Dear Gentle Reader,
Omgz, it's been a while since we've had a little chat! Such as it is, I'm sitting with my good friend, Wouter (from NL), in the Boeing field airport, waiting for a small plane to transport us to San Juan Island to visit my dad and his crue.
I’ve been showing Wouter a thin but unique slice of Americana: the Pacific Northwest. It’s always interesting to see the place you know best through the eyes of someone who has never seen it before. I wish I could have that experience.
This is what it’s like: when you hear a piece of music for the first time and know nothing about it, but only get the sound of it. The flavor. The je ne sais quoi and “I don't know what”. I wish I could have that experience again… hearing all my favorite music for the first time. I vaguely remember my first impressions of things I really love and know very well now, but to have that feeling of intrigue and mystery is priceless.
I certainly remember being in the PNW (Pacific Northwest) for the first time… a harrowing, rugged, mountainous, forested, cloudy, rainy piece of land with no apparent beauty. Yet then again, I was very small, and easily impressed by bright, shiny things, like California and Hawaii. Of course now I see it completely differently… I see it as the MOST beautiful place I’ve ever been, with the most beautiful people I’ve ever known [friends and family, mind you], and when the infrastructure collapses, there’s no place I’d rather be/defend then my own little proverbial piece of home up here.
Wouter and I were reminiscing about a particularly annoying Dutch acquaintance of ours… her impression of the PNW was something of “Oh how boring! It must rain there all the time and be like… totally boring.” I agreed with her. As I do to everyone who has expressed a sentiment similar to that. J
Now that we’ve got all the undesirables far away, San Juan awaits.
With love,
-E
6 comments:
One way to continue savouring those first moments is to continually try new stuff. Listen to something you've never heard before! Go somewhere you've never gone. Or if you're somewhere familiar, walk instead of drive... or listen to your music backwards.
Ok. Enough.
Or... as Molly might say... try listening to something besides Radiohead.
Of course, if you wait long enough, you can hear OK Computer like it's brand new. But you have to wait about 5 years without listening to it a single time.
... and as I might say to everyone who thinks I ONLY listen to Radiohead, "Ya'll do but presuppose too much!" ;D
Hmm... I thought I was making a valid point about recapturing that lovin' feeling. If one is no longer enchanted, one should try something new. If you want to make what I said about Radiohead, then so be it.
Molly, I totally agree with you. And it never WAS about the "R" band, you or me never even went there... ;)
HA! The foot's on the other shoe now!
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