Giving It Up like I Used To
That tiny twinkling makes the blood rustle, run in circles inside the chest.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Bed-Stuy, just off the Nostrand-Bedford G stop, because this is where my friend Peter and I have gotten together to do work today. Usually we get together on Tuesdays, but yesterday’s Tuesday was an out-of-the-ordinary day for both of us, so here we are on today’s Wednesday, in Bed-Stuy working together. Or, I should say, working side-by-side, since we are not collaborating on anything other than the occasional few sentences of conversation. It is easier to do work, particularly work I don’t love doing, if I am around someone else, preferably someone I know, who is also doing work. So here we are, Peter and me, doing work.
The coffee shop is not crowded, meaning I can spread my things out across a couple of tables, and the baristas are heavy on the interaction with customers. A young person comes in with hair dyed the color of a red chard stem, wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants to match, and the guy working the counter says he himself has been thinking about wearing monochrome outfits like this, to match the hair he’s dyed a sort of traffic-cone-orange. I find this conversation much more interesting than the one I overhear later, between two DJs about their upcoming sets, because the young person and the barista are explicitly talking about how they want to manipulate their appearances, while the two DJs are performing their already-manipulated personas (techno beats with World Music influences).
There is some very light flirtation happening between one of the baristas and me because about two hours ago he accidentally really cranked the volume on the speakers while “Continental Breakfast” by Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett played, and I swiftly turned my head and went “oh dang!” and then, when I noticed he was embarrassed, said “Great song, though! Love Courtney.” while smiling really big. It’s amazing to me how huge moments become when we’re paying attention, how many options we have for what to do or say when we regard the person in front of us as real and that realness isn’t a threat to our own realness, but rather an affirmation of it. My reaction to the sudden loudness wasn’t invalidated by the barista’s embarrassment. It was, in fact, made more real by it, and his blushing reaction in turn was made more real by my softening in its wake.
When I go up to the counter later, to order a decaf latte and an almond croissant, I notice that there’s a piece of paper where customers can request a song and say “oh, that’s cool!” out loud, to which the barista (I’m going to call him Pablo from now on) says “yeah, isn’t that cute?” while he watches me write down the title of a song. I tell Pablo it makes me want to come back here; he tells me the piece of paper is doing its job, then.
I sit down; the song I requested comes on a few seconds later. Did Pablo skip the songs ahead of it on the customer-request queue? I love inconsequential intrigue like this. Pablo brings over my latte in a pea-green cup with a matching saucer. He announces its arrival, and as he sets it down on the table — I have moved aside my planner and the mechanical pencil that sat on it — he says “great song choice, too.” Did he already know the song? Is he hearing it for the first time and enjoying it? These are the sorts of questions I cannot ask, because the relationship Pablo and I have is not the kind where either of us can ask the sorts of questions that require both lead-in and follow-up. Instead, I let out a smiling and slightly self-satisfied “mmm,” like Pablo has just told me I was right about something, which in some ways he has. I am delighted to yet again find so much room in a moment, a product of my attention meeting the person in front of me, Pablo’s attention meeting me in front of him, our attentions meeting each other. It is not romantic; it is living.
The song I have requested is “Like I Used To,” the Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen single that came out in May of this year. Why did I request this song? I don’t know. It was just the first song that came to my mind. Actually, that’s not true. The first song that came to my mind was Gillian Welch’s “Revelator,” which I listened to a few times this morning, but that song is slow and pensive and just not the right mood for a coffee shop at 2:30PM. So “Like I Used To” it is. It’s big right away, the drums coming in, excitingly, before the guitars; it’s got a very satisfying four-chord progression; it’s got Sharon’s gorgeous, wanting voice; it’s got Angel’s gorgeous, haunting voice.
And it’s about, to borrow from Sylvia Plath, “now, and now, and now,” its choruses made up entirely of present-participle phrases, like Van Etten and Olsen are celebrating what they’re up to right this minute, their voices joining and getting louder with each line: giving it up like I used to, falling in love like I used to, and, eventually, in a declaration of power, taking what’s mine like I used to. A slightly twinkling circular synth piano appears between verses, the articulation of sustained manic energy where words once were, easing away with each verse and chorus until it appears again toward the end, faintly as they sing open my heart like I used to and gaining strength until it’s almost the only thing you can hear toward the end, even through the drums and guitars. That tiny twinkling makes the blood rustle, run in circles inside the chest, repeating: remember, you have a heart, and it will only ever beat right now.