Dissonance

I have spent the last two weeks talking, teaching many classes. I used to think I was an introvert, and Myers-Briggs even said it was so. But teaching has turned me extroverted. Truthily. The last M-B personality test I took placed me squarely in the "E" category. Who knew?

Hectic as summer programs are, I had a blast. But boy am I sick of the sound of my own voice.

Let's listen to other people for awhile.



I'm reading Bob Mould's autobiography, See a Little Light.



I sung a few bars for my husband. He thought I was singing something by this band. I wasn't, but it's always nice to revisit the 90s.



Looking forward to the new Feist album, Metals, in October. The 4th, says the knowledgeable staff at LUNA Music. I'm-a gonna get it for the baby for his birthday, which is the 5th. Almost one! Who can believe it? Not I.



That was kind of dreamy. Speaking of, awoke with this in my head...



Better than getting Rick-rolled, which just happened when I clicked on a YouTube video a minute ago. But was secretly pleasing, also.



Enjoy the random, the general specific. The happiness of the guys in this audience. One beard, two beard, red beard, blue beard.

PANK is fun to say

And it's a literary magazine, collective, website, entity, group of individuals who are doing great things with and for writing. PANK 4 is available now, and contains my short-short story, "Comet's Return," along with new work from one of my favorite poets, Bob Hicok. Also included are Kyle Minor, Matt Bell, Jennifer Pieroni, Meg Pokrass, Coralie Reed, Ethel Rohan, Kathleen Rooney, Emily Rosko, Matthew Simmons, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Steven McDermott, JA Tyler, David Erlewine, Alicia Gifford, Elisa Gabbert, and many more.

PANK also published my short piece, "The Rest of Your Life," online last summer. There's audio to boot. Who doesn't like being read to?

There's a new robot in town checking out my blargh. Hi, robot! I hope you like my stories. I hope you are not rusting out this winter in the northerly suburbs, and if you are, maybe a girl in a gingham dress will come by soon with an oilcan. Tin man, robot -- OK, bit of a stretch. But anyway, robot? If, like other robots I have known, you are looking for lessons in how to feel, I've got two cd recommendations: Feist's "The Reminder" (featuring my theme song/credo, "I Feel it All"), and The Avett Brothers album "Emotionalism," esp. "All My Mistakes," which I found a way to quote in class this week.

Are you the type of robot that can see into the future? If so, I have a question: will I get Avett concert tickets for my birthday?

xo
Sarah

Pete Yorn is not my boyfriend

My ears are getting old, my hearing a little, well, what?, but I still go to rock concerts. And at most of the shows I attend, a good chunk of the crowd is in my demographic, wearing earplugs and supporting whatever band is trafficking the latest brand of reunion nostalgia. It's a racket, but I fully participate. Sometimes I even buy the T-shirt.

I am, however, a little old and a lot married for crushes on the bands. Isn't that the domain of teenyboppers, of Tiger Beat and Bop? (Do they still make those magazines? Somebody ask the computer. Or I could just, you know, run to the newsstand for a sec...) Still, I love so many bands and singers. Tears of joy at the Pixies reunion in '05, same at my first Feist show in '08.

I may not plaster the walls with posters these days, but that's simply a design decision, not a statement about lack of feeling. Music can still transport me back to the age and mood when I first heard it, a sometimes awkward space to inhabit. Or the best place in the world to inhabit. You know how it is.

I've always wondered why music can have such an emotional hold. In the height of the nostalgia tours, Daniel J. Levitin's book This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession was released at an opportune time. I wound up listening to his book on CD in the car, which was great for the musical examples (less so for technical descriptions, at least for this visual learner. Narrator/actor Edward Hermann, recently of Gilmore Girls, rocked the house nonetheless.) The science folk speculate that the part of the brain that makes memory is closely tied to the part of the brain that understands music. Music discovered in adolescence makes such an impact because the brain and self are in a period of insane change, another reason adolescent experiences stand out so strongly in memory.

Which may be why, in the most time-crunched part of my week, I decided to see Pete Yorn in concert Monday after teaching my night class. He graduated from Syracuse University one year ahead of me, and I didn't discover his music until I was in my mid-20s, living and working in Syracuse several years after college. My friend and co-worker Glenn passed on Pete's first album, Musicforthemorningafter, knowing we shared similar taste in music. I was, and remain, hooked. Pete's now promoting his fourth album, and while he's too young to be on a nostalgia tour, something in his music makes me feel nostalgic: it reminds me of being in college, it reminds me of Syracuse, it reminds me of people I miss.

Because of the brain's weird emo-circuitry, I have to remind myself that it's my own memories I'm associating with and projecting onto the artist. Pete Yorn and I don't know each other, though he was very kind when I met him briefly a couple years ago at an in-store show & signing. That sweltering summer day, he covered The Ramones song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" in a packed record shop. The crowd swooned. (Why pretend? I did, too.) In between songs, he recognized a young woman in the crowd. "You don't live anywhere near here," he laughed, and she stammered some reason for her appearance at yet another show.

Monday was my third Pete Yorn concert, though I've yet to travel far to see him play. But why wouldn't that young woman, or anybody, really, drive out of her way? Certainly it's for the artist and the quality of the music, maybe even the Almost Famous dream. But I think the power of memory moves us, too. We're driving closer to ourselves.