I remember in my freshman year at school that I was always the last kid awake. I used to have terrible insomnia, but in school I'm sure I didn't help matters by staying up until 2:00, then getting up at 7:00, then going to class, then sleeping again for four hours, and then going to another class. Perhaps the American Airlines gate clerk who had to wake me on the floor at SFO last night might have a choice word or two of her own to add.
(Photo via Jan Pie, on flickr.)
For whatever reason, anyway, I couldn't sleep at night very well. I remember when the heat would turn off for the night, and I would feel the last warmth through the radiator fade, and know it was going to be cold from then on. I had a speaker sitting next to my bed on my desk, and I would turn on music, softly, so that i could hear it. I would scrupulously turn the receiver to mono so that I wouldn't get the Wrong Channel. And then I would put in a CD instead of putting on an LP, because LPs just lasted about 25 minutes before you had to get up, where a CD might take you 70 minutes, if you were lucky.
I listened to Pirates a lot. It was cool, and it worked played really soft, so that when you were feeling melancholy -- it was freshman year; everyone felt melancholy, all the time -- you could listen really softly. Like I'm doing right now, with Joe asleep next door, my often-roommate as well as my son. I don't feel melancholy very often any more, because I'm grown up, and the world is a miracle worth seeing every day, filled with strange things like manga and music made from gongs, and Rickie Lee Jones. I've been luckier than I imagined I could be when I was imagining things all the way back then.
I thought I would live in a big old house with a porch on it. I thought I would be a reporter forever. I thought I would have a big office with shelves everywhere where I would keep the paper things that mattered to me. None of those things proved true.
Rickie Lee Jones still sounds like she's singing to me, though. (And not just me, of course.) I am so glad I live in the era of recorded music, when I can hear this kind of lilting, haunting song in the quiet whenever I want.