Undead Friends

Recently, I have (privately) expressed disgust that, in my advancing age, brilliant memories from just a few years ago have begun to fade into the haze of my collective wisdom. I have a napkin, emblazoned with the trademark symbol of The Blue Monkey, a martini bar in Birmingham, on which I scribbled several months ago, "I'm beginning to lose things." It was prompted by a discussion I overheard a few tables away in which someone made mention of "group showers," which of course led me to remember Simmons Hall group showers, flip-flops, pretzel rods, tunnels... beautiful, beautiful moments, tragically forgotten until that fleeting eavesdropped instant. The trigger was so arbitrary and entirely out of my control that I began to panic, as though I was holding a dying friend...

When I was twenty-one, I had gone home one weekend to visit a bar with high school acquaintances. Just before I had to leave my house, I found a bottle of cologne my dad had bought me in the spring of 1998. I sprayed it into the air above me, and, like a magic carpet, it carried me to the bleachers behind my high school, hand-in-hand with my first girlfriend Amy before the first night of the Spring Musical. I hadn't thought about her in ages. I think the pain of our non-breakup had obscured her whole existence for the previous two years, but this was nice. It was a beautiful day in a bottle, dangerous if used in excess, but a quick, occasional cure for the common cold of my early twenties.

In the past, I have extolled this same virtue in music. It was one of my talking points. I explained that I loved listening to OK Computer, feeling as I did one evening in 1998, driving home from the Poconos with that same Amy, listening to the album. I loved that listening to Rhapsody in Blue reminded me of roller-skating in circles in my basement with the lights off, conducting the orchestra. I loved that the Weezer's Buddy Holly made me think of walking my dog every day, listening to the same mix tape.

The problem with singing those particular praises at that particular time in my life, of course, was that at that particular time in my life, my life was not particularly complicated.
When you break up with someone, you traditionally remove reminders of them from your life. Pictures, birthday cards, stuffed animals, handcuffs... Anna used to dance around our apartment, dusting to the sounds of Amnesiac. 'The Luckiest,' on Rockin' the Suburbs was our song. She loved Beth Gibbons and Aimee Mann. And when I hear any of them now, I'm filled with this kind of tender sickness that I can't ignore and I don't want to ponder, so I turn off the music.

It's not just Anna. I was listening to Fashion Nugget when I had a CAT Scan for my elusive brain tumor. I was listening to 'Femme Fatale' on The Velvet Underground when I was in my car accident. I listened to Born to Run the following day. My pulse races and pupils dilate when I hear Brian Eno. Funkadelic. Rufus Wainwright. Beck. David Bowie.

Part of the problem was that over the course of three years, my record collection expanded from thirty to over three hundred. At this rate, I was listening to each album for just enough time to associate one event with it and move on to the next one.

Even pleasant memories... on bi-monthly trips to New York, Tyler and I would listen to bands from New York. We listened to Rolling Stones albums on our way to and from their concert in Pittsburgh. Roustabouts. Even my bands in State College, every cover song... amazing songs, all of them, but... have you ever just wanted to listen to an album without any baggage, without any memories?

I'm not one to dwell on the past. And I hate when friends get together for the first time in years and can only discuss things they've done together, how drunk Terry got that one night... you know exactly what I mean. As though it is their youth and exuberance rather than the individuals that keeps them together. I wonder if perhaps the stereotype of older people listening to music of their younger years is related to this, if it is not the music itself but the memories that hold the attraction. Needless to say, this is not how I feel.

At the more contemplative pace of my present existence, if I wish to listen to any of my albums, it is like stepping into an antique shop I haphazardly stocked, misfit clowns and music boxes, ancient currency and artwork, notebooks, relics of moments, anything in my immediate vicinity. And I still see the value of this. But unlike the bottle of cologne, tucked neatly in my drawer, I can not control when I need to listen to Nick Drake. Music is the healthiest addiction I endure, but I wonder for how much longer... I fear that I've ruined much of it, I really do.

Some memories have their place, and as seemingly unconnected wisps, fleeting, dying friends, perhaps, for me, they belong.