8 Year Old Album

I'm listening to an album that was put out 8 years ago. It's excellent. Maybe even worthy of some sort of top 10 list, or perhaps a top 12 list. I need to be more arbitrary and less conventional and a top 12 list seems like a small step in the right direction.

I'm driving in my old and very much not quiet Grand Am listening to this album and wondering what the heck I was doing 8 years ago that was so important that I could overlook a little masterpiece like this. And I wonder if this thing, this excellent album, was just hiding from me until I was old enough wise enough beaten down enough to appreciate it for what it is.

I'm coming back from a long day in the sun and the bars and the parking lots and the streets. Grand Ole Day in St. Paul. The people stagger back and forth trying to look beautiful in halter tops and flip flops with an ear of corn the size of my forearm waiting to be eaten in their hands. The butter sliding down the backside of their hands and there's never enough napkins and never enough table space to make this convenient in any fashion. Maybe that's why we do it, to remind ourselves that we don't have to look amazing to be amazing.

I'm walking into another bar and the din from the conversations mixes with the Van Halen or Dylan or Ike Reilly or shitty jam band and sounds like nothing at all. So I drift and I think about the 8 year old album that has been hiding from me and I remember the line "what a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all round the sun" and I feel all right and kinda beautiful and happy at once.

I drink some sangria at the mexican restaurant and try not to focus on how little I know these people at the table. Mule holds court further down and he's surrounded by his friends, Mule has a ridiculous amount of friends. In Mule's court we are noticeably short in the knight department but our jesters and minstrels are topnotch and the sangria is perfect for a sunny day in June and we don't fucking need any knights. So we drink and meet strange new people and have conversations while waiting in line for the bathroom and refuse shots of Jager from lonely old guys at the Muddy Pig and try not to swear in front of the kids in the booth to our right.

Half the time I'm engaged in conversation I'm wondering what I can say next to push things forward. The other half I'm thinking about the girl in the corner that reminds me of my wife and I wish she was here drinking bloody marys or singapore slings or just some not-cold beer from the overworked tap with me and these people who are not our friends but for these few hours can be. And I'm thinking about the line from the 8 year old album that goes something like "your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder, and dad would throw the garbage all across the floor. As we would lay and learn what each other bodies were for."

I replay the line in my head as I walk back to my car. My car that will bring me more of this album and bring me back to my wife and give me a blast of cool air after a day of walking in the sun and I feel good. Not perfect, far from it, but good. And that's enough.

One last line insists that I include it. It's about...everything. Everything important anyway. It's fucking brilliant and it makes me realize that I wouldn't change anything in the past 8 years. Not a damn thing.

"and one day we will die
and our ashes will fly
in the aeroplane over the sea.
but for now we are young
let us lay in the sun
and count every beautiful thing we can see."