. That couch made three moves with me, all the way up to North Carolina eventually. May it rest in pieces.
4. This wicked sense of humor led to me doubting the existence of the wah-wah pedal for YEARS. He first told me of this mysterious thing while we were listening to a Jimi Hendrix song. "That's a wah-wah pedal" he said. "Suuuuure it is, Daddy." "No, really! That's what it's called!" "Uh-huh. You really expect me to believe that's an actual thing? Pull the other one."
5. And the peacocks. They kept peacocks and let them roam onto our property. If you've never heard a peacock mating call, for what it's worth, it sounds like a woman screaming. And they try to hook up with one another at all hours of the night.