I’m Calling “Timber” When You Get Hit by That Car

Every once in a blue moon Lent teaches me a lesson. Considering the number of infrequent lunar events packed into this calendar year, it’s really no surprise that the most recent 40 day “fast” bore heavy lessons.

The heaviest?

Don’t get buried under headphones.

You see, I am an audiophile – music is my heart and soul. My water and gluten free, all natural, low fat bread. Giving up it’s enjoyment during mile-long treks from one end of campus to the next is like taking out a lung then taking on Mt. Everest.

Yet, during these treks, I came to notice something.

Everyone is lost beneath the soundwaves of artistry – so lost in pumped up beats that they often fail to notice the world around them.

Everything from singing birds perched in trees to the car about to hit then as they jaywalk across a Bostonian main drag.

They fail to notice the lost tourist, looking about the landscape confused and struggling to figure out where they are. They fail to notice the scalpers selling discount Red Sox tickets 15 minutes before the game. They fail to notice the friend calling out their name from across the street. They fail to notice their favorite song playing over the convenience store sound system.

Life happens all around us.
Those lost beneath MP3-driven playlists fail to notice it’s beauty because they can’t be ripped out of te Skrillex’s bassdrops being pounded into their ears at full volume – at least not the way you can rip a person out of thought.

Maybe I, in all my Gen Y infamy, am being hypocritical. My love for music runs deep, but my love for appreciating the moment runs deeper. Music is meant to enhance the moment -to form a memory, maybe even create it. We, with our iDevice insanity, have turned it into an unlimited escape of 50 thousand songs we’ve only heard once – only only consistently play 10 of. We’ve turned music, in all of it’s beautiful soul-wrenching glory, into monotony. We’ve made music into the art hanging on the wall of the doctor’s office – only to be examined when we’re too bored or anxious to think of much else.

Maybe I’m blowing things out of proportions. Maybe I’m entirely right. Maybe I’m just fucking fed up with my generation – what this world has become – how we’ve just become cattle with opposable thumbs, but that just could be senseless paranoia.

I Love You, You Animal

Though music has a way of nailing the rawer parts of my soul to a cross, it rarely elicits enough emotion to make me cry. Actually, art and life-events in general rarely make me cry. It’s an unspoken rule of disassociation.

Today, the above cover of Miike Snow’s “Animal” broke that rule.

Through Javier Dunn’s cover of a long-time favorite song, I learned another meaning of love. In fact, I learned a new way to love.

As a writer, I’m accustom to possessing the gift of life – the gift of creation – the gift of birth. When love spills forth from the wellspring of my heart I cannot hold back the words. I cannot hold back the poetry. I cannot hold back weaving that person – that friend, that loved one, that family member – into any and every work possible.

After all, as an unknown source said, “When a writer falls in love with you, you never truly die.”

Because suddenly we write you into everything we can.

Even our secret blogs.

The same can be said for other artists, other creators. As poets write sonnets and free verse about those they love, musicians compose songs. Cooks create new, mouthwatering meals. Visial artists paint or sculpt. Photographs take endless photos. The list goes on.

So, for me at least, it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea of how creation doesn’t happen as a result of love. How that state isn’t the default of a elated heart.

Then this song was brought into my life by someone whom I love so deeply and dearly.

Someone who I didn’t even expect to remember how much I loved this song.

And the weight of the act mixed with the weight of the lyrics and, suddenly, I understood.

Understood how, without creation, you could show another person how much you love them.

Through art.

Through art they hold dear.

We all love with our hearts, but in many different ways.

Just as we express emotion differently. Artists give birth to new life. The wealthy purchase gifts. The “troubled” use their bodies.

Meanwhile many stumble around blind ’til discovering – “finding” – gems like these before using them as outpourings of the most sacred, powerful force in the Universe.

Love comes in all shapes and sizes and forms and methods.

Today, I saw, found, discovered, an entirely new one.

One hidden in the depths of this song.

By a man who did not write it.

By a man who did not sing it.

But by I man whom I love entirely.

And, honestly, that’s what really matters.