Jesus, Etc.

Standing at the corner of Woodlawn and Third, I was listening to Billy Breathes, waiting for the traffic to clear. I glanced at the light to see if it was still green, saw something out of the corner of my eye, wheeled around, surprised. Just two people, waiting to cross as well. A guy, a girl. Friends, maybe more. I felt like an idiot, and was glad when they passed me crossing the street.

Outside the last building I pass before walking up the ramp into Ballantine, some construction workers were taking a cigarette break. I was thinking about my ex-girlfriend, something I've been doing since I came to Bloomington, as the town and campus here remind me of my two months living in Boulder. I thought of how the construction workers would look at me and say, "Rich prick. We work while he listens to his iPod." My response, internally, was, "My ex-girlfriend bought this for me." Not much of a comeback, but it reminded me that, yes, she had bought it for me, had even engraved something on the back, the words that, someday, I would like to title a book with: You Were Right About the Stars.

It's a line taken from the song "Jesus, Etc." by Wilco. Anyone who knows me realizes that I consider Wilco to be the greatest rock group history has ever seen. Though The Beatles may have done more to push music in a different direction, Wilco never sold out the beginning of their career with radio-friendly love songs designed to get them on the charts. Not that those Beatles songs aren't any good. I just don't like them on principle.

To understand the engraved line better, here is some context:

Jesus, don't cry
You can rely on me, honey
You can combine anything you want

I'll be around
You were right about the stars
Each one is a setting sun

One of the things I love about music is its malleability. Music can change shape based on the individual experiences of each and every listener, and since those experiences change, so does the impact of the music.

I don't like getting sentimental, but I need to to explain my point. I loved that girl. In a way that has not been recreated, and is still not forgotten. She was, so to speak, a bright, shining star for me, around which everything I did revolved.

Upon this mini-thought supernova, I played the song. Tweedy introduces it on the Kicking Television album as a mid-tempo rocker, which it is, but it's not something you'll hear anywhere on that kind of radio station. The easy drumming, the strings, Tweedy's cigarette and candy voice. And those words.

It's taken a long time to get over the ex. And this sounds so silly, I know, but this makes sense to me now, like the advice that Allen Ginsburg got when he went to India looking for the same kind of enlightenment he got from his vision of William Blake: If you see something terrible, do not hold onto it. If you see something beautiful, do not hold onto it.

In other words, everything in life is a star, and each one is a setting sun.