Musing 2 - I stream consciousness onto a page.

Right now I’m listening to “How to Disappear Completely” off of the album “Kid A” by Radiohead. Now, I’m a big Radiohead fan. I consider them among my very favorite bands, and their albums “OK Computer”, “The Bends” and “In Rainbows” would all rank highly on a list of my favorite albums of all time. I simply haven’t put much time into trying to get into their other albums, which means that listening to “Kid A” (song now: Treefingers) is largely a foreign experience. I don’t know every cymbal chime, as I do on “In Rainbows”, nor every lyric, as is perhaps the case on both “The Bends” and “OK Computer”. I only know one song very well, “Everything in Its Right Place”, the albums opening tune. This is the tune that will consume much of this musing, I think, though I can’t really say. Stream of consciousness, y’know?

Anyway, I’m listening to “Kid A” because in the book “Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story” by Chuck Klosterman, he talks about how “Kid A” as an album now defines September 11th for him. The album maps accurately, according to Klosterman, the events of that day. Now, I don’t know the album nearly well enough to agree or disagree, but I understand where he is coming from. September 11th, 2001, was (at least in New York) a beautiful tuesday. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. It felt good. Everything was, so to speak, in its right place. I don’t believe that statement (of everything being in its right place) can be accurate except on a beautiful morning. And September 11th was that. And then there were those plane crashes, the explosions, smoke, chaos, death, the aftermath, the national unity. Those things, apparently, are all too accurately represented within Kid A.

I’m not inclined to continue talking about September 11th. It was a sad day for many, a particularly jarring day in New York City, and a day that carried terrible consequences. These are not things for a random stream of consciousness musing on a crappy website.

I am inclined to return to “Everything in Its Right Place”. A week ago, the  night of March 4th, 2009 and the morning of March 5th, I did not go to sleep. I watched day become night become day, fueled on amphetamines and caffeine, writing about The New Testament, Machiavelli and Hobbes. At about 6:07 I walked out of my dorm’s common room, put on the song “The Sun It Rises”, and bounded out to the campus’s sundial. It was cold outside, alone in the predawn light. The campus was snowy white and beautiful, perfect, not a soul to be seen. I arrived at the sundial around 6:14 and changed the music. Then I lit my cigarette, inhaled its toxic smoke, and watched.

Thom Yorke sang in the beautiful sunrise. “Everything in its right place…. right plaaaace… right plaace…” I stood, in solitude, smoking that cigarette, watching the sun make its way up the horizon, listening to Radiohead, and the world was perfect. Everything was, completely, in its right place. The sun cleared the horizon as Thom Yorke finished asking, “What was that you tried to say?” And it was exactly how it should have been.

I don’t even smoke cigarettes. I don’t do well sleep deprived, I don’t particularly enjoy the cold, and I sure as hell don’t like it at 6:17 in the morning. But there I was, watching the sun rise on 9 hours of sleep over the course of 3 nights, in 28 degree fahrenheit weather, smoking a cigarette. The sky was completely blue, beautiful sounds were being pumped into my head, the sun was rising, and it was as if nothing in the world mattered, but me, my cigarette, my song and the sun, my sun, in perfect harmony.

I will never be able to replicate that moment. Sure, I can stand out on the sundial at sunrise, smoke a cigarette and listen to Radiohead. But it will never be the same. I will never get to watch the sunrise sleep deprived, smoking one of Kate Ward’s Camel Lights, listening to “Everything In Its Right Place” at the sundial on foot-deep-in-snow Connecticut College campus at 6:17am on the 5th of March in the year 2009. That was a unique experience. I can try to reproduce it, but I will fail. And I think I like it that way. Because it was a beautiful, unique experience, and that’s what made it so perfect.