A TINY GEL PEN GUY IN A WATERCOLOR WORLD + A MESSAGE ABOUT COMPACT DISCS IN THE CAR
I've always been really passionate about music, from the first single I ever had, "Wildfire," which my sister won at a slumber party and gave to me. So I think a lot about how we listen to it, whether it's live, or on the radio curated by a dj; on a podcast curated by someone whose tastes we trust; on vinyl, cassette, cd, mp3, streaming, or on earbuds in our own little undersea world. David Byrne's essay on this in his book How Music Works treats this subject really well. My preferred mode is cooking dinner or doing dishes while listening to vinyl.
My current 1998-Luddite line of thought is how great cd's are in the car. Our new Honda Fit has WORKING cd player with a mini-jack input (no bluetooth). I find that putting the g*d*mn phone away, into my laptop bag, zippered up, really improves my drive time. Like everyone, the stolen glance at the phone, or the time choosing a new playlist at a stoplight, is tinged with a gross feeling of guilt and weirdness. We were not meant to multi-task behind the wheel of a multi-ton machine that can run into people and hurt them. Texting while driving is just as bad a drunk driving but most of us do it from time to time.
Instead of texting or programming or otherwise fiddling, we could all go full mindful, hands on the wheel and saying to ourselves: I drive mindfully because I appreciate and love my life and the lives of those on the road with me. And crank a Billy Childish cd we forgot we had.
So this week I listened to one of my favorite finds of the year, Crime and The City Solution's American Twilight, and the new Mojo magazine grunge comp that accompanies their Dave Grohl feature story. The heroine-comedy butt-rockier side of grunge has never been my thing, and I would have included The Fluid, but the comp mirrors the lineup of a 1992 rock festival. It has some rad songs.