leave the car running / i'm not ready to go
[this is a post from the archives - originally sent march 25th, 2018]
It's been a bit, so I'm starting with some short notes and then have a long, weird thing to close things out for the week.
I went to SXSW and I'm still not really sure entirely what to make of an experience where on the first day a stranger filmed my face on their cell phone while I tried to watch one of my favorite artists play on a stage sponsored by Bud Light, and on the last day the lead singer of a band I'd never heard of had shed all of her clothes three minutes into a set that started at noon. This was my first sxsw in many years not spent hiding from the spectacle. Bookended by supremely weird, but ultimately good, I think. I'll include a rundown of the highlights another week when I'm feeling better at being brief.
Courtney Marie Andrews, an artist whose work I got introduced to in the back seat of one of the weirdest car rides of my life at a different music festival, has a spectacular new album out. I listened to it twice through, back to back, during a snowstorm in North Dakota. If you can make that happen, I recommend doing that but if you can't, you should still listen to it.
In Chicago, I got to see Hanif Abdurraqib talk to Jessica Hopper about his book They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us and I implore you to buy his book (and also hers). They're heroes. Jessica Hopper makes great monthly playlists. Listen to one of those, too.
I'm currently on a train journey around the country (more accurately: currently, in Seattle for a few days to stretch my legs before getting back on a train). The thing about trains is that they give you a lot of time to stare out the window and listen to music and think weird thoughts so the stuff below is sort of about trains and sort of about Chicago and sort of about music.
“Stay humble” is spray pained on the sidewalk on a corner in Pilsen across from where I’d ducked into a coffee shop because it was there and I was hungry and I was trying to hide from a man who was probably just trying to be friendly but also asked me to help him find a job and made sure I knew Chicago had killers. When he’d asked where my husband was, I was “staying with friends” because I’m always “staying with friends” even when I’m thousands of miles from any friends to speak of. A mural of Frida Kahlo was painted on the outside of the coffee shop a few blocks from where I’d shaken hands and shaken him off and as much as I’m trying to be less of a superstitious person, I took it as a sanctuary and a sign.
“Stay humble” is spay painted on the sidewalk on a corner in Pilsen and now I’m thinking about Kendrick Lamar (who tells us to sit down, be humble) and also about the lyft driver who had asked, seemingly as a dare, if I liked Lamar, and who had thought I was maybe thirteen years old, dropped his jaw and swerved a little when I told him how old I really was and that yes, I listened to Kendrick. And now I’m thinking about how he told me proudly, that there would be a lot of f-bombs on this 45 minute ride because he was /unapologetic/, always had been, always would be. And now I’m thinking about how I don’t remember the last time I felt like I didn’t have something to apologize for and as my feet slap the pavement even that noise seems too loud and a thing I should be sorry for because this isn’t my neighborhood but I like it. And now I’m thinking about how the night before I had talked loudly and taken up a lot of space and I hadn’t felt unapologetic but I had almost felt free and big and good until the sidewalk reminded me -
“Stay humble.”
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It’s a few hours later and I know it’s a bad idea but I’m a little bit hungover and feeling nostalgic for the good I’ve known but also for the bad so while I’m sitting in a train car outside of Milwaukee I’m listening to Julien Baker loudly and I’m waiting to cry but my eyes are too busy tracking the way the train going the other way is casting shadows, rapidly pushing me in and out of darkness to do what I assumed they would and thinking that maybe I’m too dehydrated for all of that anyway.
The night before, I’d gotten to see Hanif Abduraqqib and Jessica Hopper speak in a book store in a far corner of Chicago because I’d done a thing I don’t normally like to do - I’d asked. And now, on the train I’m thinking about how one of the strangers who’d answered said something about the moments of “the collective intake of breath” when Abduraqqib was reading that was the symbol of us all trying to hold it together, together. And I’m thinking about the stranger beside me who hadn’t bothered trying and had given me the freedom to try less.
And now I’m thinking about how Abduraqqib read from an essay he wrote about Julien Baker’s latest album (an expanded, unpublished version of this shorter piece for the NYTimes) and how in it he talked about how he had a car stolen once and the person who stole it ended up rolling it in a car chase, dying trapped by the seatbelt because he’d swerved to take an exit and I’m thinking about how I wasn’t dehydrated then so I did cry thinking about how what I think he was really talking about wasn’t the weird story on the news but about how sometimes “it could have been me” is spoken with horror and awe but also with jealousy and I’m thinking about how when I was eighteen I had picked my exit but made the decision to keep driving even though sometimes, not often anymore, it can be really hard to keep the car between the lines. And I’m also thinking about how Abdurraqib talked about how sometimes you miss your exits on purpose to try and recapture the magic of driving without a destination and all of the stoplights I’ve sat at in the last six months when I knew I should be sleeping but needed to keep moving with the speakers turned up near as loud as they could go.
Hopper asked Abduraqqib where he gets his hope from, given all he’s seen and done (a question that sounds brutal but when you know these two know each other, it’s less an attack and more a friend setting him up for a lay up). He talked about hope coming from the opportunity to be a better person next week than he is this one. How it comes from the fact that there are now people and things he wants to see grow old - his partner, his niece who’s so good at basketball and he wants to see her get better. “I bought a plant” tossed out as a joke but also now I’m thinking about how this is the kind of hope that gets you through - the hope you hold in awe that comes from the small things that you cling to because they’re the ones that sneak up on you, seep into your routine but are the tiny symbols that show you care, that you want to stick around to see how it all plays out after all.
Hurt Less was the Julien Baker song Abdurraqib started talking about and the one that has that brand of hope. The kind that acknowledges that things are sort of shit sometimes but still propels you forward to a better version of the person you are today. He used the word “barrelling” to describe the process - barrelling towards something brighter and now I’m on a train barrelling towards another town I’ve never been and know no one and I’m staring out the window and clinging to that hope that whatever’s there will be something brighter and that when I find that light it’ll be one I can shove in my suitcase and carry with me home. It seems silly but as the miles go by and the landscape blurs it also seems right and like Baker sings on another song - I have to believe that it is.
I didn't make an adequate train playlist and have two more train days ahead. Help?