go ahead and get it big time

When my visitors sit down and leaf through the issue of Paste Magazine that sits inside the laundry basket in front of the toilet, they come out of the bathroom thinking that there’s a new Okkervil River or Voxtrot album. If they know anything about their musical timelines, they’ll check out the front cover to find that the issue they hold in their hands is dated August 2007.


I moved to Guatemala City during the summer of 2007, and that issue of Paste was officially the last issue of the last music magazine subscription that I had in the States. The laundry basket that sits inside my bathroom, filled to the brim with books and magazines, is essentially a “This is who I am” kind of container, with old issues of Paste, Details, the New Yorker, books on special education, Superfreakonomics, the not-so-funny Best Required Nonfiction 2009 edition. Whenever I travel back to the U.S., I am sure to pick up one or two things to replace, but they typically always align with what I’ve already got in there. One thing that never gets replaced, for some strange reason, is that Paste August 2007 issue. Even when the bathroom lights burned out and couldn’t be replaced, due to a flaw that’s typical of Guatemalan design, forcing me to get a lamp to put inside, that issue has remained a fixture.

You see, music has been that fixture. With every start of the new year for the past 4 years, my life has taken some wild new turn or undergone some ridiculous stress. This new year was no different as I was faced with a decision to take a job (that would start after my work here in Guatemala ends) that I wasn't quite sure suit me. I decided not to, eventually, but not without some internal and external battles, as well as a full body rash. What got me through it? Besides the pills and cream? The Dark was the Night compilation. First Andrew Bird for a little over a week, for the brooding, and then Yeasayer for almost two weeks now, for the redemption.

For years I’ve wondered if I could pull off a blog and be consistent about it. My friends encouraged me to do something on Guatemala or special education or something else that I love. Tonight as I read the January 2010 issue of Paste, more specifically a blog entry from a girl who works on a farm and listens to Iron & Wine while tending to the chickens, I thought, I would love to be with chickens, just to feel closer to Sam Beam. And to be in a circus to feel what it’s like to be Zach Condon of Beirut.

I’m 32 years old and I still love music with the same unwavering intensity that I had when I was 13 and listening to The Smiths for the first time. Music is the one thing that I can go on and on about, I think. So why not start tonight?