‘I guess that this must be the place’

So here I am in the post-coital glow of Spring Weekend, my school’s post-classes, pre-finals celebration. Last night, some brawny fellows across the apartment quad lifted their couch onto the pointy roof above their door. It stayed there until this morning when it drooped to the right, then the boys ditched it in a dumpster. Half-crushed beer cans litter the lawn like rotten silver leaves too bulky to be raked. There’s no more booze left in this town. The dull silence of hangover Sundays is amplified to a migraine-level pierce.

David Byrne wrote a song in 1982 called “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” and included it on his band’s Speaking in Tongues album the following year. “Home is where I want to be,” he sings over a thumping worldbeat of drums and flute and synth whistles. “Pick me up and turn me round. I feel numb, born with a weak heart,” he continues. “I guess I must be having fun.”

Wine Tasting with The National

If you’ve ever listened to The National before, you might have taken note of their gloominess. These are not typically happy guys. Singer Matt Berninger often sounds so broken, you wonder how the rest of the band were able to peel him off the floor next to the toilet. Mood-builders and twins Aaron and Bryce Dessner build a powerful grey wall of sound for Berninger’s words to lean up against as they slowly spill out of his mouth like teeth in a bad dream.

Though, and this is important, The National are rarely ever unlistenable. Sure, there are some caustic tunes, especially on the earlier albums. But overall, listening to The National is a pleasant occasion, even if the music suggests sorrow. You’re in the moment, enduring Berninger’s pain as he walks with the quiet company of spiders on “Terrible Love.” You feel his desperation when he promises, “I’m Mr. November! I won’t fuck us over!” in a hearty bark. You seethe with him as he wails that a voice is swallowing his soul, that he’s “afraid of everyone.”

‘All of our friends were here — they all have gone home’

I graduated high school in late June 2008. We had our last day of class at the beginning of that same month. In that three-week span of empty space, we seniors became something else entirely: not quite graduates but not quite high schoolers, either. We were a lost generation.

Some absconded to the parentless suburban homes of their peers to drink cheap beer and rediscover those who’d fallen in the invisible gulches of grades nine through twelve. Some went on whims and impulses to these same gatherings to be rediscovered. I treaded a balance beam of both.

What followed was a puzzlebox of exciting new experiences and drunken last hurrahs. Every cheap beer party at a stranger’s house had a corresponding final hazy afternoon lap around my best friend’s street. I was 17-and-three-quarters with a hole in my stomach that just couldn’t seem to be filled, no matter how much Keystone Ice I swigged down. And people wanted to talk to me—an intoxicating mirage doubly potent with the addition of alcohol.

Breaking onto the Middle School Scene with Breaking Benjamin

In September 2002, I entered the seventh grade. It doesn’t matter where, because seventh grade is middle school, and middle school is the same everywhere—anxieties about puberty, trying to wear what’s “cool,” trying to get a handle on your locker combination, not sitting alone at lunch, etc.

But one place I never minded sitting alone was on the bus. I loved parking myself next to the window in the one of the wheel seats, resting my legs on the steel half-circle where the giant rubber wheel poked through the floor. I’d always look at the slushy snow banks on the neighborhood streets with my CD player in my hands and its bulky headphones covering my ears.

A Man Feels Afraid.

The campus library closes at 1 a.m. now. I have two English oral comprehensive examinations on Thursday.

Talk about a great pairing. That’s better than wine and cheese, beer and chicken wings…even better than John and Paul! Well OK, not quite that great.

But still, pretty great. I’ve discovered outdoor midnight walks have become my new way to cleanse myself of all the chaos and stress of this scholastic burden. Tonight, I treated myself to The White Album and some Neil Young on the walk home.

Ah, Live at Massey Hall: the paramount bridge between After the Gold Rush and Harvest, probably Young’s finest works.

Five on the Five.

Last week was my last first week of classes EVER. Although, I suppose I haven’t completely ruled out the notion of grad school, so that might not be true.

Anyway, I strategically organized my schedule in such a way that I’m taking only three classes: U.S. History 1945-2000, Journalism as Literature and Creative Nonfiction. They’re all at reasonable times (no outrageous 8 a.m. class meetings–those should be outlawed) and they’re all subjects I’m quite interested in.

In fact, at the suggestion of a friend, I’ve even begun to research the possibility of obtaining an MFA somewhere along the varied road of my post-undergrad career, Creative Nonfiction being the likely path. So of course I set a dozen alarms and woke up with plenty of time to artfully style my hair into a gelled-up mess that would make Don Draper cry, right?

My Morning Jacket’s timeless tale of a guy and his guitar.

Big talkers like to slap the term “timeless” onto certain songs, albums and artists to increase their appeal (and probably their sales). The word’s even been thrown onto works of cinema, too. You know you’ve heard it in the release trailer: “The timeless classic, on DVD for the very first time!” As if aliens will discover it thousands of years in the future after we blow ourselves to hell, pop it in the Blu-ray player and say, “Ya know, I really feel for this Simba cat. He’s gotta fulfill his destiny, but there’s all these obstacles to overcome! Classic story. Lemme get a sip o’ that Slurpee, bro?”

I’m about to do something bold. I’m going to assert that a song I love, a song to which I’m deeply beholden, is timeless. Now, there are a few clarifications, of course: