Between the Viaducts of Your Dreams

Music is a strange and powerful magic. Going through some playlists on my iPhone I stumbled across one I had made in July two years ago. I remember because I had named it - July.

It's a good playlist, refreshingly so; made up of songs by The Rolling Stones, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Velvet Underground, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Bob Dylan (I almost want to put a The in front) to name a few. The playlist tells a story, affording me a kind of time travel; a brief glimpse into the psyche and circumstance of times passed. It's a snapshot of me at a moment in time, painted through song. I can feel the happiness and readiness for adventure that the music evokes, the excitement.

There's a song on it by the band Real Estate. There was a girl I was seeing at the time, named Amanda, who'd introduced them to me. I even remember the morning I'd first heard them. We laid around her empty apartment on Page Street like cats in front of an open window, sunning ourselves and drinking tea, the cool morning air lazily turning the pages of an open magazine on her coffee table. She played the album on the stereo. We barely spoke that morning, though not out of anger or discontent; quite the contrary. We were enamored, floating in the early stages of affection, happy to be in each other's company. "Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved." We exchanged warm glances and soft, slow smiles. She was a sweet girl, learned and warm. I should've been better about keeping her.

I knew her at a time when I was wrestling with letting go of everything I knew. I had recently moved to San Francisco from New York, where my world was. I'd left family and friends, lovers and safety, everyone I held close, all that was easy and familiar to me. I questioned whether it was the right choice. There's something fearsome and feral that stirs in the heart of a man estranged from himself. He doesn't know what he's capable of. He's blind to and blinded by his limitations. He surprises himself in surprising ways.

I was coming to terms with closing the door on one of my most meaningful relationships while trying to embrace all that was new and blooming with promise around me. I can hear it in these songs now as I listen. There was a belief, a calm resilient expectation that I would triumph over uncertain futures, that everything would be okay.

"It was in another lifetime...
I was burned out from exhaustion,
buried in the hail,
poisoned in the bushes
and blown out on the trail."

The playlist continues as Lou Reed screams, "but anyone who ever had a heart," and Van Morrison asks to "venture in the slipstream." It's a collection of songs that convey a readiness to fall in love, to move on - "to another time, to another place...in another face."