tonal

There are certain songs for certain things. I put on Diane Cluck or Skip James, and I am back on the top floor of a building on Boulevard Raspail. Alela Diane or Dave Rawlings Machine and I’ve got the windows open in the evening, and in comes the whistle of the New Jersey Transit.

We took a road trip up through the mountains last weekend. Fresh air, orchids, bugs, barefoot kids on the side of the road. Emaciated dogs.

The year I lived in Granada, my iPod and computer broke within a few weeks of each other. The only music I had was the CDs friends gave me. All of the sudden, my musical library transformed into Fangoria, flamenco, silly pop songs and Chavela Vargas and the DVD in the living room. On the sidewalk, I listened to traffic, barking dogs, arguments, Camarón’s “Vamanos pá casa” coming from someone’s second story living room.

In the morning in Chiang Mai, I listen to KCRW. I know about the traffic backed up on the 405, or the accident on the Pacific Coast Highway. I knew Black Dub’s album would drop the beginning of November. I click twice and there’s TSF Jazz coming straight from Paris. I put on Elvis, Éthiopiques, Gillian Welch, all the funk albums I got in Brooklyn last August.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by this much music. On the road trip this weekend, La Paquera de Jerez came up on shuffle. I thought my heart was going to fall out. Sometimes I hear tourists from Spain at the Sunday night market in the Old City, but their accents sound from the North, or maybe Madrid. Sometimes on long drives I recite whatever stanzas of Spanish poetry I still remember. “A veces cuento las horas de diferencia / el asunto de los hemisferios / No te olvides de nosotros / que te queremos tanto.” I think of how long it took me to hear the compás of a bulería. Uno dos tres, uno dos tres, un dos un dos un dos. How long did it take me to hear the tones in Thai?

มา ม้า หมา

I mentioned to a friend at the bar that settling down somewhere didn't sound so bad. He said, "You're too young to be sound like that!" Certain sounds for certain times. That's what I've learned best from flamenco, learned again from Thai: where to put the stress, and when to let it go.