You Wouldn't Understand

An early-April deadline is a-looming, and a crazy couple days are a-coming. My superior math skillz indicate that means I must write 1,000 words between now and tonight's Syracuse game.

But HOW?

Sit down and do it, is the short answer. The long answer is a leetle more complicated.

Because there's a list of other things to do, too. And not on that list, but already accomplished:

1. Take a nap
2. Eat some stuff
3. Muse about ways to cleverly link the two bumper stickers seen Tuesday: "It's a Jeep Thing - You Wouldn't Understand" and "It's a Vince Gill Thing - You Wouldn't Understand." Think indignantly, Hey, I MIGHT understand! Just give me a freakin' chance, boss. Then realize that no, I do not understand Jeeps, nor Vince Gill, and I likely never will.
4. Remember that article about Vince Gill and Amy Grant and their blended family, and their refusal to talk about THE PAST. It was in Good Housekeeping, or Self, or People, read in some waiting room or other. VG: How can we understand you if you won't tell us anything?
5. Consider that Vince Gill might like being misunderstood. That his fans prefer exclusivity, and actively practice the shunning of outsiders. Mystery, excitement, etc.
6. But that doesn't explain the Jeeps. WHO CAN EXPLAIN THE JEEPS?
7. Think about getting ahead by making four dozen basil-cheese triangles for party. Remember that I need to write. Put off making basil-cheese triangles. Why do I always make those things? Phyllo dough is the most labor-intensive food substance on the planet.
8. Need to clean out fridge to make room for party food. Eat some more stuff.
9. Consider where to watch Syracuse game, since neighborhood sports bar is a Butler bar. Wonder if bodily harm will befall those who show up in orange.
10. Understand that a link between Vince Gill and Jeeps will come when I least expect it. Like maybe while writing 1,000 words en route to meeting deadline.

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.