Do You Miss It?

(Editor’s Note: This is in some sense a prelude to the 2006 reflective essay I’m working on, coming soon, veering away from baseball a bit towards life and philosophy and women and what to make of another year gone by. The driving question in the upcoming essay: why bother with what seems a pointless season like the last one?)

The conversation turned to Chicago in the hot tub Saturday afternoon, as we sat under overcast skies and cooler -- almost cold -- weather, with occasional drizzle collecting on the tree branches above and dropping with cold, heavy splats on our heads. “I know you don’t miss it,” my friend from Indianapolis said sardonically. She was referring to how much I like where I’m at. “That’s not true at all,” I replied. “There’s a lot I miss about Chicago. It’s an unbelievable city. It’s just that all things being equal I’d rather be in Austin right now. Especially because of all the stuff I had to do.”

And that’s right, I reflect tonight. I miss my friends and family as we fall into the old rhythms and banter, and I miss the city’s pulse. The city was a major part of who I was for a while, although at times it feels like a lifetime ago. Still, even as Texas descends into a couple of 30 degree nights and freezing rain, the town panics, we christen the fireplace in our apartment, and my return to classes is delayed a day, I’m glad to live in Austin, which all in all -- for someone like me -- is about the most fun city I could imagine. Living here definitely helps me avoid the winter doldrums I used to suffer. I was lucky to be here to write when I had to, and I couldn’t have stayed in Chicago and concentrated the same way for law school. Sometimes you have to adventure or at least drift to find inspiration and discipline.

But I do miss it. It struck me how foreign the street seemed when my friends met me out along Southport the night before I flew south again, how enough time has passed that the last traces of my intimacy with the city evaporate, relegated at least for now to the past. I could feel the pulse hibernating, and it was still familiar, but it felt more like nostalgia than anything in the present tense.

It’s a characteristic of my generation that we are often caught up in a sort of nostalgia. It’s evident in the fact that we can still tell you about all of the Saved by the Bell episodes. I have an entire theory interpreting the humor of Napoleon Dynamite as exploring this characteristic: basically, it’s a movie about all of the embarassingly un-cool Americana that we remember -- moon boots and trapper keepers and tater tots, and very bad dancing. And so on.

So, this is how our conversations go, me and the other mid-twenty-somethings like me. We start out telling the old stories over a few drinks, then we go out and make new ones. We do not debate politics or religion or serious issues. We trade stories that remind us of what we have in common among our experience. However, there is one exception: we can talk music, and movies, and sports and so on, nearly anything with media. For me, if I get to add something (especially during the off-season) it’s almost always music.

Last Saturday night in Austin, I was astonished to have a new high-caliber story for my repertoire. There’s a music group called Will Taylor and Strings Attached that gigs around once a month or so, collaborating with another artist or band, rearranging the songs with strings, performing in a church with exceptional acoustics. I saw them blow the room away with Eliza Gilkyson, known perhaps to a few of you from the acclaim surrounding her song “Requiem.” I saw them perform the entire Beatles White Album from start to finish, with a different artist or band joining on each song, one of the coolest shows I’ve ever seen. My roommate saw them perform a Led Zeppelin tribute show that he could not stop raving about.

Saturday, it was the music of Jimi Hendrix, a collaboration with Phil Brown, who released The Jimi Project last year. The show was good. But for me, the magical moment came when Buddy Miles walked up on stage. I recognized him -- the name -- immediately. “Oh my God,” I gushed to my friends, “he was in Band of Gypsys! He wrote some of those songs!” The Band of Gypsys: Jimi Hendrix’s other band, besides the Experience, and much more bluesy. The Fillmore East recording of their New York show on New Years Eve as 1969 became 1970 is one of the best live albums of all time, and this is not debatable. Hearing Hendrix there on “Machine Gun” when I was in high school literally rocked my world. And here was Buddy Miles, in the audience at Saint David’s Episcopal Church in downtown Austin, listening to these guys re-arrange Jimi’s songs, and going up on stage to tell us how much he enjoyed hearing the music of one of the greatest talents the world has known performed this way. He teared up.

Phil Brown explained Buddy Miles significance to the crowd, in case some people didn’t recognize who he was, but for those people I just felt sorry, and I hope they go and track down the Band of Gypsys live album.

Do you ever get sort of stuck on a word? A word you don’t often use, but then find yourself using several times? As Buddy Miles signed my program as we exited the church, I told him how much I loved that New Years Eve recording. “Oh yeah,” he mulled, “people always like to remind me about that one.” “Well,” I said, “I can understand why. It was an enchanted performance.” Enchanted. That’s the word. That's the sort of thing that happens in a city like Austin, a stratosphere-level musician hanging out for the show.

The last time I listened to that New Years Eve album was at my apartment in Wicker Park, and seeing Buddy Miles pulled my mind immediately back into the scene. In one of my late-night music and meandering sessions with some crazy Wicker Park characters, I pulled out the recording after we had been talking music for a while. We had been debating about the best rock and roll drummers. Former A & I contributor JMI tried to argue for Neil Peart with me earlier that week, the drummer for Rush, and I mentioned this to the crew I was sitting with. Dave, from the basement apartment, brought up the same name I had brought up in response to JMI: Keith Moon. The two of us agreed the discussion probably starts and ends right there, a position JMI vehemently opposed. Then we talked about Jimmy Chamberlin for a while, since he was putting out a solo album, with Billy Corgan on a few songs, and there were rumors of the Smashing Pumpkins rejoining. The problem is that the best drummers end up in such brilliant bands, and work with such brilliant musicians, such that maybe it’s hard to distinguish. On this point, I dug out the live recording and brought up Buddy Miles as an example of a guy who was able to make his mark despite Hendrix’s dazzling.

Then I brought out some whiskey, and we all just listened. Like I said: enchanted.

Yeah, I definitely miss Chicago, as I think back on those nights.

And it seemed to me that some of the people out in the Southport bars had no idea how lucky they were to live where they did. The same thing happens here. We are building astoundingly livable downtowns and communities in the midst of one of the most wealthy countries in the world, and yet we're tempted to retreat into the corners of our minds all too often. Supremely blessed, nonetheless we take it for granted.

Inspiration can find you whenever you listen -- really listen -- though, and it helps to be in a city as great as Chicago or Austin. You pause in the moment, awareness heightened. Maybe the runner jumps on first movement, or maybe the anticipation for the headliner builds after the opening band, or maybe you come home at 3:30 in the morning to pour one more slow drink and sit outside waiting for Orbital’s final song from their final album, “One Perfect Sunrise,” to build to its crescendo on the old portable stereo.

Whatever it is, and wherever they are, here’s hoping there’s more moments like these along the way for all of us...