Humming Lines

you snuck downstairs quietly to get the headphones that would feel the best to listen to. (autism going to autism). took a breath in as the first piano notes of the album started and suddenly you could smell the summer air of oklahoma and you swear you could hear cicadas.

and god, hits you right behind your sternum in the part that aches from time to time. and it’s hard to breathe as you start to feel the expanse of emotions without the words to describe them.

it washes over you, the way that the cold early morning hours when your insomnia hits do. you spent so long thinking about how you wanted to listen to the new album and the time you actually do wasn’t even on your list. it’s not meant to be planned though. you were meant to experience it in the hours that have become second nature.

so you listen to American Cars three times. you’ve always been so tough.

Cackled as something about the window seat makes you a poet that made you think about all the tumblr posts you’ve written out during so many parts of your life.

this song makes you feel like you’re bleeding out but smiling slowly as you think of the tricky parts of life that love and ache. god the tricky parts.

oh how I wish you could know me. And I wish I could know you much more sometimes. it’s the moments unsaid as you stare up at someone who was supposed to be one of your pillars who seems like a stranger. you didn’t expect the first song to make you sob be the one about your own flesh and blood. you love him so much but there is this divide you can’t seem to bridge and the ache settles into your bones and seeps out your eyes.

you start to understand that maybe the last album was about his parents, but this one is about his siblings.

and as porch light starts you look at the sky that’s turned an indigo color with the streetlight fading in the distance.

you realized you thought this song was about a lover, but it’s not. it’s all about them. and you’re angry you can relate.

and then you thank noah for giving you the reprieve of headed north. felt good to laugh after you felt like a bowling ball had settled on your chest.

The strums of the guitar of we go way back starts feel like the most specific blue, almost like peacock? and the feeling of hiking in Oregon during the fall and the moss is covering everything you can see. the feeling of a slight rain that makes you feel like you’ll never feel like this again. a moment in time that feels like the world. (the strain is called cement shoes, perfect for this album if you want to experience the expanse of human emotions)

it feels like the forest, this album. you know you’ll be listening to it and experiencing it over and over again in the upcoming days. finding new words that burrow into your thoughts. god, this is what it’s like to feel alive, you know? all the little connections that feel familiar and buzzing with understanding and witnessing. what it is to feel like someone is saying the words that hurt too much to say out loud!

you realize you have to experience this live. and you buy tickets that are probably a little to expensive. and you think of the last time you bought tickets to experience him live. you were living in a hotel and you didn’t want to be alive. you were sobbing when you bought those tickets and promised yourself you’d at least make it to that concert. the emotion gets stuck in your throat.

the crescendo. im always on my own. the yell. I wonder what books he reads.

Everybody’s asleep, let’s talk… and the light outside turns a robin egg blue…waiting for the sun to rise.

Don’t the sky look pretty up here?

cicadas and piano

the album begins again and you don’t stop it. how does he perfectly encapsulate the way that it feels to drive down a back road. HOW. this song feels like the windows down as you drive through the backroads where your 94 carolla engine mounts shook and your radio brought the music all around you. and you kept driving and you kept processing. god, that car was my favorite place to think and process. the 4runner felt that way too. sacred.

and then you gear up for crying in american cars again.

i didn’t realize how much i missed music until i felt every moment i had listened to notes repeat and move through my life. years of one note at a time in a choir classroom until it felt just right. my sister playing a song and forcing me to sing along, patiently playing over and over again. aunt jans house, hers the focal point of the home. a french hymn that i forced myself to learn how to play because the limerence of letters across the ocean. watching someone i love play.

i had always been scared to try. because what if i could never learn it? what if i sucked and it would never click.

i feel the vastness of the night sky reverberate through my fingers

the deep blues of my left and the violet that streaks through the sky in the early hours on my right

I hope you're with someone who isn't scared to ask

I hope that you're not losing sleep about what's next

Or about your soul and what He might do with it

i was in the new creamery on byu campus, finally comfortable in my own skin but at odds with my green hair and tattoos compared to the surrounding population. i hear this song come over the speakers and i felt this ache in my chest for the version of me who was too scared to let people see all of her. who was so tired from putting on a mask every day of who she thought people wanted to see. a mask because she was too much. too loud, too opinionated, too weird, asked too many damn questions. i said words to keep the peace, to keep the waters calm, not what i meant. be the good girl. be the straight girl. be the quiet girl. follow the rules.

I don’t worry about how loud my laughter is now, it flows freely. I don’t worry about if my shoulders are covered and how they might tempt men. i don’t think god will bless me more if I just pray for 10 more minutes. if I just read one more chapter. my love is too messy and overflows the little box that religion gave me to fit it all in. i don’t base my life decisions or worry too much about what happens after we die. i don’t parrot the words of old men anymore, only my own fall from my lips now.

but then i think about how the air changes on a humid summer night as the storms roll in. the humming in the air. the green trees as far as the street goes. the same people you pass every day, whose names know as well as your own. the first time I saw lighting bugs, the disbelief fizzling through my mind. the way that humanity came alive again, where community hummed. i thought about sitting across from someone whose town had the same blinking red light ours had and and understanding passed without words as we smiled. where you can breathe and life slows down and im nodding to a man sitting in his garden as i walk down the middle of the street.