Over the last few weeks, I 'd been channeling (or being channeled by) Pete Yorn - specifically his songs from Musicforthemorningafter. I just loved that album. Why were they spinning around my mind in an endless loop? Was there a meaning? Was Pete trying to tell me something? Anyway, on Tuesday, he was inexplicably supplanted by the Counting Crows when I heard this at T.J. Maxx. Remember that video? Back when MTV actually played music, I recall seeing it frequently.
If I had to pick a character in the video that I feel akin to, it would be the guy in the desert. I totally understand the sense of waiting, the need to stay busy with meaningless things, the loneliness. But I was also struck by Adam Duritz.
Watching him, I feel like I am looking back in time. There is Adam. Still there. I remember all his mannerisms, his silly dreads, his '90s black boots. Wasn't he dating Courtney Cox then? I know here's here now, even after all he's been through, but watching that video (like all old tapes and photographs) engenders in me the idea that a version of a person can be caught forever in a previous place. Adam is still standing on those railroad tracks on that day. Somewhere back then a woman is still schlepping a suitcase around Los Angeles.
And where am I? I am still driving my white Chevy Cavalier downtown, and around Cockeysville. I am still invisible inside a corporate cubicle. I am still wishing I were a grown-up, though I was in my mid-twenties. And I still connect with the girl on the car in the parking lot. I look back over my shoulder and see the dresses I used to wear and feel the summer heat in my apartment.
When JBL and I took J by 17J recently to show her Mommy's old place, I knew the creak of the door opening, and the musty smell of the hallway, even though we didn't go in. I knew the thud-thud-thud my feet would make walking up the carpeted steps, and I knew the semi-gloss of the brown door to the third floor apartment (on the left) - noticeably thick since it had been painted so many times since the '70s when Lakeside Living was built. I wouldn't knock even if I could have because I would want to open the door and see my pine table and giant old stereo, my TV and gauzy curtains, my shower curtain covered in roses and cherry rice-carved post bed. I am still in there - how could I possibly knock from the outside?
She said, "Shh...I know. It's only in my head." But where are you?
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2 comments:
Love this. I have also been thinking of a sort of capsule ... but more in the sense of wanting to move away from ones that keep you closed in and captive ... how it seems people are satisfied in figuring someone out and slap a label or definition on them that makes it hard for [anyone] to get out from under the weight of a past, a comment, or impression.
I like your capsule much better. =)
I've had more labels slapped on me than I care to remember, and have found it best (for me anyway) to move on without anyone's permission. It's tough. But worth it.
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