Rock music and me.

It is after 2 am on a Monday/Tuesday, which is a terrible time to be awake doing nothing important if you are in grad school. Especially if you are sick, and behind on your reading, and hoping to wake up by 8:30 at the latest on the next day. Despite all this, here I am, awake and happy, writing a letter to the internet.

I am happy because I am listening to new albums, many new albums actually, obtained through this very same medium of the internet. I'd like to tell you that the new Dinosaur Jr. album is a Dinosaur Jr. album still intact after 20 years of rock, that Hi Red Center is math rock which is delicious, that you will probably really like the Panda Bear album. And I am also sad that I am stuck using the medium of the internet to let you know about this, because one thing I truly miss since moving to camp is "music" friends.

I have tried now and again to sort of spread the love of music around here, but it's very hard for me to explain why the things I love are worth loving, why weird music is so satisfying. I don't even know where to start, to be honest. It feels exactly the same as an experience I had yesterday. A friend here, who is someone I am not very close to but nonetheless like very much, told me that he and his wife are having a baby (or, in his terms, that he is "going to be a daddy"). For a reason I can't really explain, I have been incredibly happy and excited about this fact almost nonstop since then. Yet of course, for me to tell anyone who hasn't met this friend that he's having a baby is, well, not very exciting to say the least. This is approximately how I feel every time that I listen to a new album that I like: that the world is so SO good, but no one is going to be convinced of my argument. It is a difficult position, because no matter how much fun it is to be a hermited nerd with itunes and an internet connection, it is much better to be that same person with someone else geeking out in the room with you.

I did, however, have an experience about a week ago of listening to the Danielson Family through a friend's car speakers as we danced around outside and repeatedly mentioned to each other how the music was "SO good", especially the part where it sounds like they are marching, and then the other part where they make crazy religious allusions, and all sorts of things that sound like nonsense now but are definitely one of the best kinds of nonsense ever. I just need to repeat that experience, many times over, somehow or other.

Right now, when I think of these things, I also really crave yerba mate and a crew of folk to drink it with, and the beginnings of fall, and all these vague things which mean "friends" and "community". Another world is possible.