Saturday, March 08, 2008

Oral History

My lesson today included "Take Me Home Country Roads," which, in a moment of delightful synchronicity, we discovered was co-authored by the guy who wrote "Afternoon Delight."

There are a few benefits to going to school two thousand miles from where you grew up. One is being able to get sentimental listening to John Denver when the lyrics have absolutely no relevance to your life beyond a general feeling that somewhere there is a dusty road leading up to the old homestead. Your favorite cow idles up to you as your boots kick up dust and snorts a snort of recognition right as the screen door swings open to reveal your whole family, wearing aprons, leaning against the door frame with the exact same cross-armed posture. Why is everyone wearing aprons? Because you're home. Country roads.

You get to picture your city like a fishbowl filled with the smiling faces of everyone you know, unified in mutual consciousness, content in shared presence. He who has funny mustaches and talks big-heartedly about Socialism bobs in quiet revery next to She who pierced her tongue for a day just to prove she could. Wearer of late-night speedos streaks by Carrier of way too many fragrant, earthy things in her magic purse. A parade of the femininely demure floats indignantly past a chorus of the damned shouting gleefully about buttholes. The disembodied heads, still smiling, roll across the floors of places you keep remembering.

And even though most everybody's on different continents and maybe have always been there, it's nice to think about bowls and roads sometimes.

2 comments:

Jake said...

Sometimes I just hope I've been a good enough friend to be notable enough to shore up in one of your reveries. Keep on, Matt.

Matthew Louv said...

The draft included "He who tolerates his D&D sheet being smothered in crude, phallic pictograms for the amusement of others" but it suggested that you were somehow alien to the "chorus of the damned shouting gleefully about buttholes."

Lowbrowser 4 lyfe, haumie.