aurora borealis

I have a deep and slightly irrational love for Neil Young's music. I say irrational because, frankly, some of it doesn't pass muster*. But generally, his music hits my weakness for acoustic guitar and removed, surreal lyrics. Right now NPR is streaming his soon to be released new solo album, which also happens to be his oldest solo album. It was a live album recorded in Ann Arbor in 1968 and never released, and it was recorded at the Canterbury House, which is the little episcopal place I go to for jazz mass. A time of upheaval then: assassinations, civil rights, protests and the death of democracy, contrasted with now, a time of its own upheaval, both good and bad.

The release of this album brings together so many circles of my life. It's Neil Young, at the place I go to get irreverently reverent, recorded during the time that my dad was at U of M, himself a young twentyish engineering student. I'm older than he was then, but it still feels good, like, My dad could have been sitting in the audience of this concert and now forty years later I am in a similar place in life, listening to the same concert. A picture of a picture. It feels like the universe has a little more order and purpose, like the folds of time are wrapping a little more tightly around.

So, I'm thankful for music and serendipity and purpose, even if it's only made up in my own head. Purpose is completely subjective and relative anyways, so the part in my head is the only part that really matters.


*I heard this phrase on npr while half-asleep this morning, and it's so funny and absurd that I have to fold it into the lexicon. I like it because it's so close to "pass mustard" and that I can't totally parse why it means what it does.