Music

Listening to music, listening to the dishwasher, listening to Michael and Jim talk. Stream of consciousness. What kind of instrument is Levi Weaver playing on a song called "String Theory?" This isn't the first time, while listening to Levi Weaver, I have thought "What an amazing title." Now I realize that I have to find out what string theory is, because this is the first time I have ever heard this song, but I can hear that he is talking about time. What was that line I heard only moments ago? "What if the past was not past; the future was here all along..."

And I'm trying to figure out whether I like this guy or not, because once again, I am listening to him on less than adequate speakers, and I don't know what sort of label to put on his music or his voice, and I don't know exactly what it is I am listening to. I think... I think I like it. I think I'll like it more if I listen to it some more, and I hope I'll get the opportunity to hear him when he comes.

So I'm on music. And I want to be on music, more than I am these days. You've seen it, I've shown you, the way I want to listen, to make it a part of my life again as it once was. And I am greedy for lyrics, and tunes. And someday, maybe someday, I might even want to be able to sing again. I used to sing a lot. I used to have potential. At thirty-something years old, I don't think I have potential anymore. The time for that, I fear, has passed.

Jim took us to the Gillian Welch concert in Birmingham Friday night a week ago, and it was wonderful. Wonderful to see them, to hear them, to laugh at their jokes, to marvel at the fact that Dave Rawlins stood on stage for two and a half hours in a dark gray suit and cowboy hat, playing guitar under the lights, and that Gillian Welch could sing like that for that length of time and play three separate encores. Someone in our group said that you could tell it was really over when they took the box off the stage with them.

Jim has loaned us several Gillian Welch CDs recently, and of them I think the latest, "The Harrow & The Harvest," is my favorite, and I wonder if that's because I had already been exposed to these songs before I heard them for the first time.