I listened to music while roasting.
Or thereabouts.
I have what by now is an ancient ipod. I bought it while I still lived on the farm and, I swear, I never quite got the mud out of it, but there it is, and I have some sort of mix on there and was listening to music that reminded me of the heady transition times: high school to college, college to thereafter: Sonic Youth, Smog, Slits, lots of s's. Times that surprise you now when you realize they were decades ago. And I had to get up at five thirty today to get roasting early so I hadn't slept enough and felt emotional. The music played me: it almost felt like cheating. I could WORK and yet have this aesthetic experience overriding all. And the music was speaking to me. And I remember thinking, how the fuck did these bands, that I've ignored since, somehow then, know what I still don't know now. Or something like that.
I bought my noise cancelling headphones in NYC, so I could ride the subway in a bubble. 2002? 2004? Sometime after the twin towers cast little bits of paper of into Steve's back porch while I listened to Love and Theft on a Sony walkman. I sat in lawn chairs while bloody paper filled the skies. In the distance, I heard the wailing of old women, and put the headphones back on.
I think the first thing I ever listened through the farmbought ipod was a Stephen Malkmus solo album. It was all the electric I had, in the cabin. A strange cat used to visit me. It was crosseyed. We listened to music together.
*
At a certain point, someone was singing, and it all felt a little raw, so I went back earlier, to Motorhead, to junior high, to the Hold Steady, to the romanticism of whatever whatever whatever. I read the new Philip Roth novel this weekend. He talked about growing old, and how we still see the same old face in the mirror. Only now it is puffy. It is like we are wearing a mask. That's all that has changed. We lose integrity. We are somehow something else and yet the same.
But even the early Motorhead felt raw and exposed. "Lost Johnny." No one writes songs like that!
*
That is what it was like to roast coffee and listen to music, for the first time.
Didn't know about this blog until recently... always interested to read what you have to say.
ReplyDeleteYea, those moments with your music on when you can just ZONE and everything flows... always the best work days when you can do that. The only thing that stops me from doing it more is having to read a lot of stuff at work... it just breaks the cycle.