Listening to the Lyrics of a Long-Ago Song

I slammed my laptop shut because the barista was grinding beans like he wanted to murder the machine. The raw hum of the city leaked through the cracked window and settled in my marrow. I was trying to write something profound for a client who sells overpriced mattresses. Everything I typed felt like a lie I was telling to a stranger. The fluorescent lights hummed a low note that made my teeth ache. Then the speakers in the corner of the ceiling crackled to life with a familiar hiss. It was a song I hadn't heard since the summer I turned twenty-one. The first three notes of the piano felt like a punch to the solar plexus. I forgot about the mattress copy and the broken grinder and the cold coffee. I was suddenly standing in a kitchen in a city I no longer visit. 1. Music is the only form of time travel that actually works without a permit. 2. A lyric is a dormant virus that waits for your immune system to drop before it attacks. 3. We do not listen to old songs as much as we let them interrogate us. The singer started the first verse and his voice was thinner than I remembered. Or maybe I am just thicker now. I have more layers of scar tissue and better insurance and a much smaller heart. Back then I used to think the words were about a girl who left me at a bus station. I realized now that the song was actually about the terrifying physics of letting go. IT IS EASY TO HOLD ON BUT IT IS ART TO LET GO. I stared at the coffee ring on the table and felt the weight of ten years. The lyrics were talking about a house with a yellow door and a garden full of weeds. I used to want that house. Now I just want a night of sleep where I do not dream about deadlines. 1. Every song is a map to a place that no longer exists on the physical plane. 2. We build our identities out of stanzas and choruses because the real world is too quiet. 3. If you listen closely enough you can hear the sound of your own potential rotting away. The middle eight of the song arrived and the drums started to build. I felt a nervous energy crawling up my arms. I wanted to stand up and walk out the door and never look back at my laptop. I wanted to go find the person I was when I bought the CD version of this track. HE IS GONE AND HE IS NEVER COMING BACK. We spend our lives trying to polish our surfaces until we are reflective and perfect. But the music finds the cracks in the chrome. ## THE RESURRECTION OF THE GHOST The ghost is not the person who died. The ghost is the version of you that used to believe in the impossible. When you hear those lyrics again you see that version of yourself standing in the doorway. He looks at your expensive shoes and your tired eyes and he wonders what happened. I looked at my reflection in the window of the cafe. I looked like a man who knows exactly how much a mattress costs. I did not look like a man who stayed up until dawn writing poetry on the back of receipts. 1. Memory is a LIAR that uses a beautiful melody to cover its tracks. 2. We romanticize the pain of the past because the pain of the present is too boring. 3. The lyrics stay the same but the ears that hear them are constantly decaying. I remember the first time I heard the bridge of this song. I was driving a car with a broken heater through a snowstorm in Ohio. I felt like the singer was reading my private journals out loud to the world. I felt seen and I felt understood and I felt immortal. Now I just feel like I need to buy a new charger for my phone. THAT IS THE TRAGEDY OF GROWING UP. We trade our immortality for a better interest rate. We trade our raw nerves for a steady hand and a cynical mouth. 1. Authenticity is not a brand strategy it is a blood sacrifice. 2. You cannot write anything worth reading if you are afraid of the sound of your own past. 3. The song is the only thing that remains honest when everything else turns into marketing. The barista turned off the grinder and the silence was deafening. The song was reaching its final crescendo. The singer was screaming about a fire that would never go out. I looked at my laptop and felt a sudden wave of revulsion. I was writing about thread counts while the ghost in the song was burning alive. WE ARE ALL GUILTY OF SELLING OUR FIRE FOR FILING CABINETS. I used to think I was a writer because I had things to say. Now I know I am a writer because I have bills to pay. 1. Do not trust anyone who does not have a song that makes them want to weep. 2. The most dangerous thing in the world is a man who has forgotten his favorite lyrics. 3. We are just a collection of vibrations wrapped in a suit. The song faded out into a commercial for a local car dealership. The magic evaporated and the cafe was just a cafe again. The air was stale and the coffee was bitter. I opened my laptop and deleted every word of the mattress copy. I started over. I wrote about the way it feels to wake up in a cold room and remember a dream. I wrote about the way a voice can bridge a gap of a thousand miles. I wrote like I was nineteen years old and my heater was broken in Ohio. IT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO STAY SANE. We think we are the masters of our own narratives. But the truth is that we are just the audience for the songs we used to love. We are the echoes of a melody that started a long time ago. 1. Never apologize for the music that moved you before you knew better. 2. The lyrics are the only inheritance that the tax man cannot touch. 3. Listen to the long ago songs until you remember who you were. I finished the draft and I didn't check the word count. I just hit send and walked out into the raw hum of the city. The air felt different on my skin. I hummed the chorus to myself as I walked toward the train. THE GHOST WAS STILL THERE BUT HE WASN'T ANGRY ANYMORE. He was just waiting for the next track to start. We are all just waiting for the music to tell us it is okay to feel something. FINAL THOUGHT: The song stayed the same but I became a stranger.