I have
to light up the musica side of this blog since it has recently become overrun with
picks and power rankings and the like. I don’t mean to return to Bowerbirds because they’re my favorite
band, but they just happen to be who I’m thinking about in this moment, and in
many other moments since I first listened to a certain song of theirs. And by listen I mean transcend, so to speak, because until you’ve done that with a song,
you’ve really just heard it.
Let me
give you the background—then I’ll give you the song. Two Christmases ago was
spent for me in Minnesota, as it was understood that it would be my grandpa’s
last. After 4 days of coop in my grandparent’s house, a lot of inane
conversation, and 17 rounds of Kings in the Corner, I decided I wanted to get
out for a bit. It was late and there was no place to go except the movies. I
couldn’t round up a cousin to go with me, so I went by myself. That’s a lie, I didn’t ask anyone to go with
me. I fish-tailed my way from the Minnesota border to North Dakota and went
to see a midnight showing of Black Swan by myself on Christmas night.
After
the movie, I decided I wanted to smoke a cigarette, so I went to a gas station
on sort of a remote road, because that’s what you do when you’re in unfamiliar
territory at 2 o’clock in the morning. I bought the cigarettes, felt guilty
about it, and returned to the car. I sat in the driver’s seat and took out my
iPod, because I didn’t want to fool with my grandma’s AM stations. I put on
Bowerbirds’ The Ticonderoga, and just
sat in the car and listened, the sky black and the dirty snow a pale
resemblance, wondering about the people who trucked in and out of that gas
station. The lyrics didn’t pertain to anything or anyone I knew or ever had
known, but I thought about my life in those 4 + minutes, then played it again
because sometimes you need more than 4 minutes. I thought about how strange it
was that it was Christmas and I was in a parking lot in my grandma’s ’97 Park
Avenue, wearing her boots because I hadn’t packed appropriate shoes for a
winter in Minnesota. I thought about how 5 days ago I had been home with my
husband, folding laundry and watching something on cable television, walking my
dog, the norm. And now I was in Fargo, Fargo
of all places, listening to my iPod, freezing despite the heat emitting from
the giant leather seat beneath me. I thought about my grandpa, and my parents,
and wondered if any of them had ever had a moment in a parking lot or a room or
a bus where they thought about their lives, and who they were, and what they
still wanted to be. Maybe this is weird, that I listened to this song alone
with my thoughts and too-tight shoes in the middle of this random place. But
life is weird, and music can be weird, and I don’t know how living daydreams
without music or not seeing life in terms of notes could ever be regular.
So each
time I hear The Ticonderoga, I’m
brought back to that night, when too afraid to be outside of my car in that
lot, I smoked my one cigarette outside of my grandparents' garage, later
praying for more snow to screen the ash. I do love Bowerbirds, especially their
softer cuts, in particular this one, a tale of destruction and willingness to
allow it, or something like that. It isn’t
just a hymn for a dark horse, but for a 26-year-old girl completely satisfied
with the life’s she’s in, but also welcoming of a parking lot in Fargo, where
for 8 minutes she can reflect a little, then go back.
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