Front Page Reviews & AIR

Have you ever seen a diagram of insect metamorphosis? Various arrows and Latin labels can teach you a lot.  It turns out that the dragonfly, butterfly, and the ladybug are all a pile of eggs and larvae before they reach the final stage of development.  They start out small and ugly and they end up big and bright.  But I'm almost 34 now and I'm a lot hairier and I've got too many cavities.  The animals and the humanimals: together we're driven by instinct and we grow from babies to big physical conclusions.  But we don't end up with a thick brown mane or the funky colors of a butterfly's wings.  Instead we get big brains encased in a skull whose protective strength is equivalent to a piece of hardwood.  We can't fly or run fast or breath underwater, but we get a neocortex that's saturated with languages, memories, desires, and imaginative motivation.  And every second our hearts are feeding it, pumping us toward tomorrow morning.  

It was July in Queens.  On most afternoons I'd strap on the Nike's, hop on the sidewalk a few times for a quick warm up and burst out to Crescent Street; from couch to swift jog in 8 ­minutes.  Dodging garbage cans and fence gates, scanning for uneven concrete, angling around recessed holes at the base of city trees trying to keep their dignity.  Left on Astoria Boulevard, right on 21st and up past the park to flank it on the north side.  A slight descent for a few minutes and I'm cutting left across a grassy hill and running south along the East River.  How many people did they find dead in there? 

Cars and trucks are cruising along Manhattan's east edge.  The Triborough Bridge is massive, extending high and long, linking boroughs.  Can I see Nate's street from here?  Naw, I think the JFK's blocking it.  Latinos in florescent green cars with oversized mufflers blasting who knows what.  Women with babies.  Soon I'm at the red track marked in yellow where I do 10 laps and hurdle the fence to head back home. 

I'm 26 and I live in New York and I'm capable of anything.  I can force good feelings, and if I can't, the city just hands them to me.  In New York there's always something good to eat, something cool to buy, or someone to mock, examine or admire.

Life seemed a little bit easier then—there was so little time to think.  But gradually, as the summer months passed, I got the feeling that I'd spun away from myself.

By the end of July, it got to a point where I hated the thoughts that arose in my brain in still moments.  I hated thinking about moving away in a month, I hated talking to her about what our new apartment would look like, I hated her fear of going there alone, I hated debating leaving her and not having left sooner, and I hated contemplating her sadness if she could have known the truth.  I rebuked my indecisiveness and despised the recurring guilt.  I hated the whole pathetic situation. 

On our final night on 31st Ave., the cardboard boxes were lined and stacked along the orange wall we'd painted a year earlier.  Lying in the sheets on the floor next to her, I pondered: So if I can't stay here and I can't move to the Midwest with her, what can I do?  I could load my boxes in the car and go to Chad's house.  I could drive up to my Mom's in Albany.  But the embarrassment of it, the sudden imposition on them, the unemployment that I'd chosen in planning to leave--how could I live with it?  The situation felt impossible.  Reasoning processes failed.  We were leaving together, and somehow that was that.

So in August of 2007 I found myself in another small apartment, this time in Wisconsin.  Removed from the geography of the first 26 years of my life, I stepped out and away, determined to preserve a relationship and launch myself into an indiscernible future.  She started school.  I drove her to Chicago to visit her sister.  I drove her to Target on Saturdays.  She refused to get a license and she refused to go to the Willy Street Festival on a perfect summer day.  After about 10 months in Madison I started talking to a psychologist.  "I used to be happy all the time and I'm not happy anymore and I don't know why.  It sucks."  After about 2 visits I discovered the obvious problem: I didn't like this girl and this situation was a pain in the ass for both of us.  We were sharing a life of suspended tension full of stupid arguments, confusion about where we'd go for holidays, and ridiculous interactions about common daily events. 

She:  "Why didn't you ask me before you invited him over?"  

Me: "Because he's my good friend and my good friends can come my house whenever they want." 

She: "But you should call me first!" 

Me: "Why?  He's your friend, too.  You know him.  You fucking introduced us."    

Blah blah blah.  About a year later, sometime in late November, I told her I was leaving.  She cried and I felt horrible.  I called in sick to work the next day, packed up my stuff and drove away.  Two days later I started hooking up with Allison, this brunette cutie with a lip ring who I worked with.  Wayne set up an air mattress on the floor of a spare room next to his kitchen.  "How did I end up here," I wondered at night, "spooning a Burnese mountain dog on an air mattress in my friend's cluttered spare bedroom?"  I slept there for a few weeks, and when I couldn't sleep, I listened to Jill Scott and Mark Kozalek and Led Zeppelin.  Zepplin fed the angst, Kozalek wiped my tears, and Jill Scott kept telling me that living was still fabulous despite mistakes and limitations. 

Living my life like it's golden / Living my life like it's golden golden!

By mid-January I'd found a good-sized studio downtown.  I called family members and kindred spirits.  I cooked breaded pork chops and steamed spinach.  I bought a Les Paul and a used Mesa Lonestar, set them up in my new apartment and started playing everyday.  My apologies to the neighbors.  A slew of Midwestern cuties liked the place.  Again: my apologies to the neighbors.  The new situation was instantly fantastic, like a line drive home run to left field.  I was building a customized, 200 square foot utopia.  It started as a pleasure palace, and soon became a space for obsessing about the future.   

For now I could just keep working, but what was I gonna do next year?  Stay in Madison?  I didn't have any real reason to be here.  Go back East?  Go abroad?  This was a good kind of confusion, I thought, confusion with lots of potential.  There were jobs in other cities.  There were hot Venezuelan chicks looking for green cards.  There were untapped markets for Italian bakeries in Brooklyn.  Reading about pilots:  I could have been one or I should have been one.  Airplanes are awesome.  My parents should've encouraged me more in the sciences.  Maybe I'll take a helicopter ride soon.  Two characters escape a ship in Melville's Typees: You love being in the woods. Maybe you don't love cities as much as you think.  Maybe you'll end up living in the woods in Upstate New York; could be awesome maybe.  Reading about pretty much anything manages to first twist my consciousness and then rapidly lays itself on that nostalgic stockpile of all the other stuff stored up in there.  Read, apply to self, read, apply to self, make 3 sloppy stars in the margin, apply to self.  I juggled the possibilities and traced paths toward potential outcomes.  I debated with myself.  I called friends to discuss stuff.  I thought about metamorphosis.  Maturity.  My neocortex.

Where was my brain on the morphological continuum, I pondered?  I wasn't sure.  Am I eating too much pizza?  Do I have enough savings?  Shouldn't I be married by now?  Am I a mid-stage dragonfly, a crawling wingless nymph waiting underwater for the cold weather to clear?  Or am I out there now as a protean pondmaster with green and purple wings, living large as I dominate the airspace above the pond?  I felt the presence of a quiet trajectory, but I didn't know how to name it or what my body was designed to do once I got there.              

Freud wrote that we whirl through life in "an endless stream of self-referentiality" - that we are, to put it differently, unable to transcend ourselves for any substantial period of time. The return to the self is inevitable.  That winter I swung back and forth in a narcissistic haze, like a sturdy, vivacious child living without rules.

The freeze-your-mailbox-shut, one-false-move-and-crack-your-elbow falling, fuck-you-better-get-somewhere-fast Wisconsin winter eventually passed.  And in its wake I met a fresh face who quickly became my dear friend, personal computer technician and rock show sidekick for the remainder of my Madison life.  Andy's got tattoos, a heart that Neil Young would be proud of, and bigger muscles than me.  We did practically everything fused as a two-dude team, with the double exceptions of scrubbing each other's buttcracks in the shower and sharing girlfriends.  

Andy overflowed with social capability.  He successfully assembled teams to push cars with dead batteries down the wrong side of ice-covered main roads.  One time he convinced a bunch of us—against all manner of persistent resistance—to give him $20 for a t-shirt he designed for a rock band that never existed.  It's a drawing of a white bear shooting two yellow sunbeams with a handgun.  Across the top it says, "Sunny and Bear." No doubt it was cool-looking and well executed, but did we want to drop 20 bucks on it?  He just started handing them out.  "This is yours.  You owe me 20."  Then reminders for the next three weeks until we eventually (every one of us) forked it over.  This soft cotton treasure took on a life of it's own.  From now until we die, it's an emblem of a two-year time span of friendship, shenanigans, and hours and hours and hours in coffee shops, cars, parks, and living rooms.   

Of seminal importance for my enduring friendship with Andy: we loved music. Like any person that emanates magnanimity and who is consequently worthy of deep affection, Andy could be counted on for nearly everything.  For starters, he was in the know about upcoming rock shows.  At any moment he'd spring the dates and times on me, pushing for an immediate commitment to attend. The Barrymore Theater, The Annex, Wisconsin Union Theater, High Noon Saloon, the Majestic and other clubs brought a bunch of great musicians to Madison.  Bon Iver.  The Sea and Cake.  Monotonix (a wild Israeli metal band).  One night our friend Eleanor came with us to see Ryan Adams at the iconic Barrymore, a dingy old theater that holds about 500 people.  At one point late in the show I thought, "I've been listening to the 4/4 time signature for the last two hours, and Ryan Adams is probably the only one that can still keep me cheering for another song.  How does he do it?"  The long live version of Cold Roses was a big highlight that night.  After the show Andy and Eleanor and I filed out onto Atwood with the small crowd.  Eleanor was looking hot as ever, blond and skinny and sexy as hell.  We felt like movie stars hanging with her in Madison.  In a town where most girls wear thick sweaters and loose brown khaki, Eleanor wore tight jeans, low-cut tops and makeup, subtle sexy visuals that hinted at her badass skills with a violin.  She was hired by the Madison Symphony after her freshmen year, and she still liked rock shows and all types of jazz and rap tunes.  In any moment she'd look at you and say something like "Swing it like a helicopta!" in a half 30-something rapper, half Minnesotan accent.  We loved this girl.      

Andy called me sometime in June '08.        

Andy: "What's up?"

Me: "Not much, I'm home.  What's up with you, guy?"

Andy: "Well, ya know.  Woke up around 9, just got done g-chattin' with Gooder.  It's gonna be a reeeeeaaaaaal nice time this weekend.  I got her a present yesterday.  A little somethin' somethin'."

Me: "Haaaaaaaa!  Jesus. What'd you get?"

Andy: "You'll see." 

Me: "Nice, guy.  What else is going on?"

Andy: "Just saw the Black Keys are coming.  Free show.  Southern Comfort's putting it on."

Me: "Fuck, that's awesome.  Let's go."

Andy: "Yep."    

Me: "Who even drinks Southern Comfort?" 

Andy: "I don't know. (adding a southern accent) Maybe them ol' country folk, maybe  Walter.  Why, you don't?"

Me: "There's nothing about the South that comforts me." 

Andy: "Hey now, Mr. Serious." 

Me: "Actually.  I know.  (brief pause)  Ryan Adams.  My cousin Mike.  And Jenny Firth's gigantic tits.  Alright, four things."

Andy: "Theeeeeeeeeeerrrre it is," he concluded, knowing I'd revise it.

So on a summer night in August we drove to the free SoCo summer rock show in his spunky Jetta.  We parked in a dark lot next to a health clinic and walked across a wide field to the outdoor stages.  A local band of 30 something white dudes were playing funk rock mixed with ska on a side stage.  It was bad, and I regretted having left my ipod in the car.  "Jesus Christ," I thought, sad for a minute.

We got in line for beers and then saw some other friends.  From the back of the big crowd you could hear someone rapping on another stage nearby.  The bassline was smooth and slow, while a catchy lead piano strophe kept repeating.  I swayed with it.  Then it faded.

About 10 minutes later Dan Auerbach came out in a red flannel strapped with a flying V.  Carney walked up to the drums in a blue t-shirt with yellow letters I couldn't read.  He adjusted his seat.  The Black Keys had arrived.  Auerbach plucked a few distorted notes to make sure the guitar was on.  I turned away from some banter with Andy, looked at the stage and thought, "Holy shit.  This might rock."   Auerbach clicked a few pedals, looked over at Carney and started playing a bunch of fuzzed overdrive licks.  Carney started slamming drumheads.  It was very loud. 

Auerbach's voice doesn't accelerate--it settles on a speed and cruises.  Throughout the set the sound of it, sturdy and versatile, relocated the crowd.  I felt like I was asleep and dreaming in the back seat of an old Oldsmobile, like the big black one my parent's owned in the '80s.  You couldn't feel the road in those cars, much less the speed.  Going 60 felt like going 20.  Maybe that was one of the keys to my later 20's dilemma: my speed had been changing and I couldn't feel it.  Then the car suddenly jerked to the left lane; it shook me awake.  I pushed my palms across my eyes, looked out the window and started seeing things again.

Music, like moving far away, has a weirdly influential power over us.  Being displaced from the geography of our early lives can produce big effects.  We remember the churches our parents brought us to, but we can't remember the route number we took on 500 successive Sundays to get there.  We no longer talk to people we once confided in non-stop.  We forget entire summers.  But on that night in Madison with my awesome friend and the Black Keys, 1000 miles away from the North East, everything suddenly returned to me—screen memories and clearer ones, people I miss, the world of possibilities, a few maybe I should have's, Weezer's flaming W during Dope Nose at Jones Beach, Zack Wells playing Marshall stacks in small clubs, driving around the Northshore in Rick's giant beige '81 Volvo, and more than anything else, remembering how good it feels to close my eyes, swing my head, log off of my ambitions and listen to something that I know is delivering in a way that books and essays and websites and chat strings never could. 

No more ideological differences masked as political or religious debates, no more loading the evidence in my favor in order to prove something to the deaf opposition, no more dissatisfaction with people that let me down; no more common bullshit.  Stop objecting and chastising and planning your clever retorts.  Stop imagining what people might think or fail to recognize.  Suspend all speculation and criticism.  Metamorphosis. 

I won't try to describe the eerie power of music, but it is a strange, generative species of human propulsion.  Our friends are a kind of vital fuel, too.  It might be that our favorite people and the music we love unite their strengths to carry us.  Even if our mistakes hurt or misdirect us, friends and music return like tangible saviors.  They meet up and act like a customized team for us, coordinating together to provide dependable relief in any situation.  They cross over with us into every successive stage of our obscure evolution.  Songs and friends embrace us, deliver us from wasteful rumination, nudge us toward forgiveness, and remind us of feelings and times and people and truths we probably shouldn't forget.   By keeping our memories fresh, the duo equips us to keep knowing ourselves.  From there we can draw insights from a history that remains conscious to us.  And from there, maybe we can choose better?  Mozart said that love is the soul of genius.   Our friends love us and we keep loving music.  Have they been carrying us all along?  Are they still somehow bonded and making us now?

Music has a way of purging by reminding.  As it reminds, it cures.  Thousands of people are at a Black Keys show at the Alliant Energy Center.  Auerbach’s chopping at the lead lick of  "I Got Mine."  The cymbals are crashing.  What's required here presents itself as unequivocal: Embrace total affirmation of the continuum and try not to drop your beer.  It's summer and Andy's here.  Steady now, Matt.  Steady now.