Today is July 17th and it has been a good music year
Every year, I put together these mixes that are about the closest thing to scrapbooks that I have from the past six years. Since July and 2010 are more than half-over (today is the 198th day of 2010) I decided it was time to update this year’s mix. I hadn’t been keeping it current because I’ve basically listened to two or three different artists excessively for the entire year and a mix full of two or three artists seems wrong. And then I remembered that it’s a mix of things I’ve been listening to and that’s the entire point, so I can fill it with whatever makes sense. If it ends up being half Avett Brothers and half Jónsi, then that’s cool. But it didn’t! So here it is:
- The Avett Brothers - I And Love And You
- DJ Earworm - 2009 United State of Pop
- Mumford & Sons - Winter Winds
- The Avett Brothers - Salina
- Fanfarlo - The Walls Are Coming Down
- Broken Bells - Sailing To Nowhere
- Jónsi - Boy Lilikoi
- Jónsi & Alex - All The Big Trees
- Jónsi - Go Do
- Cloud Cult - Running With The Wolves
- fun. - Benson Hedges
- B. o. B. - Don’t Let Me Fall
- Parachutes - Where Were You?
And somewhere along the way, I realized it’s been a really good year for me in the music department. And not just music, but happy and inspiring music. I don’t listen to past years’ playlists too often because they’re super depressing. And that’s not because those years were depressing, but the music was. The 2010 mix (so far) just makes me smile. I did ring in the New Year with the Avett Brothers in Asheville, so I guess that started things off on the right foot.
Oh and also, I finished my last episode of SVU today. The current season won’t be released until the end of September. There is a gaping Elliot Stabler-shaped hole in my heart already. On a related note, how did I already finish 224 episodes?
Last week, I drove to Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Illinois, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and back to Nashville in that order. As you can probably tell, I spent a considerable amount of time in Illinois because I drove through it from top to bottom and it is probably the most boring state other than Kansas (maybe more boring that Kansas, even), but boring is what I was going for on this trip. However, midwest-boring is kind of a novelty when you’re used to Tennessee-boring and Virginia-boring because there’s just pavement, corn and sky and you can see for miles. I saw a couple of Great Lakes I hadn’t seen before and bumped into another Nashville (in Illinois!) and visited my old friend the Giant Superman Statue, in Illinois. And see that beautiful beach up there? That is also in Illinois. And I listened to Sufjan’s Illinois record, in Illinois. It gave me a much greater respect for anyone who can make that state sound magical.
The bulk of my time in Illinois was spent in Chicago with my parents. Between my mom’s tour book and the Droid, we managed to cover a lot of ground by bus and by boat and by train and by foot and by Segway. I experienced a Cubs game at Wrigley Field with a bunch of German rocket scientists, hit up the aquarium and the planetarium and the art institute, sunburned my eyeballs (true story!) looking at some neat buildings on the architecture cruise, hunted down coffee with my dad, nearly crashed on a Segway a few times with my mom (pro tip: If someone hands you Segway, make sure it is not in “turtle mode” before you step on), and wound up in the middle of a gang fight near Grant Park. I’ve got lots of pictures and lots of stories, actually, but that’s the short version.
As for the other states, Michigan was probably my favorite. The sun set around 10pm and I didn’t expect Lake Erie to be that pretty. But something about sitting on a beach in a sweatshirt when it’s 65 degrees outside in June is just good for you, I think. Especially when Nashville is somewhere out there in the triple-digits, melting, with an Air Quality Alert. Wisconsin seemed alright, but I only ventured about 10 feet into it. I was essentially on a country road and there was a gas station right on the border. Then I drove on the border with Illinois on my left and Wisconsin on my right for a ways until I hit the interstate again. I also didn’t spend much time in Indiana but they didn’t appear to have a welcome sign in that little bit you have to drive through to get to Chicago; you have to go hunt it down at the welcome center/rest area which is gross. Missouri was Missouri and Kentucky was Kentucky, I guess.
At any rate, it was about 1,600 miles of driving and I’d do it over again tomorrow if I could.
And now it’s past my bedtime.
I drove five-hundred and three miles today to get away. I didn’t have anywhere to be or anyone to see in Michigan, which is probably what made it appealing. I drove here, I checked into my hotel room, and then I realized that I just spent the better part of nine hours sprinting away from God-knows-what and now here I am in Michigan. I’m in this little town called Monroe that contains mostly rusted railway bridges and I’m in a hotel that contains mostly no one and I’m on the fourth floor on the backside of the building that conveniently faces West, where the sun sets. I have every intention of getting up at 5:30am to see the sunrise over Lake Erie because I’m not sure when I’ll have the chance to do that again, but that’s awfully early and it’s getting late.
I saw Jesus today and he was burnt to a crisp, which I suppose is what happens when you build a structure out of a conductive material and cover it in something flammable, even if that flammable thing is shaped like Our Lord Jesus Christ.
