Twenty-Seven: Listen to the Song.
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
I took you to the record store on Burnside on Thursday evening, because you told me you hadn't gotten new music since moving to Portland. I didn't go often, but it was close—a few blocks from the bookstore.
The ceiling was dirty but the selection was good, and you squeezed my hand happily when you saw how many CDs there were. Rows and rows, rock and pop and country and R&B and everything in between. The guy at the counter, who sported the typical tattoos and multiple piercings that young Oregonians are famous for, laughed as you dashed into the fray.
“Girlfriend?” he asked me, watching you. I nodded, and he remarked, “Seems cool.”
“She's really cool,” I agreed.
I followed after you, dragging the soles of my shoes across the coarse carpet. Somehow, you'd already acquired a stack of at least seven disks, balanced in a stack beneath your chin. I offered to take a few, but you didn't respond because at that moment, you discovered the vinyl department.
“Sam,” you said softly, freeing a hand and grabbing my arm. “What is that?”
I trailed your gaze. “The record section.”
“Oh my God.”
You set your CDs down on one of the racks and drifted toward the adjoining room on floating feet. I shuffled after, passing hippies young and old as you dragged your hand over the tops of the records with a reverent smile. I knew next to nothing about records, but you obviously did, and I was content to just watch you flit from bin to bin, gathering another pile.
You were wearing my jacket; I'd given it to you on our walk over, because you'd left your own at home. I wondered if you were like my sister, who never brought a jacket when she went out with a boy—not even when it was snowing or pouring rain.
It was a U of Oregon sweatshirt, and it swallowed you whole as you made your way toward me with records clutched to your chest. There was a turntable on a table by the door, and you asked the guy at the nearby counter if you could use it.
“Sure,” he said, “lemme just—” But you were already moving, lifting the glass top of the turntable and setting it aside. You removed a record from the tilting stack and slid it out of its cover, then shook it from the thin paper sheath.
The guy from the counter hovered.
“Are you sure you know what you're doing?” he asked, and I was wondering the same thing.
“Of course,” you replied, carefully setting the record onto the turntable. “My mom has one of these, I use it all the time.”
Your fingers were careful as you raised the needle and started up the player, but when you lowered the lever you closed your eyes and placed it down at random.
“I've never heard any of these,” you admitted, grabbing a pair of headphones. “I just grabbed everything that caught my eye.”
I just chuckled and shook my head, because I wasn't surprised.
You lowered the headphones over your ears and I picked up the record cover, taking in the watercolor design. Passenger. I'd never heard of him, and I guess, neither had you.
But the moment the song settled into your ears, you grabbed my arm. I turned, and you were wide-eyed, your free hand pressed to one side of your face. You felt on the table for the second pair of headphones and shoved them into my chest.
“Ellery, what are you—”
“Be quiet and listen to the song,” you ordered, your voice too loud because it was fighting with the volume of the music. When I hesitated, you shook my wrist. “Sam. Put on the headphones, and listen to the song.”
Shrugging, I did as you said.
It was a careful melody, quiet strums and a hesitant tempo. The guy's voice was careful too, his words leaving his lips with thorough consideration, each one a gift handed over rifts of sound.
I peeked at the track list, counted how many tracks you had skipped on the record. Feather on the Clyde, it was called. I thought it sounded like feathers, soft and drifting and lovely. It sounded like the wind in summertime, like the turning pages of a good book, like your smile. When I looked at you, I knew that you heard the music too, really heard it, because your green eyes were saucers as they met mine.
I held out my hand without thinking about it. You looked at it, then placed your fingers over my palm. The song washed over us and I twirled you into my chest, wrapping my arms around you as you linked your fingers behind my neck.
You buried your face in my sweater. I pressed my cheek against your hair and closed my eyes, and we swayed along without any concern for the hipsters who kept glancing our way. When I was with you, it sometimes felt as if everything simply ceased to exist except for the two of us, wandering our own private stretch of universe and managing to transcend time itself.
Because in that moment, we were all there was. Forget the stained ceiling and the scruffy carpet. Forget the rain outside and the quickly melting snow. Forget everything else but remember us, us and the feathery music, weaving together into a single, glorious existence.
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A/N: gah the song there guys. i just got passenger's album yesterday (pluseightotheralbumscough), except in cd because really idk if it even exists in lp plus i don't know how to use my dad's record player and i'd probably break everything so
but mike rosenberg is brilliant and so is that song and all of his songs and yeah
