#the whole theming of the song about recalling memories like vivid events ‘i can hear the rain just like her laughter’

[ranuunculus]

the last notes in I Can Hear the Rain… <- (full of emotion)

[modernart2012]

Sing Sing (Lovin’ You)

1.  There’s something to be said about waking up on Saturdays. It’s not the sudden blaring of his alarm, and the dusty echo of an otherwise empty apartment. It’s warm, on Saturdays. And not just because Friday night was his standing arcade night appointment with Hizashi, and he inevitably ends up at the Yamada’s home, in Hizashi’s bed - only because he can never get warm enough on the spare futon - for the night. Normally, he’s cocooned in blankets and Hizashi, tangled up so thoroughly that sometimes he finds stray golden hairs on his brush days later. So when he wakes up to slight jostling this Saturday, he’s not surprised to find it’s Hizashi leaning over him as he extracts himself from the Gordian Knot they’ve become. What’s different is he’s humming soft and low.“Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you; caught up in circles confusion is nothing new,” the words flow in steady soothing cadence, not disrupting the haze of sleep Shōta’s surfacing from. Shōta stretches and yawns in response, because if Hizashi is up then Yamada-san has probably made pancakes.

Hizashi keeps humming the tune, skipping lines at will, but his eyes remain sleep soft and quiet, not yet sparking with his normal energy. Shōta sits up to finish stretching, joints popping and crackling across his torso. “Good morning,” he greets and is returned.

It takes until halfway through his pancakes that he pinpoints exactly what was odd about Hizashi’s humming. “That song you were humming this morning - it was in English, wasn’t it?”

Hizashi startles around a mouthful of pancake, then after a moment to finish chewing and swallowing, “Yeah.” He looks awkward, off kilter, as if he wasn’t expecting to be caught.

Shōta takes pity on him, “You sounded good. The English I mean.”

Hizashi brightens, then leers at Shōta playfully, “Yeah? I’ve got a talented tongue, what can I say.”

Shōta huffs, amused despite himself. “You can say you’ll help me with the English assignment due Monday, and I won’t let Tensei know that you can sing.”

Given that Tensei is often dragged to karaoke group dates, this is a good threat. Hizashi pales and quickly agrees to the terms.

2. The next time Hizashi sings for Shōta, it’s after their final Sports Festival at Yuuei. They’re third years, and in a completely unforeseen turn of events, it ends up with the both of them in Recovery Girl’s office with heavy injuries. Shōta himself is in traction, both legs in casts after going up against a Mutation type quirk that produced skin like stone. Hizashi, similarly, is banged up, his neck supported by a brace and his back strapped to a board to ensure that he doesn’t further cause damage to his bruised spine. Shōta is doped up on pain medications, because Recovery Girl can only do so much when her patients are exhausted, and he’s pretty sure he’s hallucinating. There is no other explanation for the flying reptiles. (Unless it’s a Quirk?)

He’s about to cross check with Hizashi on the status of the reptiles when he hears soft raspy humming float across the room. Hizashi’s voice, usually loud and exuberant at all times, and not bad to listen to normally, was downright angelic when he sang - something Shōta knew he could never tell Hizashi for want of never live it down. While Shōta didn’t mind Hizashi’s near constant chatter, it’d be awful if he knew that Shōta couldn’t imagine a world without that voice booming in his ear at some point in the day. “If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world? I don’t quite know how to say how I feel; those three words are said too much  they’re not enough….”

Shōta’s aware enough that this time it’s English, but with the way his head is still aching, he’s having trouble understanding the words. Hizashi was always better at English anyways, so he’s already at a disadvantage. Maybe he should study English more, ask Hizashi for tips? Shōta yawns and decides to do so when he wakes, letting the soothing sound of Hizashi’s voice carry him off to restful sleep.

3. The worst part of being 20 and drunk is realizing Hizashi. There’s more behind that, but Shōta’s having a hard time with words, and what other words can explain … everything. There are no good words for describing how Hizashi’s eyes sparkle (not plain green, something like a gemstone, rare and unique), or the way his hair looks when it’s down (bright and soft like the fuzzy glow of a baby duck, but shiny and vivid like spun gold threads), or the general energy (aura?) of Hizashi. Effervescent doesn’t cut it, but there’s not anything better? Shōta turns to glare at Nemuri, who is also drunk, “Japanese is a pathetic language. There are no good words.”

Nemuri pokes him in the ear from her spot on the floor, missing his cheek by a solid mile, “Don’t you suck at English, though?”

The only appropriate response is to blow a raspberry at her.

He doesn’t get retaliation from Nemuri in response, though, because he ends up with a faceful of cat paw. Kurage was just as much of an jerk as he was, and they got along beautifully except for the occasions wherein Kurage decided that he needed as taste of his own medicine. God, he loved his cat.

Shōta is startled out of his consideration of whether he should risk getting clawed in the face in order to cuddle his cat with the soulful tones of Hizashi, singing along with some song piped in through the speakers. It was still a rare event to hear Hizashi sing, but he was good and Shōta was always captivated. “I’m not looking for somebody with some superhuman gifts, some superhero, some fairytale bliss; just something I can turn to, somebody I can kiss, I want something just like this….”

Another English song, and with only him and Nemuri and Tensei there, it felt like a present. More so than the times he busted into spontaneous song, usually his favorite (read: latest find) song of the week. Hizashi only ever sang when he felt especially at ease, and it always highlighted his soft spots. Shōta turns over onto his stomach to cushion his head on the couch arm so he can watch. He’s rewarded with a playful wink from Hizashi with a warmth that was unusual, and if he weren’t already red from the sake he was sure he’d be blushing.

It’s only later when he’s crawled into bed and let Hizashi arrange them for maximum octopus impression does he have a realization about the songs Hizashi sings, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. He’ll try to recall it in the morning.

4. Shōta hates Fridays now sometimes, because Friday means Hizashi has his radio show to produce, and that means they don’t head for the arcade. Hizashi always has a talk segment, generally about something ostensibly music related but sometimes something he and Shōta discussed during the week. During those times, Shōta’s “his Number 1 Listener” and it satisfies the cat-possessive portion of his soul, outright luxuriates in the attention. But otherwise, Fridays now interrupt their standing arcade date appointment, which used to be the highlight of Shōta’s week because he’d get all of Hizashi’s attention for a bit.

This week is almost worse, because Nemuri and Ectoplasm made a bet (that they’ve kept from even hinting at in front of Shōta, which is suspect) with Hizashi who had lost - somehow, because Hizashi has never in Shōta’s memory lost a bet - and he has been close lipped about his forfeit ever since. He had mumbled something about it all being on his show, so Shōta tuned in a little earlier in order to be sure to catch the whole show and not skip the cold open as he usually did.

Shōta can imagine the way Hizashi’s tipped back in his chair as he enthusiastically greets his listeners, the way he would light up from the inside with the focused energy of “Present Mic” live on air. It was different from fights with villains - there was no urgency or adrenaline, no crash, this was pure buoyancy that set Shōta’s veins to fizzling too. That fizz and the usual Hizashi general fizz usually compounded into something that felt like he’d ingested nitroglycerin - a racing jittery feeling that bounced around his insides while he outwardly remained calm.

Time hasn’t dulled that regular Hizashi feeling, only given him a chance to realize it’s always been there and he’s only just not managed to notice. He doesn’t want to give a name to it, because his grandmother always said names have power, but he knows. What to do about it, that’s an entirely different question though.

The cold open ends, leading into the opening theme of the show. A rock number Hizashi spent an entire weekend mixing, having Shōta listen to different versions until he finally had it prepared. That had been a good weekend, one spent entirely sleeping and with Hizashi (sometimes simultaneously, which… in retrospect should have clued Shōta in because he had been altogether too happy to wake up to Hizashi), eating takeout ramen and gyoza with extra chili oil for both.

A few of the latest top 40 hits played, interspersed with Hizashi giving his thoughts (some highly unflattering) on the song. A few requests are thrown in, with light banter between Hizashi and the fan on the line, then it was time for an advertisement break. One is for an “Eraserhead eraser! Completely erases all mistakes just like Quirks!” Shōta internally snickered, because that was the best piece of misinformation he had ever been induced to produce. Such a great logical ruse!

Then Hizashi was back on, his animated tone greeting his listeners, then growing a little subdued. “Recently, I lost a bet with some colleagues about a certain topic. The penalty was to sing a song for my Special Person. So, um. Here I go? I hope you, and especially you my Most Precious Person, enjoy.”

He strums a guitar, humming the opening along before beginning to sing along fervently.  With his gut sinking through the floor - since when did Hizashi have someone like that? Why had he never said? - Shōta listens carefully, recognizing the song as one Hizashi had wanted to play but ultimately rejected because of its age.

Hizashi carries into the chorus, “If you gave me a chance I would take it, It’s a shot in the dark but I’ll make it, Know with all of your heart, you can’t shame me; When I am with you, there’s no place I’d rather be.” If that wasn’t a full on confession, Shōta didn’t know what it was. He stares at the not insignificant number of papers he had yet to grade, shoves them into a messy pile in a drawer, then grabs his coat and all but flees the office.

If the villains he apprehends that night are a bit rougher for the experience than is norm, then no one comments.

5. “Feelings suck” is the sum total of what Shōta learns in the next few weeks. He did his best to act like everything was normal, that he didn’t know Hizashi had a romantic interest that wasn’t him, but every time he did he’s plagued by thoughts of Hizashi’s “Precious Person”. Who were they? Did they know? Did they suspect? Did they love Hizashi too? Know about his need to cuddle at night? The way he hated shrimp and lobster for looking too much like bugs? His hatred of strawberry milk, but love of raw strawberries? In the end, it was too much, and he inevitably fled with thin excuses. After a few days Hizashi started looking like someone had kicked his puppy and Nemuri was frowning at Shōta like he had done something wrong. Saying he was going out with his friends (who weren’t also Hizashi’ friends or originally Hizashi’s friends) didn’t work that well, because beyond his agency colleagues, he didn’t know very many people, plus Hizashi worked at Yuuei too and if he dragged Thirteen out any more he was sure Thirteen was going to Black Hole him. Which meant the only other option was to take more shifts during the night. Beyond the fact that this netted him a more surefire way to avoid Hizashi, it also netted him extra cash, which had the opposite effect because his first instinct was to buy things for Hizashi. Shōta stares at the pair of brand new, latest version headphones Hizashi had been gushing about, the ones that had the best audio clarity and sound truity as compared to the other headphones of similar style on the market. They had cost quite a bit, but Shōta was flush with cash anyways and the extra padding from his recent shift increase was just begging to be spent. Maybe it would make up for the forlorn look Hizashi had been sporting recently?

That thought was put on hold as a massive shape flew through part of the train carriage. It wasn’t a high traffic time, in fact only a handful of people were riding, which was lucky. What wasn’t lucky was the dark shadow that was also flying towards the carriage. That was definitely Hizashi, dealing with the villain in a rather harsh manner. Which made almost no sense, since Hizashi wasn’t much for shadow heroics (though the harsh treatment… that was usually only for heinous criminals.) What was he doing hero-ing when there was no adoring media, no spotlight, no fame or newspot to be gained? Was he doing night shifts so he could have more time with his Special Person? The thought sours almost as soon as Shōta thought it. He frowns and focuses on the headphones for the rest of the ride home.

Except, he doesn’t make it home. He’s just entering his apartment, Kurage twining about his feet, when he receives the call. The voice on the line is collected and professional, imparting the bare minimum of details before Shōta hangs up and races back the way he came.

He must have looked like a madman running full tilt into the lobby of the Shūzenji Hospital in Kita ward, breathless from having sprinted the whole way. “Pre-Present Mi-c,” his chest rose and fell in a staccato beat, fighting for air against the burn in his muscles. The receptionist looks at him like he’s some sort of monster, her lilac skin fading to lavender as she froze. He bears down on her like she’s a troublesome student, eyes sharp, her skin going grey, “I-I was cal-led. A-About Pre-se-nt Mi-Mic. He-he w-was admitted here.” He inhales sharply, then exhales, “His room number?”

The receptionist sags relief clear from the slack of her spine to be out of his gaze. “I’ll need to see identification before I can tell you that.”   

Good, he wouldn’t have to file a complaint with Recovery Girl that her receptionists were shoddy and letting anyone up into recovering heros’ hospital rooms. He fishes out his ID, and waits impatiently for the receptionist to check the information. When she finally returns it, he is jittering in place, and barely hears the room number before he is flying down the halls and opting to dash up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.  

He slows down on the floor though, because there are obviously other patients in the ward. He slips around the night nurses, nodding to the ones he recognizes. After all, this is the floor for those who are under the effect of a Quirk gone haywire, usually overexertion of their own but sometimes under the effect of a Villain’s Quirk. He doesn’t know which he is in for, and hoped if it was Hizashi’s Quirk run amok that he had already lost his voice from too much screaming. Or that the nurses had managed to get his multi-directional speaker off him. Recovery Girl would not be happy having to heal him from broken eardrums.

Shōta meets a nurse at the door to Hizashi’s room, Satō, who is generally sent to deal with heroes due to his six arms and infinite patience with which to deal with difficult people. He nods politely at Satō, who returns the greeting with a perfunct, “Eraser.” He looks dead inside, which some might say was a step up from his usual vaguely fed up with life countenance, but must also speak to the hassle Hizashi has become. Shōta makes note to sent Satō a fruit basket, one with a melon.

Shōta clears his throat, “How is he?”

Satō stars at him with dead eyes, “Truth Quirk plus Singing Quirk. Now he can’t stop singing - real songs! - about whatever he’s thinking about, and it has to be true.” One set of his arms crosses itself, and Satō looms, “It’d be best if you just took him home.”

That. That was not a suggestion and Shōta makes note to not send a fruit basket. Satō does not deserve a fruit basket. When he enters the patient room, however, he wants to flee and pretend he was never there. He’s caught Hizashi mid-song, “Where did I go wrong? And how can I make it right? Tell me where did I go wrong? You know I want to make it right, and make you come back it me.” Then his eyes land on Shōta and he practically wrenches his jaws shut, face going blank and lovely croon abruptly cutting off.

Shōta tilts his head, a slightly worn smile tipping the corners of his lips as if he hadn’t just caught Hizashi singing, “This is a jailbreak. Let’s head home.”

There is a momentary panic in his eyes, and Hizashi’s mouth opened before he clamped it shut again and nods. They leave the hospital, and Hizashi seems determined to sing some inane anime opening about hamsters. When that was over, he switched to the themes for some anime with ninjas, and then some song about …. samurai hearts? Shōta had stopped keeping track around the time Hizashi partook in a rap battle about… the lights in the night sky?  Something like that. At least they were at Shōta’s apartment, and Hizashi couldn’t bellow anime songs.

Kurage greets them from her perch on the refrigerator, or at least greets Hizashi. She pointedly ignores Shōta, probably for the betrayal of not petting her earlier before he had to run out. Had he ever mentioned his cat was an asshole? She was perfect.

Also, an effective distraction for Hizashi, who was singing a children’s song about an adventurous cat. It was an interesting trick, to consciously think only of a specific song to get around the Quirks. Commendable even. But he missed Hizashi’s voice -screeching, solemn, lilting, and mellifluous, all the different ways he expressed himself so wholeheartedly. Hopefully this would wear off soon.

Shōta was jolted out of his musings by Hizashi grabbing his sleeve as he passed by. His voice is rough with overuse, quiet and shaken, “Sh-ōta, did - did you get - get those?” He sounded like he was actively fighting against the Quirks affecting him, and the way he sagged boneless against Shōta belied how much energy he had spent to achieve it. Shōta turned to follow his line of sight, to the headphone box he had left carelessly in the genkan.

Hot embarrassment floods through him, and he could feel the flush spread across his face and down his chest. “Ah- uh, Yes. I did? They’re for you.” He winced internally at the way that sounded.

“Oh,” Hizashi sighs, and whatever had been sucking him of energy these past few weeks seemed to disappear. He smiled tenderly, then moved so quickly Shōta had no time to react. His face ends up buried in the junction of Hizashi’s neck and shoulder, Hizashi hugging him tightly like he was a ghost liable to drift away at the slightest breeze. He’s singing again, softly as if he’s afraid of being overheard. “We watch the season pull up its own stakes, and catch the last weekend of the last week.  Before the gold and the glimmer have been replaced, another sun soaked season fades away.  You have stolen my heart. You have stolen my heart.”

Shōta fists his hands in Hizashi’s jacket, glad that Hizashi couldn’t see his face as his world imploded. He’d become practiced enough at English at this point to know the words, and their meaning, and what they meant strung together and his heart was exploding like a star into so much dust, uncontrollable and pure. This song was clear, direct and the only thing he could think is, “Oh, he’s in love with me too.”

+1. The next few days were like drifting anchorless and weightless through a bank of clouds. It was surreal, unbelievable even. How? When? Why? Of all the manically unpredictable things - him? Oh, that time on the radio - was for him? He chased himself in circles of thought, ignoring the frowns Nemuri sent his way, the terrified way his students cowered, and instead lost himself in the near permanent giddiness suffusing into his bones and Hizashi’s smiles.

Then it hit him around the time he’s trying to make tonkatsu ramen from scratch - he had never given any indication that he felt the same. “Oh, Endeavor-dammit,” he informs Kurage, who yowls in agreement. Shōta feeds her a piece of cooked chicken and considered the discussion closed.

Which, then begged the question, how to go about confessing. All the guides on the internet were geared towards high school girls, with ideas like letters in shoeboxes and homei choco, and other trite things that are fine for high schoolers but not grown men in their mid-twenties who had know each other for nearly a decade. For kicks, Shōta  tries searching that in google and ends up in a very odd place in the internet. Something about fursuits. He closes the browser quickly, then climbs into his sleeping bag to think. This has to be special.

It comes to him mid-nap interruption by Kurage trying to worm herself into the sleeping bag, when there’s a metallic clatter against his floor. He blindly reaches around Kurage - has he mentioned his cat is an asshole? - and getting a faceful of cat butt while he roots around for whatever fell. His hand lands on a small, thin rectangle, which his eyes tell him is Hizashi’s iPod. An idea comes to him, one that will need some practice to execute well, but … doable. He sets to, because he only has this weekend off.

By Monday, he has the perfect plan. He drops the iPod and a CD - thank God he knows that Hizashi has a CD player - clearly labeled with Hizashi’s name and with directions in Hizashi’s shoebox (somethings are a classic for a reason.) Then he goes about his day trying to teach first years. He’ll know when Hizashi has listened to it - he hopes. Then there’s a massive incident that All Might puts down quickly, but it’s all hands on deck to quell the populus and maintain order. Confessions, such as they are, get put to the wayside.

It’s only the Friday after, during Hizashi’s radio show that Shōta remembers that he gave Hizashi a CD. It’s during his talk segment that Hizashi talks about receiving a CD from his Number 1 Listener, and that he hadn’t listened to it yet. He invites all the listeners to listen with him, and queues up the only track on the CD. Shōta is glad that all the other teachers have left for the weekend, because he would be too mortified to survive otherwise.

Which is not to say he isn’t mortified, just less mortified than what he could be. Shōta decides it doesn’t matter and gives up on lesson plans to head home. That way he can skip most of the embarrassment.

It’s rush hour and it’s raining, so the trains are packed and it takes a while to get home. He greets his cat, and sets about preparing dinner, his phone clearly visible even though he knows Hizashi won’t call unless the show is over. He itches to turn on his radio, but refrains because Hizashi just played his confession on live radio. Shōta can imagine the fallout, and doesn’t wish to die of embarrassment. He settles for finishing the ingredients for katsu curry.

Shōta’s patience is rewarded when there’s a heavy pounding at his front door. The door flies open to a disheveled Hizashi, who is radiant and broken and panting and staring as if Shōta is a miracle Hizashi can’t yet believe in, and then he’s got an armful of wet leather and wet gloves against his face and a chaste wondrous supplication against his lips.

They break away to breathe, foreheads pressed against each other. He’s breathless and soaring and smiling just standing there in the genkan. And this is perfect, in it’s own way, no matter that Shōta’s sure that Kurage has probably eaten herself sick of the tonkatsu, no matter that Hizashi is dripping and probably going to catch cold, no matter that hundreds of thousands of people just heard Shōta confess on live radio. And then he’s laughing, and Hizashi is too and that’s fine, because he’s got Hizashi and the rest is just…. The rest.

Later that night, both of them full of curry and laughter and kisses, tangled up in bed, that Shōta sings for Hizashi, one more time, “Take my hand - Take my whole life too, But I can’t help falling in love with you.”

[oneweekoneband]

If you get on folk music's most celebrated highway and drive north along the shore of the biggest freshwater lake on earth, cross Knife River and angle right onto a red-dirt gravel driveway that winds almost a full mile down through tangles of lupine and sumac and quaking aspen, you will find, set back on a sloping lawn, a gray house with a dark red front door. Ten years ago, I lived there. The plot of land where it stands used to hold a different house, white clapboard with blue trim; I watched one morning before fourth grade as a bulldozer ripped open the front wall of that house and something yellow — a forgotten toy, or maybe just a piece of insulation — tumbled from what used to be my bedroom to the grass below. We broke ground on the new gray house just before the leaves fell that year. My mother, an architect, drew the plans. My stepfather, a contractor, worked to frame it and roof it and hang the drywall. By the next summer, the house was complete enough that the three of us were able to move upstairs from the single dusty room we'd been sharing in the half-finished basement, and that fall, Suzanne Vega released Songs in Red and Gray.

---

The facts: Songs in Red and Gray is Vega's first album after her divorce from Mitchell Froom, who is the producer of 99.9F and Nine Objects of Desire as well as the father of her only child, Ruby. In the press she remained adamant that the album was not explicitly biographical, that only a handful of songs dealt directly with her emotions and experiences regarding their split, and that in no way should it be considered a concept album about her divorce. Nevertheless, the theme of divorce runs through the songs the way a vein of iron runs through earth, deep and heavy and unyielding. I have no way of knowing if, when I whirled around our new kitchen to "Priscilla" with tattered chiffon scarves from the dress-up basket swirling in my wake, that same vein already lay beneath the smooth tile and fresh paint and slab foundation of the gray house. I do know that, five years later, before we'd even installed the upstairs shower or finished the front porch, my mother and I moved out for good.

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Trying to explain Songs in Red and Gray feels like trying to explain this house to you: the house my mother dreamed, the house my stepfather built. I could sketch a floor plan, spread out paint samples, tighten focus on any number of tiny details and fixtures to illustrate a point, but to me it is not about any small part of the whole. It's about the air inside. How it changed. This album sounds different than any of the work that came before it — there's a different atmosphere, a heaviness and a hugeness, a flung-wide feeling that could be freedom or grief, depending on the light. What must it feel like, spending years of your life laboring over a project with someone only to come to a point when the work is all that's left, and then not even that anymore? How do you learn to move alone through the space you once traversed together? This album starts with "Penitent" — once I stood alone so proud — and despite the name it is not so much a hymn of atonement as it is an exhale of long-held breath, a sigh of relief and frustration and pure honesty addressed to an indifferent god. Or husband. Or father.

---

If you're paying attention, you'll notice that the divorce already happened. Before the first house even got torn down, before I ever sang along to "Soap and Water" — daddy's a dark riddle, mama's a headful of bees — I'd learned to live like the little kite, carried away on the wayward breeze. My stepfather built the gray house; my father haunted it. Telephone calls and bad dreams. Twice a month my mother would drive me to see him: six hours one way on a Friday night, six hours back on Sunday. She copied Suzanne Vega's first two albums onto a single cassette tape so we could listen straight through both, and I'd stare out the window, past the ghostly reflection of my own face, the shadowed ditches, the half-moon hanging in my hair, listening. Mostly I was silent but sometimes I'd sing along. My favorite was "The Queen and the Soldier." She closed herself up like a fan.

---

I said I did not want to dwell on the small parts of the whole but, actually, it’s the smallest things that snag, burned into the back of my brain like afterimage. The gray pewter vase held the deep red rose / one piece of coral shone white / by the brass candlestick near your red velvet coat / is everything I can recall of one night. Color makes this album what it is, and it’s color that comes back to me most readily in memory. When they were building the gray house they cut down my favorite rowan tree, the one split at the base into three trunks with a cleft just big enough to hold me. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. Whorls of white lichen like lace over the dark silver bark. Vivid red berries. Did you know that there’s a logic to the way languages develop words for color? First comes the differentiation of values: dark and light. Next is always red, because you need a word to call attention to blood.

---

The traditional way to trace a family history is by tree, but I find it easier to follow the path not branch to branch but split to split, a maze of rifts and cracks. My family tree reads like twigs scattered on the ground, like fortune-telling. The week I watched the bulldozer tear down the white house, my teacher instructed our class to create timelines of our lives. Include significant events, she said, like when you've moved or your family structure changed. As I began to track backwards through the number of ruptures and relocations, I became increasingly anxious; I could not see how to cram all of my significant life events onto the paper she had provided. Already there had been too much upheaval. At the far right edge of the ruler-straight line she’d drawn for us, I wrote, watched my house get torn down. I don’t remember what I left off the page to make sure everything fit properly, I only know that I must have done so, because never in my life have I managed to tell the full story in any one place.

---

What stuns me most about this album, even after all these listens, is its sense of control. Amazon’s reviewer wrote that it is “arranged with the meticulous precision of a butler laying silver on a table,” and although I think that wasn’t meant strictly as a compliment I can’t help but hear it as one. There’s something heavy and rich and ritualistic in it, but no sloppy decadence; more like something Catholic, explicitly — the Virgin Mary on a chain has hit me in the mouth again — and implicitly, echoes of sin and sacrament and guilt and ceremony. Old magics and new. Actions seem spurred not by abandon but by lucid calculation, every sentiment balanced in a cold and practiced hand before being placed — not hurled, not smashed, not brandished — placed, with exquisite care, in exactly the right spot. A long row of silver knives on a red tablecloth.

---

Outside the gray house with the red door, walking the windswept shoreline, I collected stones. Smooth and round and dark gray, some washed almost to perfect circles in the tumble of the lake. I’d fill my pockets and bring them home to line the windowsill or bookshelf, dropped them carefully into glass jars. When we were packing to move out, I remember thinking: what the fuck am I going do with all these rocks? It seemed absurd to lay them carefully inside a box and carry them away, but somehow more absurd to bring them back outside, dump them unceremoniously on the beach somewhere and leave. The title track of this album has a line that goes will you please tell me why I remember these things / after all of this time I don’t know, and it was that line that echoed in my head the first time I encountered the much-loved quote from Anne Carson’s “The Glass Essay” where the mother says, You remember too much. Why hold onto all that? And the narrator replies, Where can I put it down? In the end, I took the stones.

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My mother and I moved into a new house, splintery blue shingles and a rust-smeared white screen door, and the week afterwards, I started high school. We pulled up the stiff shag carpet and painted the walls wearing torn jeans and ate dinner together every night. Like the Gilmore Girls, people said to us; I hadn’t seen the show so I didn’t know whether to confirm or deny. I’ve watched a few episodes now and the comparison seems fair, but what struck me as the greatest difference is the ease with which they draw honest emotional conversation out of each other, how willing they are to speak the names of what haunts them. What hurts them. Then again, once my mother asked me over a plate of eggs Benedict in a diner: how come you were always able to understand when to get out of a relationship? And I said: I think watching you get divorced twice taught me that breaking up was always possible.

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Forgive me all my blindnesses / my weakness and unkindnesses. I have the only child’s predilection towards secrecy and silence, sharing myself only insofar as I reveal nothing that sits too close to the bone. I have, too, the only child’s myopic self-absorption; I tell history by telling the story of myself. It is hard for me to talk about my parents’ marriage because I have no memories of them together, aside from a single hazy impression of my mother at the kitchen sink in my fathers’ house, washing dishes, her dark hair still tumbling halfway down her back. In that memory, she is only a few years older than I am now. So much of this album recalls my past selves, my early private dramas of sorrow and self-creation, but when Suzanne Vega sings soap and water / take the day from my hand / scrub the salt from my stinging skin / slip me loose of this wedding band I’ve never not pictured my mother’s hands under the fauce, her bony knuckles and trimmed nails, and the ring from her second marriage, beaten with an intricate pattern of platinum and rose gold. Our hands look remarkably alike, but they are not the same hands. I am embarrassed to say that I do not know the story of how she left my father, nor the story of how she left my stepfather, from her perspective. I am not sure that I have ever asked her, and if she ever told me, I have failed to remember.

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Whatever happened to the handsome fist? He’s here, of course, he always is — the puppeteer from “Machine Ballerina,” the adulterer from “Song in Red and Gray,” the imperious patriarch of “Penitent.” The last time I saw my former stepfather was when we ran into each other in the grocery store a few years back. He looked the same as I remembered: close-buzzed silver hair, rough suntan, crinkles around the eyes. I almost hid from him at first, nervous and expecting some sort of confrontation, but of course he was perfectly kind to me. Every man is not a fist, as it turns out. Or, I guess — some fists don’t come out swinging. Some fists clench tight because they don’t know how to loosen into a flat palm, allow themselves vulnerability. Some fists clench tight because all fears elide into each other, and there’s no way to know when it’s safe to let go.

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Take what’s wrong and make it go right, you can / weave it like a prayer. This is the part where there should be some kind of revelation. The place where, having been tossed up in the air, the pins come down and I catch them, set them out in sequence so the story makes sense. But the problem is it isn’t a story; I didn’t toss the pins in the first place, and I can’t do anything but scramble to catch them as they come plummeting out of the sky one by one. I’ve never been any good at magic tricks. I can barely even shuffle cards. I tried to learn, bought a book and everything, but my hands wouldn’t do what my mind asked. My father could make coins disappear and reappear at will; it is the only thing I remember him doing that ever delighted me.

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Two years after my mother and I moved out of the gray house, I quit speaking to my father. I did not know that I was going to do it — I just left one weekend and never went back. Two years after that, I graduated from high school; I had a rocky start to college, but in another two years I moved out on my own, for good. My mother started dating someone new — another builder, actually — and they’ve been spending every summer and some winters tearing up the house, redoing bits and pieces to make it more livable without altering the fundamental structure, its good old bones. He re-shingled the outside in raw cedar, which will, over time, weather into a beautiful shade of silver. But they won’t be around for that — the plan is to try to sell it in a couple of years and buy a plot of land somewhere outside of town, build a place of their own from the ground up. Whenever I’m back to visit my mother reminds me that eventually I’ll have to sort through the boxes of my old things and decide what to keep and what to throw away. But, she says, no rush.

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This album ends with a song called "St. Clare." It is, actually, a cover — the original is by Jack Hardy, an old-school New York folk singer and long-time friend of Vega's who passed away in 2011.  Bold little bird / fly away home. Where is home, exactly? Pretty soon every house I’ve lived in before age eighteen will be closed to me forever. A few summers ago I almost made it back to the gray house with the red door — a friend from college came to visit and we drove up the shore together, past Knife River, right onto the gravel road which, as it turns out, is paved now, but I couldn’t bring myself to go all the way down the driveway. What was I afraid of? Seeing something? Or being seen? I couldn’t explain it. We turned around, headed back past the lupines and the sumac and the quaking aspen, back to the famous highway. I think, actually, we listened to that album on the trip — yowling at each other, hoooow does it feeeeeeel! To be on your own. No directioooon home. That was three years ago, and I haven’t been back since. Lately I’ve been fantasizing about driving up the shore again. What I miss more than anything is the landscape: the rock beach, the shadows under the pines, the way the sunlight scatters off the surface of the lake on a calm day. I would like to go back on a clear afternoon and sit next to the water and feel the wind in my hair. When you say home, actually, that’s what I imagine. Not a house at all, not even a person — instead, the atmosphere that holds them, the air that slips in and around and through those precarious human spaces. A place to breathe, a sense of change. Something wild. Something green.