Mandy Canales

I didn’t get to practice as much as I wanted – there seemed to be lots of distractions. Excuses. They were excuses. I can’t name a distraction that was good enough for me to use it as an excuse for not practicing. It’s not that I’m feeling any pressure or I’m feeling impostor syndrome it’s just that it’s not a habit yet. I’m currently reading Badass Habits by Jen Sincero to help me with my writing but I have noticed that it’s seeping into other parts of my life. There’s a lot of valuable information in the book but I think the piece of advice that sticks with me the most is making sure to create an environment where you can succeed at the habit you either want to adopt or get rid of. I have a notebook within reach at all times to help me with my 15 minute a day writing habit I want to cultivate and, without really planning for it, I cleared out a space in my house so that I can exercise without bumping into furniture when I turn into a kickboxing ninja machine. This environment shift has kind of worked with the guitar; however, I think I can do better. Currently, it’s in my basement and I need to get  a stand for it so it’s not resting on a chair (Don’t @ me for sacrilege guitar storage. It has a pillow that is securely and comfortably behind it) and maybe I should have a light shining down on it that will always be on (cue angelic “Ah Ah Ahhhhhh”) and it will beckon me to play. Too dramatic? I thought so. But I think there’s something to be said about bringing the habit you want to adopt (or get rid of) to the forefront of your consciousness. 

My progress has been…progress. I did introduce myself to the finger gymnastics that make up the G and C chords but I haven’t been able to pull off playing them in a way that makes them sound like they are the backbone of so many songs; I’m a little anxious to see when and how my short short fingers will extend to play them. The chords I’m really excited about (can one be excited for chords?) are the Em and Am. When I played the Em, I immediately thought of “I Fought in a War” from Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant by Belle & Sebastian and after a quick look up on the old interwebs showed that I was right to have thought of that chord. Seasoned musicians may scoff at the pride I felt for being able to name one chord correctly (and no doubt that when we all start meeting for happy hours and cocktails parties, I will be reminiscing this moment again and again and again until people are like, “Ok. We get it, you can identify the first chord of a somewhat esoteric song.”) but it did feel like a big deal to me. I don’t remember the first sentence I was able to read as a child but I’m sure the feeling of confidence was something similar. 

I listen to Belle & Sebastian fairly regularly but it made me think of the first time I heard them. I was at San Francisco State and it was the first couple months of living in the dorms in the late 90s. Everyone was buzzing, getting to know each other and introducing people to The Things They Liked by letting people borrow CDs, cassettes, and VHS tapes. One girl named, Shannon, (who I don’t remember much of other than my friend, Taylor, swore she looked like Drew Barrymore) lent me If You’re Feeling Sinister and The Boy with the Arab Strap (which, if I was her, I wouldn’t have because that album was just released in September 1998 so she probably had it in her hands for, like, a few days before she let me borrow it). I don’t know how she came around to lending it to me but we probably had a discussion where she asked me if I liked Belle & Sebastian and I probably replied with confusion that I liked the cartoon when I was younger and then she probably laughed at me and then brought the two albums over to my room. So, after I listened to the albums at least one hundred times each I gave them back to Shannon. I don’t remember interacting with her much after that exchange but my Belle & Sebastian appreciation is forever growing and now I can identify a chord from their opening track on their fourth album. 

When I was five, I was at tap dance practice when a woman came through the dance studio door visibly distressed. She was speaking Spanish and no one in the studio could understand her. My teacher, Dorothy, told the woman very slowly, “No Spanish” but the woman kept talking. After a few more attempts, Dorothy turned around and looked at me, “Mandy – do you speak Spanish?” I didn’t understand why she would expect me, out of the whole class, to speak Spanish although I did know a few words and so in an effort to be helpful I said the words I knew: ROJO MANANA or, in English, RED TOMORROW. Can you imagine having an emergency where you are in a non-English speaking country and you are so desperate that you enter any place of business for assistance and no one speaks your language except for a small child who cryptically says RED TOMORROW? The woman stared at me, looked at the adults in the room, and left the studio. The class went on as usual but  I was still left with the question of why I was expected to know Spanish. What I didn’t know at the time is that when people know you’re Mexican-American, even half like I am, some people have expectations of the things you should know. 

I was in  bilingual class since kindergarten and in Spanish I learned los numeros, and los colores, and los animales, and then…algebra which was a leap of faith on the part of the bilingual education committee. But even though I was introduced to this language early and I lived in a community where Spanish was frequently spoken and written in storefront signs, I didn’t catch on because while the outside world was speaking in English, Spanish, and Spanglish the inside of my house was English only. My dad, whose first language is Spanish, grew up in a time when assimilation was expected of folks who didn’t fit into the expectations of white America. A spoken word of Spanish at school could end up with a ruler on the knuckles, a trip to the principal’s office, or being sent home. He didn’t grow up with a rock star named Richie Valenzuela but one called Ritchie Valens and heard rollicking laughter at Ricky Ricardo’s Spanish speaking comedy bit. My dad was adamant that if my sister and I wanted to learn Spanish, we would learn it on our own. Because it was a personal choice steeped in fear mongering and anxiety, I learned French instead.

And so began a long history of me running away from a language and culture because of its perceived toxicity that it could have on me.  As I grew older, though, I noticed the question of if I spoke Spanish had morphed into why I didn’t speak Spanish and because I was tired of giving the assimilation history lesson and felt like I was ready to learn the language once and for all, I started taking classes. I told myself this time would be different because I wouldn’t be distracted like I was as a kid. This time would be different because I would be older and understand the reason why I was learning the language. This time would be different because I would be paying a lot of money to learn instead of it being paid for by local taxpayers. But this time was not different and I didn’t learn more than I had already known.  If I walked into a Spanish-speaking community and needed to know the time or where the bathroom was, so help me God, I could get the job done. If any other situation arose, I would probably find myself listing all the colors and numbers I knew in the hopes someone would feel sorry for me and they would have to dial a gringo or pocho to see what my problem was.  I didn’t share my journey with my family because they had become used to me not being able to interact with them in Spanish and all of my past efforts were met with eye rolls and ridicule. Some would call me “too white” when I tried to speak it and the last memory of my grandmother was her telling me in broken English to go watch TV because she only wanted to talk in Spanish and I wouldn’t understand her. 

But just like your college roommate who was only able to speak Spanish when they were drunk in Cabo, I also found out that the brain works in mysterious ways when it comes to language retention. A few months after my last attempt at learning Spanish I was helping my Tia Francis with a garage sale at my grandmother’s house.  An older woman from the neighborhood stopped by to see what we were offering and they spoke in Spanish to each other. They started out with pleasantries, the weather, and then: 

“How much is this?”

“Five dollars.”

“For this? Are you sure? None of this is worth five dollars.”

I listened passively and then I realized that my brain, my brain that stopped working when I needed to use Spanish verb conjugations and preterite tense, translated  this haggle over a clock radio that probably didn’t work with perfection and clarity and it was the most beautiful exchange I had ever heard. And it continued:

“Well, you don’t have to buy anything.” 

“I wouldn’t waste my money here.” 

“Thank you for stopping by. You can leave.” The woman was about to turn around but before she did she decided to get the last word in,  “You know, for someone who has lived here so long, your Spanish isn’t very good”.

I caught my breath as this casual chat had turned into a driveway telenovela. I kept neutral, busying myself by arranging a couple of  dolls with crocheted dresses used to cover toilet paper and waited for my Tia to respond.

“Don’t tell me I can’t speak Spanish, you understood everything I said to you!” The old woman turned around, muttered something and left. I looked at my aunt, “Wow. She was rude.” My Tia’s eyes widened. “You understood us?!”

    Soon after this divine intervention of the language gods, I went to Spain and ordered a plate of “vege-tab-les” instead of “verduras” – it was clear my ability to speak and understand Spanish would be forever fleeting. But what was also clear was that this expectation to speak the language of one’s ancestors with clarity, perfection, and brilliance wasn’t just a burden that I shouldered but one that extended to other generations and other cultures. When the shame and the guilt associated with not knowing Spanish began dissolving away, I started to think about a space for all people, from all cultures, to come together to be celebrated for their valiant attempts to learn the language of their heritage. Picture it: Set in a small hacienda, there will be a large room with a hearth where we will gather and teach each other how to say numbers, colors, and animals in the language of our grandparents. We will go on fieldtrips in the hopes of eavesdropping on contentious dialogues in the mother tongue to giddly translate the gossip where we can find it. We will rejoice over the everyday phrases we have mastered but will probably never use. It will be a place for healing. It will be a place for acceptance. It will be a place called Rojo Manana. 

I believe in ghosts. I believe in the ghosts of otherworldly dwellings who haunt from the great unknown as well as those kinds of ghosts who haven’t been seen for ten years but a run-in at Target at 10pm on a Wednesday has determined the resurrection of familiarity and undo anxiety.  If I’ve witnessed the first kind, I may have repressed the memory but the second kind I recently experienced in full force on my Facebook feed when I accepted a request to join in on the fun of  twenty year reunion page. From the first day joining the group, I watched the countdown happen as old classmates posted pictures of their “insanely” good times, memories of teachers, and all those exhilarating moments at the (insert sport) game when (insert jock name) made that (goal/kick/touchdown/homerun). As I read through these posts I began to wonder if I was included in the correct high school reunion page because with the exception of a few people, these folks could have been stock photographs of Anyone from Anywhere, USA. Their comments about their lives and who they were (“You guys, we were crazy”) or who they are now (“Well, first of all, I’m a mom”) didn’t help me to piece together the puzzle of if I knew these people or not. Who were the teachers that were being quoted and laughed about? Did I not take science class with other people? Was I not in math class with at least 60 people over the course of four years? Where was I for four years? 

 Oh yes, the Drama Room. 

The Drama Room  was one cavernous room with a magnetic grip on any kid roaming the halls who was looking for a social scene that didn’t require chasing a ball and welcomed esoteric knowledge of BBC sketch comedy. The room was decorated with industrial carpet and had few tables and chairs scattered around the room. One could enter this space and if they weren’t pummeled by the lyrics to Rent, confused by teenagers dressed in formal Victorian garb on a sunny California day, or chosen at random to be included in the bibbity bibbity bop improv game, they were taken aback by what was on the walls. Covered with colorful production posters, the walls boasted of all of the shows that had taken place at the school, pictures of all the casts and crews from the past, and toward the back of the room, all the trophies. The trophies caught my attention when I walked into the space for the first time – I saw them I knew I wanted to win one. But these weren’t in-house, pat-on-the-back trophies, these were won at competitions and if I wanted to win a trophy I had to go to one. 

There were a few competitions throughout the school year but the one everyone wanted to go to was held at Fullerton Community College. There were some vague rules that you had to play by but it would seem that if you were dedicated to your script work, had a decent GPA, and weren’t a pain the ass you could go to competition and be alongside other kids who were freakishly well versed in the nuances of Sondheim, able to morph into the nostalgic portrayal of Neil Simon’s east coast middle class, or wax poetic the intricacies of the Third Folio. Upon arriving at the Fullerton campus, the quad area resembled festival grounds of warring factions with each high school pitching an encampment that were beehives of activity: streamers, balloons, costumes scattered like armor after a long day in battle. Students doing stretches, rehearsing lines, crying (Oh! The tears!), doing hair and makeup (Oh! The glitter!), chasing each other, and dancing (Oh! The Lindy hop!). Then there were the parents trying to keep up with it all, trying to make sense of the environment while also helping kids with costumes or rushing them off to the next competition to support their friends across campus. It would not be unheard of to almost be knocked over by a flock of teenagers dressed like Cockney ruffians running by while one of them yells, “Hurry! We’re going to miss Jennifer’s Antigone!”

If you followed those ruffians, those little Greek mythology enthusiasts, through the labyrinth of the  campus the end point would be in one of the many classrooms where performances occurred in front of judges. Whether or not those four strangers had theater experience or if they were a community member who thought volunteering for something like this would be fun, those performing didn’t care – as far as we were concerned, these people were Guffman and our competitive performance lives counted on them. All judges were seated in the front row of the classroom looking very important, making small talk names dropping that time they saw Mandy Patinkin at a drive thru in West Covina or which off-off Broadway shows and artist co-ops they belonged to in the 70s. Amongst all this low level chatter, take a moment to place yourself in the role of the performer: standing at the front of the classroom reflecting on the hours spent rehearsing and blocking the scene, the tangle emotions felt “digging deep” to find the soul of this character, multiple science homework packets missed to focus on this three minutes, consecutive nights lying awake wondering if the time’s been wasted, and your peers and their parents staring at you with dead eyes because they haven’t slept since arriving two days ago. All this has brought you to this pristine moment of adrenaline forged of excitement and white hot fear because you’re pretty sure you forgot all your lines…The stuff of nightmares but never fear, the fairy goddesses of the theater competition kick in and everyone in the audience is giving you their version of the Care Bear stare because though theater kids can be a catty bunch, we are all in this together. “This” not being the competition but whatever was waiting for us outside of the magical quad space of eccentric glittery glee and Shakespearean fairy dust. Because once the trophies were given, the group pictures taken, and phone numbers and addresses of new friends exchanged it was time to go back to “this”. 

We were bullied for being weird, loud, having a bigger sense of the world and having imaginations. As an adult, I now know kids bully other kids because their sense of self is challenged and I can understand how a theater kid is who is spontaneous, confident, outgoing, and not giving a shit about what others think is scary AS FUCK to a kid who is concerned about being popular. But because at the time we couldn’t empathize our way out of having trash thrown on us during lunch, being called fags, being pushed into lockers, and being laughed at openly while we were on stage in those grueling in school performances, we looked toward the future and anxiously awaited the time when we could travel a few hours away and cocoon ourselves in happy theater geek warm fuzzies. The trophies we won didn’t matter to our school or to our classmates but they were a small token of dedication and focus –  in the bigger world, we knew things were going to be ok. 

And things are ok but adults do still bully, however, in ways that seem well meaning when paired with Pinot Grigio and vegan fare: “What’s your real job?” “What awards have you won?” “Have you performed in anything that I’ve seen?” “You’re so lucky because you don’t really work – you just write!” The resilience I built over my formative years to not suffer fools gladly assists me in these moments and the foundation and the ability to smile politely and think of the community of artists who support me and my artistic goals was built by participating in theater competitions. By attending these festivals, I learned to seek out structures of support like the one I found at The Pocket Theater where inclusiveness, respect, and flat out unbridled enthusiasm for the creation of any art has been a kickstarter to many projects that may have never been dreamed of, let alone attempted.   

“How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale” could have been a line delivered to me looking at my twenty year reunion Facebook page because before my God, I might not this believe.  How could I compare with some of these accomplishments that I was seeing? There was no way that I could have three children, lose twenty pounds, gain 5,000 followers, travel the world, publish a book, and become a lawyer/doctor/Phd by the time we were supposed to meet at a nondescript San Marcos brewery?  But while those ghosts haunted my computer screen, this scholastic seance also brought me those spirits of the drama room and the spectres of theater competitions. Memories of those wily and far out kids who would swing dance in the middle of conversations and reply to each other across a room in musical theater lyrics danced through my mind and summoned my attention to remind me of my foundation:

“Psst.”

“What? I’m busy comparing myself to other people!”

“That’s not very theater kid of you.”

“Shut up!”

“Create your own reality!”

“Blah.Blah.Blah.”

“Thrive in your own weirdness!”

“I…guess.”

“Only you can be you!”

“Well…”

“Act well your part, for there all honor lies.”

“…OK. You got me.”

“And wear more glitter.”

“I said you got me!…But ok.”

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and among the ads for skin cream and ergonomic cat bowls saw the San Diego band, The Jade Shader, was releasing a limited amount of the album “Sea Stacks and Sleestaks” on vinyl at Lou’s Records in Encinitas, California. If it had been any other band my reaction would have been composed but because this band is no longer together and they started to mysteriously release their music online my interest was pretty high. I checked the Lou’s Records website for the album but it wasn’t showing even though Lou’s was mentioned as a place where it was being sold. Although it crossed my mind, booking a flight to San Diego so I could pick up a limited edition emo record was not practical so I knew I would have to employ a two pronged plan to make sure the album was secured. The first part of the plan was to text a friend in San Diego to pick up a copy, enter Sean, a long time friend and trusted audiophile. 

“If you’re by Lou’s can you pick up the new Jade Shader album for me? I’ll pay for shipping.”

“Sure thing.”

Easy. The next part of the plan would be to  contact the record store and ask how I could get a copy and hope the message didn’t disappear into the customer service ether – not so easy.  Why, you ask? Wouldn’t a business want to assist someone interested in one of their products? The short answer is – it’s complicated. But the reasons (that I will get into shortly) shouldn’t have been a deterrent because this was Lou’s Records. Located two doors down from my mom’s childhood home, Lou’s Records was where I had a breakthrough in my music education, where I learned how to flip for CDs and vinyl in an efficient yet exploratory manner, and how to hold my own shopping for music “while being female”. This was the place where I spent my hard earned Pizza Hut money on a bootlegged VHS copy of Radiohead’s headlining show at Glastonbury and a boxed set of recorded Beat Generation poetry both of which I still have to this day and both of which contributed to shaking me out of my Southern Californian suburban sleepwalk – I was grateful for this place but still weary of dropping these folks in Encinitas a line. But when I realized I could support this small business that had always been there for me when I needed it the most and an old school local band without physically being anywhere near the store I fired up the old email and wrote the two sentence inquiry.

My commitment to supporting records stores has been pretty consistent – saving these establishments and independent coffee shops from oblivion seem to be the hills I’ve designated myself to die on and, if possible, I try to bring this consumer activism to the things I spend my time doing. A few years back I founded a writing group who used music as inspiration for writing plays. When we first started meeting, I made a request that we buy the music we listen to as opposed to listening for free on the internet. The group replied nodding their heads in agreement that we should support artists. I then went on to ask that we buy this music in a record store at which point the nodding heads paused for a minute and were followed by a slow “sure” and “yeah, I think I can do that”. Think? What was there to think about? I realized how behind the times and hardcore nostalgic I was for this, apparently, archaic platform to purchase music. I didn’t see the red flags waving when Easy Street Records closed its Queen Anne location in 2013. I didn’t hear the alarms sounding when one of my nephews asked me blankly what I meant when I used the word “album” or when another nephew looked at me with some confusion when I gave him a CD as a gift. Lastly, I wasn’t fazed when the maudlin record store community felt that a day – Record Store Day- had to be dedicated to the fledgling business enterprise to remind us how awesome they are and, yes, we should spend our money there. No, those moments were only filled with denial, pretension, and some smiling and nodding. The big moment was when I was surrounded by my peers who grew up in the same era as I did looking at me with a “You want me to buy what, where?” expression on their faces did I realize that one of my favorite things was following drive-ins and roller rinks into a shallow grave of “things people too busy looking at their phones have decided they don’t want anymore”. 

I understand not everyone has the time to flip lazily through the new used albums from A-Z and then go look for the music they actually came in the store to buy. I get that not everyone has the time to show up on the designated vinyl delivery day eagerly awaiting store staff to distribute records, acting like they just happened to be there on the right day and time. Available stock is also questionable in a record store and if you’re hurting for time, your search for a Matador Records compilation circa 1999 that you sold for beer money in college might prove to be a mission impossible and, at best, foolish. A fun search for an album that might have been feasible to find fifteen years ago turns into a moment of sad desperation with a little soul searching about what the hell you’re doing with your life. As you dig through the crates below the CD racks while asking if there’s any more stock in the back room, you realize a light hearted rummage has turned into a full assault on the things you know to be true. Mixed feelings of nausea and a sense of creeping middle age set in only to be cured by some hard liquor or to run away from it all fast, speeding past the guy in the skinny jeans and Converse who absolutely has to walk out of the store with the vinyl he purchased under his arm to show the world he knows who The Stooges are. I get it! Not everyone has time for this nonsense. 

With the question of whether or not you’ll actually find what you’re looking for hanging overhead, there is also the sad and honest-to-god fact that record store employees rarely win awards for customer service. While I have to say the employees of Easy Street Records in West Seattle and Light in the Attic Records located in the KEXP Gathering Space break all stereotypes of typical record store employees, I have seen and experienced “Barry” from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity all too often. While working at the now closed downtown location of Rasputin Music in San Francisco, I experienced co-workers treat well-meaning and good natured customers like they had committed a crime against humanity because they wanted to know if we sold the latest Coldplay album. Depending on the staff working, a homemade sign reading “Buyer beware if you are not enlightened by the history of Sub Pop, the fanfare of the Madchester scene, or display the right amount of subdued enthusiasm for the B-sides of the Stone Roses” should have been hung at the entrance. Though horrified by this attitude, I found myself taking on this role of “Record Store Barry” one day when I was pushed to my limit by a Abercrombie-dressed teen girl and her mom while I was working on the fourth floor jazz section. Ugg boots dragging, she flipped her hair, smacked her gum, and asked if we had the Love Song single. Since we were standing in the jazz section I was confused by the request and after some back and forth about if “Love Song” was the title of the single she was looking for and her singing the chorus to me, I asked if they had checked The Cure in the rock section. The girl looked at me with vacant eyes while her mom looked like she wanted to burn the clothes she was wearing after having dared walk anywhere near Powell and Ellis streets. I went on to tell them that I wasn’t sure if we currently had singles by The Cure but before I could turn to a computer and check the girl stopped me, “No. It’s not by…whoever you said. It’s by that punk band – 311!” After her assertion that Love Song was not sung by The Cure she asked where she could find Ok Computer by “that one band Radio-something”on vinyl. I told her I’d check that out for her and took my lunch break instead. 

If these places are black holes of customer service and unmet consumer needs, why go? Why go to these places if you might have to deal with some recluse with thick rimmed glasses who will use their newfound exposure to The Velvet Underground’s Loaded as a tool to prove superiority? Why go to a place where you might find yourself in a conversation about the remastered version of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures when all you want is an 80s compilation CD for a last minute white elephant gift? Why go to a place where your human status as you know it is determined by whether or not you can drop “Thrill Jockey” in a casual exchange with the cashier? Why elect to be anywhere where an opinion about James Murphy is expected? For me, it begins with the feeling that these stores – while full of opportunities to be shamed by strangers for inane reasons – offer me weird rolling moments of Zen. The second I walk in my mind blanks and I have no idea why I stepped foot inside in the first place but I’m compelled to move forward and start discovering. The only time I share the same brain waves and the spike in adrenaline with people who repel into ice caves or volcanoes is when I enter a record store: there’s a rush, a sense of ambiguity, and the knowledge that a majority of people wonder what the hell is wrong with me. While I walk through the aisles, there are moments when I start to remember my wishlist but just when I have it under control, everything goes blank. I remember. I go blank. Remember….blank. And on and on until I suddenly have about ten CDs in hand and an urge to look for some Gil Scott Heron spoken word and Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass on vinyl. I’ve received continual and unsolicited advice to “make a list” during my excursions – well, I have made lists and I don’t follow them because, damn it, what’s the fun in going down a list and checking off items? That’s not music shopping – that’s completing a task! As I peruse, I know that the employees won’t ask me what I’m looking for and what some people see as lacking in customer service I see as being afforded some space and freedom from algorithms that tell me what “other people like me” have purchased in the last 48 hours. 

Less than 24 hours after I sent them a message, Lou’s Records got back to me with a question about my email. It turns out my two sentence email was a little too hasty and failed to mention pertinent information, like, the title of the album. It wasn’t like I asked “Do you have that one Ty Segall album?” but the band I was asking about now has two albums and clarifying which album I wanted would have been helpful. (You got me, Lou’s. You got me. And your ability to craft an email that delicately included snark normally reserved for a live person in their store was truly impressive.)  Since I try to have the basics covered when I’m music shopping, my head hung a little lower than a normal shoegazer and I remembered the girl in the Ugg boots and started to wonder what made me so annoyed during our encounter. Was it because she didn’t know a piece of knowledge that was so obvious to me? Was it because I really wanted her to walk away with an album by The Cure and begin a whole new chapter in her life? (A whole new non-Abercrombie, black eyeliner and faux crushed velvet Hot Topic-inspired chapter in her life?) I can’t help but wonder if what I really wanted, what I couldn’t articulate at the time, was to make sure that the connection she felt to that song was a whole one. I wanted her to know that this song was loved by millions worldwide and there was a whole movement behind this kind of music. Cultures were shaped and lives were saved because Robert Smith’s lyrics have the capacity to speak to a large swath of people from lonely goth kids in Russian suburbs to jockish nu-metal types from Nebraska spanning from the late 70s until now. Beyond that, I wanted her to know there is a ton of music out there beyond the clatter on the radio she hears when her mom drives her to school. There is music out there that is so loud that it’s beautiful and so tragic it’s funny. There are stories of people’s lives woven in between chord progressions and silence between notes that could never be understood without a privileged auditory experience; a return to the basic kinship of storytelling shared by all humans throughout all time. I started to understand where this “record store guy” attitude came from and for some it could come from a sad, scorned, human who wants to get back at the world by holding esoteric music knowledge over people’s heads but for others, it could be quite the opposite. It could come from caring about something and loving it so hard that protectionism is a natural reaction and the instinct to connect with another person about this thing is real and requires attention. A vulnerability that can be seen as vulgarity; take a moment and think about those things you love so much and how that love can be displayed so peculiarly, so awkward sometimes…

***

“Purchased the album via email!.”

“So you don’t need me to pick up a copy for you?”

“Nope!”

“Rad! Happy listening!”

After the rigmarole of ordering the record, Lou’s Records wanted to know how I found out about the album and I told them I saw it on Facebook and they should prepare for more requests and they responded gratefully. I laugh at myself thinking about how nervous I was reaching out to the people who work in a bungalow on North Coast Highway and have been slinging music for the love of it since 1980; people who love music and are fellow audio scavengers and should be considered friends. Comrades. Associates. Simpatico. However, if you need some reassurance before going into a record store after a long hiatus of purchasing music online, just walk in with confidence, glide past the faded promotional posters for Bjork, Pearl Jam, and “that one band that sang about Buddy Holly”. Ignore the weird stains on the industrial carpet below and start at the A section remembering how much you love music because that is enough reason for your entry into the store. But in case you’re having any second thoughts, you can always keep the following in the back of your mind: 

• Velvet Underground is generally a phase; Lou Reed is not – go from that angle.  
• Unknown Pleasures is great but with new mastering techniques a lot more things are possible – remastering it might have been a good thing. 
• Thrill Jockey released The Fawn by The Sea and Cake over 20 years ago. “Wow! I can’t believe Thrill Jockey released The Fawn over 20 years ago. Feels like yesterday” is a good enough statement to get you to the final stage of interaction. 
• James Murphy listened to direct advice from David Bowie – people just need to chill out. 

I was stuck in traffic on I-5 when I was unexpectedly overwhelmed by the memory of the look and feel of my deceased grandmother’s papery hands. The narrow but firm shape, translucent soft skin, and how when she wore a ring on special occasions it would loosely hang off her finger. If anywhere else I might have been able to shake off the memory but being stuck in traffic kept me stuck in my head and suddenly I was enveloped in a wave of concern that I did not have a tangible thing to remind me of her. Not a jewelry box or necklace; no token that could be held. Different from having a picture, I could not go home and hold a small figurine of her life and just stare at and feel all of things that I associated with her.  My chest tightened and as Lush’s “Sweetness and Light” played on the radio, I began to cry.  

But as quickly as the tears fell they stopped when I realized that I did have an artifact from my grandma’s life, in fact, I had many.  Since I left for college I had been corresponding with her through letters up until the last few months of her life – letters that I kept. I don’t just have a tchotchke but I have years of thought processes, illustrations of her personality, and countless updates on the weather.  She would always say “If you don’t have anything to talk about, you can always talk about the weather” and she did. Meteorologists would be impressed with the precision she had for noting a slight change of temperature by the end of the day. She may not have had anything important to say but continued to send letters just to let me know she was there.

I have these letters all over my house, living in strange places until I find them – in between papers and in boxes of old pictures and Christmas decorations. When I find one sometimes the most interesting thing about the letter is the address on the envelope.  For years, I lived in a small studio in downtown San Francisco but before then I lived in random spaces for fleeting amounts of time: the dorms at San Francisco State, sub-letted apartments on Cambon Street and Bush Street, addresses on Treasure Island and the Presidio, a brief stint in a horrible apartment shared with a woman who dressed her Shih Tzu in a sailor suit, and a student-filled house on Goddard Street in Hull, UK.  No matter where I lived or for how long, a letter from grandma made its way to my mailbox.  I always tried to respond as soon as I received them but it often took me longer than I liked. I felt my letters were shallow and not worth sending because the majority of the time I had nothing to report and I’m not much of a weather person. 

If I had letters all over my house, were letters I sent to friends all over their houses? I started to wonder what happened to all the letters I sent before the internet “connected” us all so I asked my friend, Erin, who was my first pen pal at the age of six. We’re Facebook friends now and don’t write letters anymore but every once and awhile we’ll “like” each other’s posts. She was a little shy in her response but she said that she had kept them for awhile but at some point she had to throw them away. Truth be told, I was shocked but why? Is it possible to keep all the letters ever sent to you? Do the senders expect that you have a box with their name on it and go back to them once and awhile to reflect? What’s the protocol?

Maybe I’m a romantic but I’ve always felt a written letter is a sweet shared experience that transcends the sterile font of email exchanges and trigger reminders and revelations of the person behind the pen; the physical handwriting creates an organic memento of that person’s existence. I do receive emails from friends that are sentimental to me but I wonder what kind of personal touches those emails would have if on paper. Would they be one of those letters in which the writing is a ferocious groove-inducing act with physical traces of the writer hardly able to keep up with the contents of their head? Or would it be like those letters where the writer has great attention to detail in their narrative only to trail off into scribbles when they realize they should wrap the whole thing up and get it in the mail? Would there be small drawings or doodles?

I have always enjoyed letters that span time where the writer diligently marks the beginning time and end time of each little entry allowing a little portal into their daily routine.  One friend wrote me a letter dated “half-past never, someday” where he detailed a night shift at a frozen pea factory where he worked for a summer. I can clearly hear the East Yorkshire peaks and valleys of his voice and the deterioration of his alertness is strikingly predictable by looking at his handwriting and stream of consciousness. What starts as a letter written on breaks while he is feverishly seeking out sources of caffeine turns into a shift that spirals into an injured head and preparation to bike home in the rain, a scrawled signature and extra notes crammed together at the bottom of the page with confusing urgency. Whenever I come across this letter I always wonder why he just didn’t finish it the next day. 

Alongside my collection of letters are the postcards that only allow enough space meant to relay the most succinct messages and never beg a response; however, very few postcards I’ve kept have these banal greetings. On retained postcards, my friends have shared the decision to start an 80s cover band named “Bizarre Club Triangle” to “ensure” financial stability, they’ve sent a hello from a certain unnamed Middle Eastern country along with a concern that I am now on the CIA watch list for receiving a postcard from the certain unnamed country, scrawled fragmented Jack Kerouac quotes, and presented philosophical ramblings about the Kool-Aid guy. It’s almost like my friends accepted a challenge to create the most haphazard communication ever sent.

These marked up pieces of paper serve as artifacts and a kind of witness to those people – from amazing to tortured- who have stopped for a moment in their frenetic or regimented lives to drop me a line.  Christmas cards from Glasgow and wedding invitations from friendships made in kindergarten – they all contribute to a timeline that only the two of us share. It’s hard for me to throw these moments away. Unlike email that can be quickly deleted and forgotten, discarding a letter is an intentional act just as much as it is keeping it. I’ve kept many of the letters mailed to me – I don’t think this makes me a better person, in fact, this collection probably paints a picture of someone who could be diagnosed with crippling nostalgia. But armchair psychologist opinions aside, I hope I can also be analyzed as being someone who holds close the moment you decided to sit down and take a pen to paper to talk to me about the weather.