Fall's here.
I hear stories of tourist season from all the New Englanders: Blood-curdling tales of SUVs with Jersey plates destroying and backing up small town roads; Carloads of tourists camping out with cameras along the highways, never bothering to photograph anything but the trees that line the road; Vacationers who never leave tips.
I sympathize with the townies, with the full-time students, even with the summer folk who go down to Florida in the winter and swap allegiances between the Patriots and the Dolphins like changing a hat. I really do. I'd hate to have my home invaded by hordes of uncouth southerners every fall with the changing leaves, regardless of the fact that my town may or may not make all of its money for the year in this three-month span.
Then again, I am still a fairly recent transplant, and I still have yet to see the full glory of an autumn in New Hampshire. We're used to fiery foliage in Colorado, what with our mountainsides of Aspens and capital city known for it's tree-filled parks, but Ali does nothing but foll her eyes and say "You'll see" whenever I assume I know even a part of the glory I will be beholden to.
And yet... people here seem oddly aloof about the autumnal transformation. It's not that they don't like the trees; they love them, and the tourists do nothing to dampen that. But nor do they really look at them with any real obvious affection. You'll never actually see someone who lives here take a picture of a tree in full colored brilliance (although you will certainly see plenty of photos), and you'll never see anyone bending down to pick up any fallen leaves.
It's as if... maybe when you live somewhere this beautiful, you almost have to take on a businesslike detachment about the entire thing.
"Yes, the leaves are beautiful. No, I no longer look at them. I simply represent them. "
Like the stories you hear about the citizens of New York city, about how they always look forward or down, never up to the tops of the skyscrapers around them, because that's what the tourists do.
People are strange.
Continuing from yesterday's entry, I'm bringing you the next two installments in my series of albums that have etched themselves into the meat of my soul.
Fur and Gold by Bat for Lashes
Something about Natasha Khan's voice draws me in completely. It's plaintive, it's British, and it sings about the sort of dark, perplexing things that I thrived on as a teenager. And while I didn't hear anything by Bat for Lashes until a year or two ago (Fur and Gold didn't come out until 2006), it was in time for it to completely take hold of my heart via my imagination. I mean, one of the instruments featured is a harpsichord, which we all know speaks directly in the language of dreams, Nordic myth, and mystical masques in mist-filled mausoleums. I get shivers at the very thought.
I listened to nothing but Fur and Gold for a week in the middle of last winter, driving to and from work in the bitter cold, the drive just long enough that the heat never kicked in until I was at least 30 seconds away from the front doors. I'd do little shivery dances in my thin pea coat half to the music, half to the ward off the cold. And yet, when it warmed up again, I found I still got little goosebumps every time I listened to the album, and I'd reprise my shiver-dance to ward them off. It became a sort of talisman, a ritual of the truck.
Since, the truck has been sold, and the only time I have to listen to Natasha's voice is at work, where a tiny bit of dancing in your cubicle is smiled upon, but full-fledged shiver-dances would probably earn me some odd glances from the folks across the hall.
Tracks to listen to:
Horse and I (Live)
What's a Girl To Do?
Tales of Mystery and Imaginationby The Alan Parsons Project
No, really.
In seventh grade my mom diagnosed in me a serious need for some Alan Parsons. We were in a shopping mall (probably Southwest Plaza) at the time, and I being such a little opportunist, dragged her into the Sam Goody while she was at least sounding charitable.
The album she had wanted to buy me was I, Robot, but the only thing they had was this plain-looking, pseudo-Victorian woodcut monstrosity done up in green, with a CD case like I'd never seen.
I'd heard of Edgar Allan Poe before, but only in a loose sort of context. I knew he was British (although he wasn't) and I knew he'd written poems about things like Ravens and Starry Starry Nights, but that was about it. Also, I was an ignorant little seventh grader, and while I may not have known much about Poe, I wasn't about to let an opportunity go by to expand my very very small music collection (which, at the time, consisted of a compilation of Star Trek theme songs, a pilfered Simon and Garfunkel CD, and a tape of very good irish music that I miss dearly), and I said yes, please.
My little mind, it was blown.
We only had one CD player in the house, an old black square thing that had one busted speaker and a switch that you had to operate with a pair of pliers. But it worked well enough, and I dragged it into my room that night with the intent of sampling my new CD while I read. I think I put my book down about midway through the second track, and didn't pick it up again. I only moved to start it over again when it got to the part with all the rain and thunder (a favorite part, now), and I guarantee you that my dreams that night were filled with cryptic images and repetitious soundscapes. Synthesized voices followed me, hysterical exhortations resounded from empty rooms... it was as if a door had opened. The idea that not only had great things been created, once upon a time, but I could experience them was a brand new one to me. Up until then, I'd got by on Star Wars novels and Goosebumps, and anything old that I consumed just sort of was; I had never thought seriously about how it had come into being.
But this album, this collection of poems set to Rock & Roll, was inescapably two things that I'd never actually experienced mixed together: Old, and Good.
Tracks to listen to:
The Raven
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Fall of the House of Usher (in part)
And... that's all for tonight. I'm going to go snuggle under blankets and enjoy the delicious chill that's settled into the apartment. Tomorrow, when I come home, I'm going to put some apple cider on to cook a little, maybe with some mulling spices, make the entire place unbearable with good smells.
-James.
1 comment:
Eye in the sky! That was the other song I was trying to think of last night.
Sometimes when I'm in my car and the cool night has taken over, and a song I want to fall into is starting, I turn the heat off, and I'm never really sure if the shivers are from the temperature or the moment of it all.
Also, the italics? I'm sorry, was that a jab??!
Let me tell YOU, what REAL southerners are like. Not those not really southerners from the middle of the eastern coast, and not those oldies who transplant to florida just so the humidity will clear up their sinuses.
Those of us who grew up here don't know what it's like to not be near the beach. I think the largest distance you can live in florida from the beach is like three hours (I'm a little under two hours away from it both here and in Tally). Some of my friends grew up with the beach in their backyard, literally, and would ditch school sometimes just to go falling into waves.
There is no detachment from the beauty of florida among its natives. every time we go to the beach, as the pine gives way to palm and the terrain turns sandy, everyone in the car will strain their eyes, trying to be the first to catch sight of the coast, a magical honor to claim. "I see it!" one will say in a hushed tone of reverence, awe and excitement evident. "I see it!" Every time it's like that, it never gets old. We go and take pictures and every time are in awe that the beauty still remains. We look every time, see it anew every time, because how could you go and it not take your breath away?
Thomas called me from connecticut(massachusetts? new hampshire? I don't remember, sadly. He told me he worked all day, but that every night he left his home in the woods to crawl out and watch the sun set. Every night he said. I told him once he became an adult, other things would take the place of those sunsets. That eventually he'd have to grow up. And he told me that he didn't care, that even if his marriage grew bitter and broken, he would always find love in a sunset, and I gasped at the simplicity of it.
And hear you me. Nobody here wants notherners or westerners coming here to crowd our beaches with their pasty skin so unaccustomed to the sun and their large flappy hats and hawaiian tshirts in our theme parks. We point out these people and we laugh.
In seventh grade, one of our school trips was to Epcot. As I chattered with my friends, eager to lead the way, I found in the edge of my vision an older couple with children probably college aged smiling at us and even pointing like we were creatures in a zoo. "Did you hear that?" one of them whispered to another as if my group of friends were incapable of understanding english, "they just said 'y'all'!" And it was then that I realized not everyone knew the same florida I do.
trust me. the people of the north may respect their land and its beauty, may even love it and admire it, but that is all. to those of us who are native to florida, we ARE the land. it is in our sun-kissed skin and our salt streaked hair and our thin blood pushing as fast as it can as we race across the hot sand in the summer. in the callouses on our bare feet and the way we could stay in the ocean forever.
...
I'm going to work on this long commenting thing. So as not to scare away people who are luckily not as long winded in me in blog comments.
the end.
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