cautionsound

[cautionsound]

Songs I Like, #2: Gryffin - MAGIC (ft. babyidontlikeyou)

Has the amazing energy of the old Gryffin (no offense to his most recent album). Apparently he played it at his Red Rocks show in October, which I definitely would've tried to be at if not for the wonderful birth of my daughter.

I can't wait until she can really enjoy music. I wonder what her relationship with it will be like, if songs alone can make her feel the whole spectrum of human emotion, from tears to euphoria. Once at Coachella I was vibing *intensely* to Epik High's great set, and a friend of a friend asked if I was rolling. But I wasn't under the influence of anything.

Somehow music can activate my brain such that I feel like every nerve ending is firing off at once into some sort of hypersonic nirvana. It almost does feel like a drug at times, the way I can just lie in bed, listen to music, and feel euphoria for hours. When I read it that does sound troublingly like addict behavior.

Anyway, this song makes me feel a form of euphoria. Today I listened to it on the BART ride to work, and the bass came in *right* as the door to my stop opened. I almost flew out the train and up the stairs. What a feeling.

I do hope Claire has that same embrace. She does react quite strongly to music even at 5-months-old, with Beyoncé's "TEXAS HOLD 'EM" having an amazing soothing influence on her. That song has honestly saved our life. There have been dozens of times already when she is crying, we play that song, and she stops crying within seconds.

Whether in her car seat, having boogers aspirated out of her nose, or having medicine syringed into her mouth, Beyoncé always saves us. We honestly owe her so much; I think we would have lost our sanity a long time ago without that song.

The only other song that works is the NARUTO Main Theme, oddly enough (which only works when TEXAS HOLD 'EM doesn't work).

I think this bodes well for her relationship with music. I can't wait until she, Iona, and I can all dance together. It'll be magic.

[cautionsound]

Songs I Like, #1: Weezer - Holiday

This YouTube video popped up on my homepage:

And the prompt reminded me of this song. There's something so triumphant about the opening riff that makes you feel like you've climbed the mountain top. I. DID IT!!!!!!!!!

The summer after my dad died I listened to Weezer's first two albums on repeat while driving to/from a tutoring gig. Tremendous catharsis, to brood with the brooding songs and scream with the screaming songs. Holiday's triumphant tone didn't really fit though. I was on academic probation, in the early stages of a breakup, and in a prolonged state of shock from everything that comes from your dad dying of a stroke just after your 20th birthday.

In the 13 years since though, I somehow graduated, married the love of my life, and now my dad's first grandchild is 3 months old.

CUE THE GUITAR RIFF.

We. DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

🎵Let's go away for a while / You and I / To a strange and distant land🎵

[cautionsound]

friendship flings

there’s you and another. the two of you share a flurry of conversation over a short period of time.

then it stops. a mere friendship fling.

you wonder why. perhaps the conversational flurry was of a situational sort. the two of you shared a class together, you found yourselves in the same car on multiple occasions, something like that. but as the situation went, so did the fling.

or perhaps the flurry was of a personal sort. one noticed a tumblr post the other wrote, or he just looked particularly nice that day, and a burst of conversation ensued. but the inertia from that initial burst could only last so long. you run out of things to talk about, and the fling runs its course.

or perhaps it’s, perhaps it’s just… it is what it is. you talked for a bit, life happened, so you didn’t talk for a while, and now you aren’t in the position to strike up conversation with that person without some kind of excuse, and you can only come up with so many excuses. your path crossed with her path for a while; it was fun. you smiled, you laughed, you pondered. but you can’t be friends with everyone.

so you settle for looking wistfully at the other’s frame or screen name from time to time, wishing for situations to fall from the sky so you could talk the talk, laugh the laugh, ponder the ponder. but you can’t be friends with everyone, so you shrug off the wist and settle for the beautiful friends you already have.

and it’s alright

[cautionsound]

Kobe

When I was around seven or eight we went to a wedding. The groom was Dad’s friend, or was he Mom’s cousin? The whole thing is mostly a blur now, but I do remember that the reception was in Long Beach (what a funny name for a city, I thought) and that you could see the ocean from the bar.

I remember this because my little brother and I had hoisted ourselves up on the barstools to watch the basketball game. The Lakers were playing. At that point I didn’t know much about basketball other than David Robinson had the same name as my brother, Dennis Rodman had crazy hair, and at the end, Michael Jordan always won.

Some time passed before we felt a presence. We turned our heads to find the bride. She came alone, in her wedding dress. David and I bowed instinctively. She smiled, and asked if we wanted a drink. There wasn’t a bartender, so when we nodded yes, she strode behind the bar herself, grabbed two cups and a hose, and started filling the cups with Sprite. My brother and I were transfixed. Our bowl-cuts had never been to a bar, and the idea that you could shoot Sprite from a hose was pretty much the coolest thing we could ever imagine.

She laughed at our wide eyes, and asked if we wanted to try. David and I looked at each other, wondering if it was okay. Finally she grabbed another cup and put the hose in my brother’s hand, telling him to go for it. So he did, then I did, and it felt like we had uncovered secret access to infinite soda. It was great.

Her eyes then went to the game, so ours followed. She said the Lakers were her favorite team. I had never met a girl with a favorite basketball team; most people back home in Albuquerque only watched football. So I thought about how cool that was as the three of us sat there for a bit, watching. In that moment, with Sprite in my hand, basketball on the TV, and the bride in her wedding dress, sun-kissed ocean behind her—she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

Eventually she went back to being the bride at her wedding. But before she left, I remember that David asked her who her favorite player was. She pointed a white-gloved finger. We turned our eyes to a man with big hair and 30 points.

“Kobe.”

[cautionsound]

pictured: my little brother, David (left), and me (right)

A few hours before my father laughingly took this picture, he angrily chastised his two sons for drawing on our new coffee table. It’s one of my first memories; the experience of moving into a new house, with everything all big and shiny and different, must have left a rather indelible mark on my psyche. Mom recently explained that this particular incident was the first time that dad formally disciplined us. He felt that we should start taking some responsibility for our actions. I was four, my brother two.

I guess my mischievous, conniving persona started young, for as soon as my father cleaned the table and left the room to continue unpacking, little me somehow reacquired the dry erase markers and convinced my poor brother to draw on the table even though Dad had just warned against it. Other than an appreciation for The Beatles and Sufjan Stevens, I was never really a good influence on him.

So Mom and/or Dad walk by a few hours later and find the coffee table mockingly graffiti-ed with their own command: “DON’T COLOR ON [the] TABLE.” My brother wasn’t yet capable of expressing thought, hence the cryptic yellow scribbles. I wonder how long my parents deliberated over whether to be humored or apoplectic. It might have been a referendum on their whole style of parenting for all I know. Anyway, Dad laughed and took a picture, seriously but calmly explained why it was important to keep the table clean, and eighteen-or-so years later, I found the commemorating photograph on a CD-ROM marked “Favorites” while unpacking for Mom’s new house in SoCal.

The “Favorites” is in my dad’s signature d'nealian penmanship, all close-kerned and controlled-like. It was nice to see it. It’s been a while. Miss you, Dad.

[cautionsound]

The Language of Basketball

The NBA returned to action today. It was great to see some of the familiar protagonists—LeBron, Kawhi, Doc Rivers’ amazing hairline—return to the fore.

Even more than watching basketball though, I miss playing. I joined a rec league in early 2019 and it’s been a blast, at least it was until COVID hit and halted our spring season. 

Nate Duncan touched on this in a podcast, but basketball is such a unique activity in that you could walk to a random court, team up with four random strangers, and within a few minutes, coordinate your play as if you’ve played for years. It’s different than pickup soccer or something, in that ostensibly the roles are so defined and require such unique skills, that you’d think some planning would be necessary. Like ten emails and an hour-long Zoom meeting. But through how you talk, dress, move, dribble, you communicate within seconds how you’re comfortable playing, the four others do the same, and then you’re off. Someone brings the ball up, people spot up for three, people rebound. Naturally, without a word of planning, people fall in tune with the choreography of basketball.

And when it all clicks, it feels almost religious. Like you’re connecting on some higher plane of understanding beyond conscious thought. Screen, cut, swing, swing, corner 3, bang. Then you run back on defense and God, it feels great to have a human body.

[cautionsound]

The Most Romantic Place On Earth

I’ve been meaning to write, and Frank Shyong of the LA Times posted this tweet today and it inspired a burst of nostalgia on the old Borders in Palo Alto, so here goes:

The Borders in Palo Alto, which closed in 2011, was at the old Varsity Theater. You walked through this rather regal courtyard to access the books, lending an air of academia before you even arrived.

One of my first dates ever started here, after her mom drove us there (lol). The perspective in the picture below, from atop the staircase, is particularly burned into my memory. 

She walked ahead of me up the stairs, and I remember noticing the hair on her neck and arms. I had never noted a girl’s body hair before, so I was a little taken aback at first, but then thought you know, whatever. Everyone has hair. The way the fluorescence softly reflected off of it looked really nice, actually. 

We didn’t speak much, just sifted through various sections. Past the Redwalls and Harry Potters from years past, past authors who would shape our perspectives and personalities during high school, and past self-help books on phases of life we had yet to endure. I don’t remember anything we said, remember what we did after, or anything else really—just the light reflecting off her arm hair in the most romantic place on earth.