There was a boy

There was something very right and comforting yesterday about lying on the couch with my book in my hands, my dog sleeping on my chest and Daniel's music filtering into the living room from his room. These are some of the best parts of my leisure life up to this point all mixed together into one Saturday morning.

Although I have always loved music, I have never really had the focus to pursue new sounds on my own. I have always tended to get references from friends and I really only assimilate about 4 new albums into my life a year. However, lots of music is familiar to me because my brothers listen actively. As a child of about 5 or 6 in the old house, I listened to my bother Paul's classical from the room next door. Once, Daniel and I went to investigate Grieg's "In the Hall of The Mountain King," which quickly developed into a whirling dervish of chase dancing around the room, onto the bed, through the closet, around the room, onto the bed, through the closet, faster and faster until we collapsed into classic giggles. Paul would have been about 15 at the time, playing with the little kids that were his siblings. As a pre-teen in the new house, I remember investigating the music in David's room to find him jumping up and down with his body perfectly straight like a pogo stick to the Violent Femmes, "I Hear the Rain" and being just a little weirded out by the discordant harmonies and dark lyrics. Again, David would have been around 16 or 17 at that time. As I entered junior high, though, my friends and I would share dubbed tapes of all the Femmes albums and in my teenaged angst, they spoke to my soul that was now so dark. HaHa.

But Paul and David are so much older than I am that these two memories are about the extent of their musical influence. Daniel and I, however, grew up at the same time. So, I lived out that summer he learned Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the Poison, "Look What the Cat Dragged In" winter, the Thin Lizzy spring, the multi-season Kiss experience and the full-on David Bowie era. So, to listen to him working out Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy" on Saturday morning and to hear, "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" while he worked out the chords was a nice recreation of our childhood, as well as a relieving indication that his musical taste has grown and matured as he has gotten taller and acquired tattoos and a mustache. Oh, that mustache.

Other than Saturday morning and a weekend dogsitting Retha, I don't have much to report lately other that to tell you that I had my first Superdawg. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I'm hoping Spring is going to restore my adventurous spirit. Thanks for hanging in there with me through these last, dull days of winter.