25 november 2021
It’s getting cold here in Brooklyn, so lately, for comfort, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to things I know well: early Perfume Genius (primarily Put Your Back N 2 It), Gustavo Cerati (the late Soda Stereo stuff and early solo stuff), an old Atahualpa Yupanqui record whose provenance I have forgotten. One new thing has made its way into the rotation: the recent Hand Habits record, Fun House, and specifically one song on it, “Clean Air,” which is bubbly and sad and smart all at the same time.
In the familiarly unfamiliar category: the new re-release of Kid A / Amnesiac, which on first play left me staring dumbfounded at my speakers, stunned at the depth of sound emanating from the swelling strings that suggest a wordless “How to Disappear Completely.” What a way to go out. Of the record, I mean; that’s the last track. But while we’re here: is this the last thing Radiohead will ever release? Are they done? Does it matter?
I could listen to only Radiohead for the rest of my life and not be unhappy, I think. I’m grateful for that, grateful for the knowledge that I could be satisfied with so little, because, really, actually, it’s so much.
Isn’t that true about everything? For example, last Friday on the way to the DMV I found myself crying just thinking about seeing the ocean. I mean, here I was crying — full-on crying — just thinking about it! I hadn’t seen an ocean since 2019, which is an incredibly long time for me, someone who loves to be reminded of how small she is on a regular basis lest she start forgetting it could all be over tomorrow. It is all so much if you let it be.
It’s Thanksgiving which is a holiday I did not grow up celebrating and whose social rituals I don’t totally understand. But I understand gratitude. Not in the cloying, inert sense, but in the active sense. That’s what gratitude is: doing something with what you have.
I was only at the DMV for a total of 45 minutes, which seemed like nothing to me, and I didn’t even have to take a test. I just showed them my old driver’s license and they took my picture and made me sign a few pieces of paper and read a single line of uppercase letters and answer a few questions. Do I want to donate my organs? Do I want to register to vote? What was my address the last time I voted? Am I wearing contact lenses? Yes, yes, let me think, no.
After I was done, I had a little bit of time before I had to get back to Brooklyn to run some more errands and walk my dog, so I went down to the boardwalk. There was a man there, at the top of the stairs, standing next to a small black bicycle and talking loudly at no one and everyone, another man a dozen or so feet away from him stretching, about to go on a run. The beach itself was completely empty. An old couple walked by arm in arm. The sun was shining in that too-bright, static way it does this time of year, cold and white, sun like when you run the bath so hot it feels frozen cold.
For a moment it recedes, farther away from me now, behind some clouds, and the relief of no longer having to squint means my eyes relax enough to cry. It’s the way I was crying on the train, but it feels better now, fuller, more drenched in something real, but also in nothing specific. It is not crying about — it is crying just because, nondescript and nebulous, moving outward from a cold, condensed center, in every direction, huge and swallowing, the way emotion does when you don’t put anything in its way. I’m no longer thinking about the ocean, but rather: here it is. Huge, unmoving, unstilled expanse that meets the shore in a single, permanent, nonexistent line. Slowly the knowledge comes back from its latency: I am of the earth just as much as the loud man, as much as the couple arm-in-arm, and we are also of each other.
It is all so much if you let it be.