Untimely Reviews: Phish, "Fuego"

         

          Consuming music has gotten so weird. This is not an old-guy-hates-change rant, but I miss the effort and perhaps a bit of the difficulty of what it was like to experience music in middle school. Yes, I love iTunes, and yes, I think Pandora and Spotify are fantastic. So is Amazon. But when I was 12, 13, and 14 years old, acquiring music and then experiencing it was a serious, complex endeavor. Adulthood and technology have made it this whole other thing that -- for the most part -- grants immense access to the listener and makes it impossible to keep current. There was something about waiting until payday (or until I’d mowed enough lawns) and hopping on the 10-speed for a five-mile round trip to load up on cassette tapes.

            I mean, it wasn’t hard. But, I had to heave it up a few small hills and cross some busy streets and ride home with my merch’ swinging in a plastic bag, banging against the handlebars. And then I’d sit down.

            After all of that huffing and sweat and the awkward transition, multi-tasking -- once I was home and through the plastic wrap -- was the farthest thing from my mind. It was all about spending time with the albums, the undivided attention, the listening and studying, the melancholy of knowing I could not transport to the studio where that album was born.

The Moments That Make Up a Dull Day

January’s been a tough place to be in terms of keeping tabs on my mental health. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure my head’s visited all of the beneath-the-couch-cushions corners when it comes to the emotional dinner plate. With my starches there’s been fatigue. Each bite of protein has had a dollop of motivation on top of it, and when it’s come to getting those veggies down, I’ve been every bit of both the refusing child and the adult who knows better. My head has nodded in agreement to angry, unaffordable appetizers; my inner glutton has thumbs-upped dessert when there was no room left in my belly.

Google Maps Navigation has been my favorite smart-phone tool as the new job opens itself up to windshield time, but the more familiar I become with it, the more of a stranger I become to myself. It’s as though I’m perpetually shoe shopping, but can’t tell how each pair fits until I’ve left the building, and then once I’m processing, my foot tells my brain how each shod situation felt unfamiliar.

Maybe I’m out of shape. Getting back in to therapy would do me some good. Age is not helping, as these weird, dull flashes of pain have been greeting the inner back of my skull. Perhaps above everything: Happiness hovers, half attainable, frequently out of reach.

And I have answers for none of it.