middleagedmiddlechild.

This is the place it happened. It was here. 
The two of them in someone else's nice neighborhood,
walking down the steps to the water. The young man kneels.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
The young woman smiles & cries. She says yes.
They hug & kiss. They make each other a pledge.
This is the place it happened. It was here. 
Soon everyone will know they're in it for good, for life. 




This draft has two inspirations. The first is Joshua Mehigan's "The Crossroads", a perfect triolet from which I borrowed the first line. The other is Yi-Fu Tuan, who reshaped the way I think of space & place. My then-girlfriend & I had designed just the right engagement ring for her, for this moment. The jeweler finished it a week early, and we both rushed to the store to make sure it was just right. Then I drove to this spot, a nice neighborhood where we used to walk, in Dallas. We both woke up that morning not knowing that today would be the day we got engaged.  

When I learned about love,
I was on my knees, 
praying for mercy & wisdom.
I believed what they said:
G-d listened, and G-d cared.

I grew to love myself,
to open my heart (late).
The right girl found me
and waited, and led me 
to believe again, believe anew. 

_{The challenge for this one, I think, was to stick to five-line stanzas or five words in each line. Every time I write about my wife, I’m tempted to use that image above..}

There are certain items in my parents’ house that are downright totemic.

On a shelf in their study, an official US Post Office scale from the 40s, its elegant detailed dial stilled after decades of bearing & measuring the heft of countless packages, ounce by ounce. My grandfather’s–my dad’s dad.

Under the bar connecting the kitchen to the living room, an iron & smoothed wood sewing machine with a still working foot pedal from the 30s, a real conversation piece. Miles of fabric have burnished the metal guide brackets to a crisp silver gleam. My grandfather’s–my mom’s dad.

Two men, fifteen miles apart their entire lives. Lives of honest work with their hands, with these tools. Work the town depended on, where everyone knew everyone by first name. Generations along those dusty Starr County streets.

And then there’s mom’s molcajete.

Boutique kitchen shops sell the smooth white marble variety, a device better suited to a medieval apothecary than a Mexican kitchen. They call it a mortar & pestle. We call it a molcajete, although technically it’s supposed to be called a molcajete (the bowl) and a tecolote (the grinder). I’m not going to call it that–we never did, never will.

People walk by the molcajete there on the kitchen island. (What a lovely word for this space in our homes–island. I don’t know what they call it in other languages in other homes. This spot that isn’t the fire, isn’t the water of the kitchen. An island of food in the ocean of family, an island of fecundity & fellowship.)

On the kitchen island, a squat rough small volcanic thing. Look close & I’d swear you can see remnants that can never be ground or washed out. Maybe a sharp corner of anise or an eyelash-thin thread of a garlic peel. The pepper pops under her strong loving hand, leaning her whole body into the rotating motion–deep from her shoulder through the palm of her hand, willing the pieces unmeasured into perfect proportion. Decades & generations of family later, everything she creates is always just right.

The rice begins to steam. Mid-conversation, mid-instructions to my father, she sidesteps from island to flame, scraping the pasty earthiness into the pan. A quick stir and then back to the sink. A tablespoon of water to eke out the last little bit before the onions & peppers get sliced and added. My sister & I argue over the rice that gets overdone at the bottom of the pan, the rice that peels off the rest like its own thin rich bloodbrown cake of flavor & motherly love. (She overcooks it deliberately now. Just for us.)

And after dinner, it sits where it began, a low peak on the center of her island. Pockmarked & uneven, blackened & alive, fragrant with the subtlest power.

You'll be tempted to (you'll need to) talk to others.
They'll be tempted to ratify what has happened.

They'll tell you what was wrong, what was not worth loving.
They'll remind you of all the bad times--ignore them.

Take this time to do what seems the least natural: 
Make sacred the things that always were (are) sacred.

Curate & cherish what it was like to love her.
You'll have nothing but time for anger if you choose. 

Choose instead memories that water your dry heart. 

Thanks to Ruben Quesada for the guidance & the challenge of writing a paragraph on heartbreak, and then making each sentence an Alexandrine. The image is Josef Sudek's The Window of My Studio.  

what lies beneath
illumines what's above

diaphanous weight
a statue baptised

the bracelet
a shining silver choice

the depths indistinct
no stones no plants

she is alone
and elegantly

out of place
ennobling what holds her

her body is not at rest
toes spread arms drifting

maybe we're all suspended
and safe, floating

facing what's above
listening to the depths

Green burrs grow there,
dandelions & weeds I can't name.
Cigarette butts & candy wrappers
catch low in the chain link fence.
You have to look up 
to see what it meant
to me all those years ago.

Look up to the wide dry space,
for running, walking, daydreaming
a life of an adult you (never this one).

Look back to the line 
of live oak trees along the fence,
thick shade for boyhood
summer days

and cover for stolen embraces
on the thin flannel sheet you didn't know
she had in her trunk.

Nobody saw you that night.
Nobody sees what you saw
back there back then.

Before I grew into doubt & anger, disappointment & disgust
with the church, I prayed daily to
Virgin Mary.

She was calm & beautiful, her pain serene,
not a crown of
thorns.

Let it be done to me--disarming
service & bodily yielding, faithful, maternal & beautiful,
clothed in the stars & sky, atop the moon.
Pray for me, Mary. I will be good. 

In some ways, I've written about this part of my life before, most evident in the Virgen de Guadalupe pendant above which I have worn since I was thirteen. but never with these parameters, where each line length is dictated by digits in my phone number. 

The city restricts watering during summer, for good reason,
so the man tends the brown patches daily by hand.
Seven thirty and seven thirty at morning & at night. 
He times each session each day down to the minute.

He gets to know his lawn intimately, patch by patch, 
the narrow band right by the sidewalk nine feet long,
the yellowed oval that stretches out just behind the mailbox,
the tight corners near the turns by the lawn lights.

His fist around the hose, his thumb widens the spray,
the mist cooling the only man outside this hot night.
Sometimes cars pass him, their fingers lifted in a hello,
their palms steering them down the alley to their garages. 

On vacation, he worries about the lawn, patch by patch.
Over time all see the green return stronger than before.

Over the summer, I wrote a lot of watering-the-lawn poems. This one is kind of a sonnet, but with ten words per line rather than ten syllables.

The child enters.
"Knock knock" "Who's there?"
The father wonders at
the enduring appeal of jokes, 
the older we get
the fewer we hear.

The child grins through
the setup, knowing that it's worked
all day long
friend to friend
playground & cafeteria,
a center stage moment
he's rehearsed & honed.

The child delivers the punch.
There's more ah than ha
at first before the father
shifts from discovery to joy.
They laugh together.

Let there always be 
shared moments like this,
an assurance for each, 
a luxuriating in who's there
and why. May the doors
to their hearts always
be open to each other.

This is inspired by a writing challenge that Matthew Olzmann gave my students--write a poem that begins with a joke and ends with a prayer. Photo of Diego Rivera with his child here. 

May your feet be warm & dry
May you hear your name said with a smile today
May your nights be peaceful
May your work be meaningful
May someone you love think that you are smart & funny

May your coffee be served just right
May you see your child laughing
May you enjoy the book you're reading -- and the next one
May you feel the warmth of the setting sun

May your children be safe & happy
May they grow up to love & talk to one another
May they have dogs & beloveds that love dogs
May the clouds always inspire you

This is inspired by a three-part writing challenge that Sarah Freligh gave my students--write blessings for all people everywhere, then blessings for someone difficult to love, then for yourself. The image is by my friend Scott Lewis, from his series God & Globalization.

The wind was blowing most of my first day in town, and the snow flakes fell gently, slowly, cartwheeling to me with cartoonish clarity, like a confetti’d welcome for us alone. We were two blocks from a good bar, a decent diner, a video store, and an El stop. We were in love.

She had chosen our home well–not the hippest neighborhood but still one that felt like a city I’d never known, like a place where the rest of my [ahem] … where the rest of our life together would begin.

Instead it was an extended break, not quite vacation not quite holding pattern. I continued teaching but not well. She found a job at company called Oracle. My wife looked her up–apparently, she still works there. She set down roots; I did too, somewhere else.

The wind blows there even now as strong as ever. I saw it on TV the other day. It looks just the same as it did that January.

_{The image is from Andrew Sullivan’s View From Your Window feature. I saved it as “ChicagoIL930pm” but cannot find the original source or photographer.}

You create an account gently, and you construct
a password--a nonsense mixture made memorable,
letters, numbers, characters made special
somehow, a song lyric, a sentence you alone know.

You pull the doc from the drive, a last look
at a once-inspired miracle, a polished
inert version of the original spark, now rendered
regular, out of your hand & into gently. 

Gently receives the doc, a new screen
assuring you that the server worked.

You forget and wait, gently. Gently managing
the impersonal viewable shareable
version of you at your most artful, 
most vulnerable, most hopeful.

Three weeks later, gently a message
in your inbox. 

No. 
Thank you. 
Sincerely, 
Gently.

This is inspired by Sophia Terazawa, who gave my class the following writing prompt: Personify an adverb. I chose to personify the writing submission platform Submittable as the adverb "Gently". So above every time I originally referred to the platform, I substituted the word Gently.   

I read somewhere that G-d is merciful,
watching, judging, understanding, but still

merciful. The quality of mercy, I read
somewhere else, is not strained. It droppeth like ...

well, it's freely flowing. It isn't meted out
like some precious resource (though it is). 

It is worth much more than it costs to give. 
There is always a person to forgive

and a reason to forgive, if for no other reason
than that it gives you practice

in feeling how little it takes to bless
a person in error, in distress, deep in shame.

Even when we know that they'll just mess up 
again, in our mercy, we bring a part of heaven

to earth.

"kyrie eleison" means "Lord, have mercy." This was my last sprint write with my students on May 18, 2022, modeled after Clint Smith's "Meteor Shower". 

An orange shirt hangs in my closet. My second ever. 
It's got a sheen & a stretch altogether unnatural,
some space-age material that doesn't breathe & doesn't fade.

It's a golf shirt from another era, a stiff broad collar,
more buttons than are necessary, and a deep breast pocket.
There's a duck on the pocket also from another era. 

Summer 1988, north Austin, I'm watching my girlfriend shop
in a fabric store. We were young enough & in love enough
to do everything together then, even things I didn't want. 

I rotated one of those product kiosks, bored & annoyed. 
And there the duck was on a tiny card, a bright impulse
that I knew would make her smile. She sewed it right on

an orange t-shirt I wore probably once a week. Decades after 
we broke up, the shirt lost its snap, and I lost my taste for it. 
I threw away the shirt but kept the duck. I showed it to my wife,

who sewed it right on a new orange shirt. My second ever. 
Here in the closet, in the home we share, a bright sign of
how to adorn a simple thing, of how to keep love near your heart. 

_{Inspired by the love of two women and by this poem.}

You wear a white shirt,
grey slacks, and a plaid tie.
A uniform of academic
seriousness & middle class.

You roll your sleeves up
& unbutton your shirt
at the neck. You feel there's little 
on the surface you choose.

You are freest on your paper route,
especially Sunday mornings 
weaving slowly from curb to curb,
crossing the double yellow line.

All four lanes yours.
The city asleep.

Inspired by Erika L. Sánchez's "The Poet at Fifteen", which was inspired by Larry Levis's "The Poet at Seventeen".  

There is a tree at the heart 
of our house. A live oak 
reaching up in three directions, 
waist-thick master branches 
rough & mossy. 
I imagined it as mine 
the moment I saw it. 
The house would belong to all. 
The tree to me. 

From beneath it, I can see 
into each room. I don't look up 
often enough. I look around,
from window to window, 
at my family, my house 
alive & secure. A life-size diorama 
I'm growing old in. 

Every few years the tree gets trimmed, 
sometimes as much as a third of it 
gets sawn off, mulched, & driven away. 
The dust settles bright & aromatic, 
a sandy pattern within 
the ridges of the roots. 
The canopy lifted, 
the shade dappled anew.  

And my tree bounces back, 
quickly dense again with leaves, 
stretching up imperceptibly, 
inch by delicate inch over 
the chimney, over me. 
I sit, book & wine at hand. 
Breathing deep & waiting 
to be called back inside, 
back home. 

Every few summers
right before the kids return,
the cones & ropes come out
directing traffic somewhere else.

There's a potbellied trailer
spattered & smoking, surrounded
by men in fluorescent vests
& tarred steel toed boots.

The asphalt goes down
thick & clean, the oily heat 
rainbowing & distorting 
the new view.

Then a slower process,
stencils & block letters, 
striping & labeling: 
students & faculty,
 
visitors & diagonally reserved spots 
we hope never to need,
a reminder of the everyday horrors
that happen somewhere else. 

Years later the colors return
to the earth, as we all must.
Cracked & bubbled, a broad mottled stripe
thrown into relief by sun & time.

The lines, faded & crumbling,
can still keep us safe. 
We remember
where we belong. 

_{On April 27, I sent my students outside with their phones to return with photos of different colors. This is inspired by a color I found.}

Along with the usual noises
(washing machines, wind chimes),
this house has other voices.
Scratches, creaks, murmurs, all times,
all corners of the house. Like a
conductor tapping a baton,
a critter's feet ticks out a
path across the roof, lighting upon
the shingles faintly. Beneath 
the deck, deep in the shrubs,
a bit of digital-ish noise beeps
& chirps, then drops out, an abrupt
small wild world alive, persistent -- but each
time I approach, silent, just out of reach.

_{Written for this challenge, this sonnet features words & phrases from this record review.}

which is to say
in the darkest of hours
there's a flickering,
an easily snuffed light.

You can lift it,
you can move it,
but you must
protect it.

A hope chest holds
soft elegance,
handstitched care 
for the body & the bed.

A hope candle can last
if you're careful & still.
Keep it close. 
Keep it dry.

Watch hope dance then stand
to reveal dangers, to ennoble
wide eyes. Windowed, mirrored, 
it even grows. 

Hope throws big shadows,
darkening what's behind.
So look ahead, look close.
And hold your breath. 

_{For this writing challenge, I rolled some metaphorical dice, which gave me the three words that are the title & inspiration here.}

The light comes before 	the rumble.
The longer the gap		between them,
the further the storm		from you.

The first flash woke me.	For once,
my wife slept through	it all.

I lay alone with the sound	        and light,
watching, listening, 		        and counting.

Light, 				one Mississippi,
two Mississippi,		then

a rumbling menace 		                           above the roof.
Windows rattled, the dog	burrowing        between us.

In the next flash, 		a silhouette, a child
midstride, framed by		the illumined window.

He climbed through		        the thunder
into the flannel & heat		a safe dry place
between father, mother,	        and dog. 

The sound got as close		as the light.
It rained 		                        till morning.

_{Written in response to this writing challenge.}

There’s a rusty chair left over
from your grandparents in law, 
one the squirrels haven’t yet
torn to shreds.

Pull it from the corner of the yard
and right to the center,
the pollen crunching
under your feet.

There’s a neighbor behind you,
his garage door open. 
Music is playing. Something is 
being fixed or installed.

Push that from your focus,
and avoid being annoyed
by his perpetual busy
suburban nesting.

There’s a deck before you,
decades old, creaking & buckled
from rain & sun,
boards warped & bleached,
nails reaching upward. 
Some slats mossed over
fold beneath the lightest
of footsteps.

Give thanks for the long years
this space has given you, 
and avoid being annoyed
at this crumbling hazard.

There’s a vista before you,
a roof that’s never leaked,
a tree above it, right at the center 
of this part of your life.

Cross your legs. Palm the glass
of wine. Watch for mosquitos.
And look up.  

There are clouds & birds,
branches & wind.

It’s all starting again.
It always will. 

_{Written in response to this challenge.}

There’s a place for your hands
And another for your feet.

You look. You breathe. 
You count. You play.

It’s just as responsive as you 
would hope wood would be.

Eventually you learn to play 
with your whole body

like you’re gently blessing 
the music into the keys,

your elbows nudging,
your wrists pliant,

your fingers curved 
and lifting,

a fragrant sheet
caught on a line.

These days my mornings
begin outside with the sun
in my face. Texas
makes this difficult most days
what with heat and mosquitos.

But it’s a habit 
now -- a tan line on my nose
where my glasses sit.
“Here’s another day,” I think.
And here too am I. Thank God.  

_{This is another tanka poem. Sorta.}

The day's first email --
subject line: "Confidential."
A kid in crisis
is bravely getting some help.
Looking up from the email,

I see her come in
like it's just another day -- 
which, I guess, it is. 
Still, every word & gesture
becomes a sign, a warning.




If you or someone you love needs help, please know that there are resources out there. This is a kind of tanka poem. Sorta.

Far down the page --
past news of war,
past opinions
& perfume ads,

past covid charts
& thinkpieces
(this one about
arctic penguins) --

"Rain Boots We Love".
And I recall:
It's April now ...
spring has returned.

I saw it just
today, parking
under budding
trees -- a sky grey

with the promise 
of that patter
that redirects
human focus.

And tomorrow
all of the girls
will reach way back
in their closets

for the right shoes.
Pulling bootstraps
over bare legs,
toes & soles gleam

wet & bright with
long awaited 
rain, finally
just underfoot. 

This was written in response to a challenge to compose a poem based on a news item.

I was the first in my line because I was the shortest boy.

Across the aisle, Claudia was at the head of a long line 
of girls in white, veiled & serene, palms pressed in prayer.

Two by two, we received the Body of Christ & returned to the pews, solemn, sacramental. Later, a man leaned over me, his hand 
on my shoulder. "Now you're one with God."  I thought I already was.



This one is another cherita. 

Once we hit the highway, she said, “I think we should get married.”

Two hundred miles from home. No stops planned. No one else in the car. No way for me to avoid what this lovely girl said.

Three hours, two people, one question: How much longer did I need 
to know that she was the one? One thing I knew for certain.
She knew how to pick the right moment -- and for her, the right guy.

_{This is a cherita, that is, a six-line poem that consists of three stanzas — one line in the first stanza, two in the second, & three in the third.}

A match aflame
is held aloft.
Fire focuses
the eye, the mind.
 
But these eyes aren’t
a match. A flame
won’t catch these eyes,
any of them.
 
The field once green,
now roaring from
a match, a flam-
ing horizon.
 
Make a wish. Then
a quick escape.
Behold, beware
a match aflame.


This poem is my response to a writing challenge--four stanzas of four lines each, four syllables per line, with one line repeated in lines 1, 2, 3, 4 of stanzas 1, 2, 3, 4. 

i've underestimated
the pleasure of things
catalogued, things put in place.

to know that we agree
"this is a badger. this is not 
not a badger" satisfies

like a well built
chair. rest & know
that we can rest & know,

that the cataloguing, the naming 
can be beautiful, that a name 
can fit & fit well.

we can even refit, replace:
firefly. lost love. still life.
artwork. plaything. like

this girl in her place,
still, pale, except
the color of life on

her mouth, the glistening gaze
behind the brittle thicket
surrounding, adorning her.

the babe in the wood,
aflame in twigs, clothed in
dried delicate proportion,

packaged & shelved,
awake & alert 
to all on the other

side of the glass. 

_{This is an ekphrastic poem I wrote with my students, that is, a “a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.” Here’s another one I wrote about a mobile by Alexander Calder.}

before a melody, a mood,
rolling waves of sound, resolution always
imminent,
all connecting a
network of
electronic ethereal lines.
now the voice—
open to dreams, to horizons. 

to have and to hold

keep clean, keep communicating, keep being funny & nice

from this day forward

keep the past in the past, keep your jealousy to yourself

for richer or for poorer

max out your 401k, decide who pays the bills and how, share taxes, share accounts, don’t buy anything <$100 without checking in with her

in sickness & in health

exercise, wash your hands, don’t expect thank yous for loading the dishwasher. learn to cook. learn to snack. drink moderately

for better or for worse

you’ll think some wrong & petty things a lot — keep it in your head. learn to make sacred everday tasks, everyday beauties — the smell of her hair, the smoothness of her cheek, the calming & ennobling presence of family, the loyalty she shows friends. the love she gives you unearned

till death do us part

learn to care for her. learn to anticipate her fatigue & her worry. learn to be gracious in the little that you do. one day you’ll be reduced to a body to maintain not a personality to cherish, not a coparent or a partner. one day you’ll need help in ways you can’t imagine, in ways that you won’t notice or recognize. one day it’ll all be over, and you will have lived well thanks to her, thanks to these words today. be happy because you’ll leave her as you found her. beautiful, strong, wise, clear brown eyes, soft skin.

_{Inspired by Jamaica Kincaid & Lupe Mendez. The title alludes to the wedding vows in a Jewish ceremony–“Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li.” Roughly, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine”, from Song of Songs 7:10.}

Back then, back there, if you were a man, 
you joined the military. Dad did.

Mom has photos
of him uniformed, ramrod straight
on campus, far from home, not yet
at war. He graduated 

& went. 22. An officer.
His first day, his first mission: find
a platoon presumed dead. 

He did. They were. 

Fifty years later, the tears 
have come back for those that didn't. 

The VA reached out: You can talk about it.
We're here. We'll listen. It'll do you good.
It almost always does.

These days, if you're a man long alone
with your feelings, you move slowly,
you mourn privately. After the VA, 
you pull over the car to weep, 
the tears coming like
a blowout. You'll be home late, 
dazed by the surprise of 
what you remember,
what you survived. 

This is a mostly true story. He's alright. Really. I saw him just the other day.

The photo, taken June 2019, shows Panel 8E of The Vietnam Memorial, where two men from dad’s unit—64th QM BN—are honored. Donald F. Leuthold (SFC, US Army) and William W. Webb (2ndLT, US Army) died during an ambush while on intel recon 06/05/1966. 

Click here for mental health resources, information, treatment options, and more — all accessible to veterans & veterans’ supporters. 

A man crosses the street in rain,
    one long last step over the curb.

His coffee cup out at an exaggerated 
    distance, a comically small cup
    to be sheperding through the 
    crowded city street.

He's on time. Two more blocks.
    Past the Thai place, past the laundromat,
    past the diner. He'll be there soon.

Two keys -- one for the gate, one for the door.
    It's an old building, tight turns on
    the stairs. Small rooms. No closets.

He takes off his shoes & feels the moist cold
    of his socks as he walks to the window, 
    twisting the fading light into the living room.

There's a chair he'll leave behind in
    eight months when he moves home
    (but he doesn't know that now),
    brocaded, low, a color he can't name,
    springs he can't ignore. 

He reaches & turns on the TV. His team
    almost never televised here, far from home. 
    His team will receive.

It's a Sunday in January. 1995.

_{From a project with students, using the first line of Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye}

As a kid, I wanted to be
a priest. I knew the costume,
had seen men add layer

upon layer of holiness.
I knew the sacristy,
the drawers of clothing

& cabinets of gold & 
wine. A bell struck.
All rose. He walked.

All waited on him.
He had it all.
The title, the pulpit.

I never imagined myself
at fifty, feeling young,
feeling uncertain, feeling

like anything less than
a leader, a voice behind
a screen offering forgiveness.

Holiness, I hope, is
everywhere. Sin, I've learned,
is nothing to be

ashamed of unless it's
cowardice. Enter the space.
Listen. Speak. 

_{Pitchfork‘s 5-10-15 feature offers artists the chance to talk about the music of their lives, five years at a time. Here’s my headphone journey, five years at a time. I tried to find songs from that specific age, songs that serve as a hyperlink to then, not necessarily my favorite songs of all times–just of those times. So a lot of what I love that’s not here: no jazz, no country, no hiphop, no R&B. What is there shows how blessed we all are for a life enriched by music.}

5: I’m old enough to remember when a home stereo was a piece of furniture, a large one. Ours was about the length of a couch, a sensible brown woodgrain cabinet, with a gently lifting lid. Inside was a radio dial, a compartment for about twenty albums, and a turntable.

Parents of five-year-olds in 1974 probably fed their children a steady diet of Carole King, Elton John, James Taylor. Jim Croce, etc. I didn’t grow up with any of that. When I was a freshman at UT Austin, two of my friends teared up at a diner when James Taylor came on — I looked at them like they were from Mars and sneered, “Doesn’t heroin usually lead to good music?” But I digress.

The turntable at Casa Garza in 1974 usually had Eydie Gormé y Los Panchos on. If you’ve been sung to at a Mexican restaurant, you’ve probably been sung to like Los Panchos did — tight harmonies, intricate fretwork, soaring choruses, big finishes. That makes me tear up. “Piel Canela” is a really catchy upbeat song, a love song that’s joyful. It took me years to recognize that Eydie Gormé’s accent wasn’t great, but then again, I’ve always had a thing for Jewish girls.

10: Sometimes after soccer games on the weekend, my parents would take us all out to have a hamburger. There was a jukebox at the place. Around this time (1979), you’d see non-disco acts pulling disco into their bag of tricks. I really like disco. I’m really persuaded also by those revisionist music historians that see a not so subtle homophobic / white supremacist strain to disco haters.

The Doobie Brothers were hippies, the kind of musicians that Jim Henson was thinking of when he assembled the Electric Mayhem. “What a Fool Believes” isn’t really their sound, but then again Hotel California isn’t really the Eagles’ sound. It’s a hit. It’s catchy and bouncy. It has a buncha guys singing really high harmonies. It has a pre-chorus and a chorus. It has a bangin’ piece of modulation in the second verse that introduces a subtle but noticeable high descending keyboard line that you didn’t know the song needed. There’s no guitar solo — and at the end, it’s just Michael McDonald riffing through the fadeout.

If I saw them live, I’d have been very tempted to bootleg them for that song alone.

15: I’m going to have to work sometime soon on how David Byrne shaped me for good. Sometime in high school, I began taking on my own musical tastes and not just leaning on my siblings’ impeccable musical choices. Talking Heads was a gateway into a whole lot: Contemporary bands with similarly angular sounds, the possibilities of blending art & music, of blending Africa & America, the realities of a rock band as a kind of art project, the fact that a drummer could do away with the ride cymbal altogether, the fact that there’s a loopy beauty in / to suburban spaces. Talking Heads also introduced me to Brian Eno’s vision and Eno introduced me to worlds and worlds.

This song, though, is the end of a kind of era with Talking Heads. This is their third & final album with Brian Eno producing. I’ve always loved when a band sounds like one big instrument, but I’m always disappointed when the band I love no longer sounds like that band. I get growth, I get experimentation. I am disappointed for the bassist I love, disappointed for the drummer I love on a song like this where the whole thing seems hijacked by the singer-songwriter-genius & the producer-genius.

It’s organic & programmed — hand claps looped, shakers & Fairlight beats, spoken word & studio trickery, panning from speaker to speaker in whizzing flurries. A single bubbling of escalating pings, an echoing that dies abruptly.

And then a voice — not singing, but speaking. A story about change & regret, or regretting change or changing from regret. Or something else.

20: I was one of those Gen Xers whose musical tastes got blown away by Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, and David Byrne, bringing back sounds from their travels–sometimes for their own stuff, sometimes for a compilation album. That’s how I ended up in the world beat bin at Sound Exchange on the corner of 21st & the Drag my freshman year at UT Austin. The B-Boy stance of the cover got me, and I bought it without knowing a single song, artist, or even the label.

I never understood the words, and I’ve never looked them up. I could have picked any song on The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, and I chose this one. They’ve all got close rich harmonies, they’ve all got guitar work that is of another world, both rhythm & lead, support & countermelody all at once. And every now & then Mahlathini comes growling in for a verse. Every voice in place. Enduring lesson: Every instrument a rhythm instrument.

25: There is music that makes you smile, and there is music that makes you smirk. Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks work both kinds well. Their instrumentation (circus organ, saxophone, sousaphone, sometimes banjo) harken back to when entertainment was gas lit, when performers used greasepaint, when the man at the mic wore tails and knew how to make you laugh between songs. This live video, although not of the original band, gives you a sense of what it was like way back then, between rock shows that I saw a couple of times a week. Steve Carter sings with no vibrato, no front guy “filter”, no performing tricks –– like Sade, like Chrissy Hynde, like many of my favorite singers, he sings about like he talks. And his lyrics always make you feel like you’re in on a joke and like you’re smart to laugh. Here, he retells the temptation story in Genesis with Frank Sinatra as the hip but justice-dispensing God. 

30: Yo La Tengo is a band that, for much of their catalog, breaks down into two kinds of songs: feedback driven lengthy Velvet Underground inspired space jams, and sensitive Velvet Underground inspired love songs. They include a married couple (the singer/guitarist, the drummer/sometime singer); they’re renowned for their Hannukah shows. They have a couple of albums that are titled with complete sentences, a creative decision that I love in any genre. I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is their pinnacle, I think & Pitchfork thinks. On I Can Hear, the balance of movements and sounds, the arc of the album, the packaging and the moment all came together perfectly. “Green Arrow” is five minutes of countrified calm in an album  that is lovely and noisy.

35: Pedro Almodovar’s Talk to Her is “late” mature Almodovar. Like so many of his movies, it’s a thoughtful & transgressive movie that celebrates full-contact relationships, human bodies, and art in all forms.

Michelle found a theater that was playing it — she’d already seen it but knew I’d really love it. It was about forty-five minutes away. We were the only two in the theater. Caetano Veloso sings “Cucurrucucú Paloma”, a song I knew first as a big brassy mariachi song. I had discovered Caetano through David Byrne’s seminal Beleza Tropical anthology of Brazilian music from the 70s & 80s, music that blended samba with rock & funk. I wasn’t prepared for him to take on this Mexican song, for him to move through it with such languid grace, for the cello to take center stage in a way that made me teary-eyed & woozy, and I looked over at Michelle and knew that, if I stuck with her and kept myself from doing anything really stupid, I’d have moments like this throughout my life. The rest of the movie is amazing but not nearly as good as this few minutes.

A few weeks later, for Valentine’s Day, Michelle & I each got each other the same gift–the soundtrack to Talk to Her–attached to the same non-Valentines card from the same store. Really.

40: I’m recognizing the further I get into this playlist that it’s the playlist of my desk, of my work, of my walking, of my thinking, of my writing. The drive to school is DJ’d by my kids; the soundtrack of my school gym is DJ’d by the coaches there; the soundtrack in class is DJ’d by the students. What remains is a space I recognize as meditative, a compass pointed toward thought and silence. Music that’s almost not music –– lyrics removed, verse-chorus-verse-bridge-etc patterns vanished, an aural mind set. The sound of deep, and sometimes brave, thinking. In this case again, a cello holds the place that in pop music is reserved for the rhythm section. Emerging from the waves of that resonant deep long-bowed line, like a light rotating and fading toward an away from the listener, is a woman’s voice. Beckoning? Encouraging? Enchanting? It’s one note, not even a word. It’s enough. 

45: Spiritualized is not a band of subtle gestures. Big guitars, big suffering, big choruses repeated dozens of times loudly (like here at a show I saw in 2019). They emerge from a kind of acid rock group that I loved, but which developed in Spiritualized into a sound with soul. This song, however, is as one of their album titles suggests, pure phase. Voiceless looped keyboard figures, building & building, never letting up. Every couple of minutes into the song, you can pick up a new color, a new pattern, each time convincing yourself that this is the main line. 

50: Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians entered my collection sometime early in my twenties. I don’t know who recommended it to me. I never put any of it on a mix tape. I’ve never listened to it with anybody. It’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve listened to it probably once every three days for decades. There have been entire months of my life when I’ve listened to nothing but this album. This is the first time that I’ve written about it or talked about it. Really.

It’s an austere title and a challenging idea — a mostly instrumental album but with voices deployed as sounds rather than word-vessels, rather than melody centers; an on-the-surface mercilessly repetitive album that reveals even on the first listen a variety of colors & tones, dynamics & movements, motifs & threads. Depending mostly on breath & wood, focus & perseverance, it sounds downright mechanical, like gears moving in varying rotations against & with one another. A classical piece challenging in its relentless non-swinging rhythmical patterns, it is a virtuoso ensemble piece, not a piece to support virtuosos. For 18 musicians, its most dramatic moments depend on single non-flashy entrances (of chimes usually) and abrupt exits (of woodwinds usually).

It still fills me with wonder. All of this music does.

In every city, there's a room full of dreams
    catalogued carefully, nuances of emotion,
    scenarios you can scarcely imagine awake:
    Honeymoons nestled with lost loves.
    Anniversaries with chores forgotten.
    Illicit joy with family laughter.

They are alive & renewable. The city never runs out of dreams.

A map of the city is on a big screen, filling the wall.
    Streets & fields have been removed.
    A grid of addresses & numbers, 
    rooms & beds. All accounted for.

A man in uniform drags each dream 
    from the margins to a house,
    through the house to a room,
    through the room into a bed,
    the right side of the bed for 
    the right dream. 

He hovers, uncertain at times.
    It's artful & important work,
    work that takes root but not
    in the mind. Someplace deeper.

Does he know the false hopes he drops
    on unsuspecting people
    prone, disrobed, mouths agape? 

Sleep tight. 





I am not imaginative in the way that fiction writers are. Still, I tried my hand at a subject that I don't understand well, explained through a lens that's not mine, in a voice I don't use often. It's a dream vision.