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Don't You Fret.
Brinks aren’t great. Edges are already suspicious, but brinks are just the worst.
Except for those money delivery trucks; each of those is a minimalist Recreational Vehicle filled with Pure Dreams (tainted only by a measure of grand larceny). But every other brink? Terrible.
And all of that teetering. No one ever frolics or languishes near a brink, it’s always TEETERING. And never toward ice cream, or low interest loans or a smoked brisket sandwich - folks endlessly teeter toward the brinks of insanity, bankruptcy, extinction, and the unfortunate favorite, war. I do try to stay positive, but…heavens. All this teetering.
Everything seems just a little bit much right now. And Winter’s a bad time for distraction - too cold to take my long walks outdoors, while indoors is filled with funny little screens that kind of hate me. I can’t eat or drink my worries away because the math to do that would mean there’d be no food in my refrigerator and I’d be living comfortably in a rehabilitation facility. I bought a kettle ball to get more exercise, then promptly sprained my back cleaning out my office at work, so that’ll have to wait until Spring.
Enter my family, who can always be trusted when teetering looms. Their ingenuity has resulted in a new therapeutic strategy that has kept us all going.
About once a week, my family sits on the couch and listens to an entire album. All the way through. Sometimes we listen to two.
We eat popcorn sometimes and sketch sometimes and sometimes we look at the words and are surprised that we had them wrong, but don’t really correct them in our heads because that’s the way we’ve been singing “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones for the past 45 years.
My daughter plays both contemporary artists as well as a surprising amount of classic funk and rock. My wife plays 90’s goth and shoegaze standards as well as drum and bass. I play everything else: children’s records from the 1940’s, jazz icons, orchestral soundtracks from rarely screened movies, the best of pop music’s 3 and 2 hit wonders.
Sometimes we relate to our daughter our memories regarding the music we choose, or a brief history of its relevance in our lives.
“This is the one that Dad danced to in high school at the one party that someone finally invited him to.”
“I know.” she replies, “You told me that when I was eight, but it does sound a little bit sadder now that I’m actually in high school.”
While it is comforting to bring context to the music, our shared experience re-listening together frees our perception to hear the music through our current ears. Subtleties we never caught before rise to the surface. That Jane’s Addiction album might actually be a little toxic, masculinity-wise.
Many new artists my daughter introduces us to seem to enjoy the endless musical potential of heartfelt profanity. On principle, we have never played censored versions of songs. When an inappropriate lyric came up while driving in the car with our young daughter, we would just both sing gibberish louder than the radio. As she is older now, we all just sing along.
“Is this a love song?” I’ll ask her.
“Not really. It’s more an assertive statement about who she is.”
That seems good, right? A powerful alignment of art and spirit. A good thing to be a fan of. At her age I was deep in the throes of Yacht Rock, and doubt that the North Star of my identity was in any way fashioned by Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” or everything by Hall and Oates.
It’s good this time, spent together. We don’t have to talk. We don’t have to watch anything. It pulls us back from the brink, which the OED defines as the point where something (typically something unwelcome) is about to happen, or the verge of a very unpleasant or dangerous situation.
What wonderful news. We’re far past that! We have, ALL of us, obviously traversed the brink, since we are deep in the land of the unwelcome, unpleasant and dangerous! Huzzah, I say! We teeter no more as we have been pushed in and are now swimming!
How incredibly delightful. I do hope there’s a bar at the edge of the pool.
Next week, Sam and Dave. Soul Man.
‘Cause that’s what really matters.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com
View all episodes
By Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production HouseBrinks aren’t great. Edges are already suspicious, but brinks are just the worst.
Except for those money delivery trucks; each of those is a minimalist Recreational Vehicle filled with Pure Dreams (tainted only by a measure of grand larceny). But every other brink? Terrible.
And all of that teetering. No one ever frolics or languishes near a brink, it’s always TEETERING. And never toward ice cream, or low interest loans or a smoked brisket sandwich - folks endlessly teeter toward the brinks of insanity, bankruptcy, extinction, and the unfortunate favorite, war. I do try to stay positive, but…heavens. All this teetering.
Everything seems just a little bit much right now. And Winter’s a bad time for distraction - too cold to take my long walks outdoors, while indoors is filled with funny little screens that kind of hate me. I can’t eat or drink my worries away because the math to do that would mean there’d be no food in my refrigerator and I’d be living comfortably in a rehabilitation facility. I bought a kettle ball to get more exercise, then promptly sprained my back cleaning out my office at work, so that’ll have to wait until Spring.
Enter my family, who can always be trusted when teetering looms. Their ingenuity has resulted in a new therapeutic strategy that has kept us all going.
About once a week, my family sits on the couch and listens to an entire album. All the way through. Sometimes we listen to two.
We eat popcorn sometimes and sketch sometimes and sometimes we look at the words and are surprised that we had them wrong, but don’t really correct them in our heads because that’s the way we’ve been singing “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones for the past 45 years.
My daughter plays both contemporary artists as well as a surprising amount of classic funk and rock. My wife plays 90’s goth and shoegaze standards as well as drum and bass. I play everything else: children’s records from the 1940’s, jazz icons, orchestral soundtracks from rarely screened movies, the best of pop music’s 3 and 2 hit wonders.
Sometimes we relate to our daughter our memories regarding the music we choose, or a brief history of its relevance in our lives.
“This is the one that Dad danced to in high school at the one party that someone finally invited him to.”
“I know.” she replies, “You told me that when I was eight, but it does sound a little bit sadder now that I’m actually in high school.”
While it is comforting to bring context to the music, our shared experience re-listening together frees our perception to hear the music through our current ears. Subtleties we never caught before rise to the surface. That Jane’s Addiction album might actually be a little toxic, masculinity-wise.
Many new artists my daughter introduces us to seem to enjoy the endless musical potential of heartfelt profanity. On principle, we have never played censored versions of songs. When an inappropriate lyric came up while driving in the car with our young daughter, we would just both sing gibberish louder than the radio. As she is older now, we all just sing along.
“Is this a love song?” I’ll ask her.
“Not really. It’s more an assertive statement about who she is.”
That seems good, right? A powerful alignment of art and spirit. A good thing to be a fan of. At her age I was deep in the throes of Yacht Rock, and doubt that the North Star of my identity was in any way fashioned by Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” or everything by Hall and Oates.
It’s good this time, spent together. We don’t have to talk. We don’t have to watch anything. It pulls us back from the brink, which the OED defines as the point where something (typically something unwelcome) is about to happen, or the verge of a very unpleasant or dangerous situation.
What wonderful news. We’re far past that! We have, ALL of us, obviously traversed the brink, since we are deep in the land of the unwelcome, unpleasant and dangerous! Huzzah, I say! We teeter no more as we have been pushed in and are now swimming!
How incredibly delightful. I do hope there’s a bar at the edge of the pool.
Next week, Sam and Dave. Soul Man.
‘Cause that’s what really matters.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com