I rarely walk without headphones. I like the idea of starting my day with a coffee and the idle browse, picking through artist after artist until I find the day’s desired play. The sound follows the background, sets the scene. There are days when you can usurp the offered trajectory, play something upbeat when the moment demands its sleep. Then there are times when the contrast grates, leaves the finger reaching for delete. Music has its own moment too, the song last listened to when you were four feet ten and licking braces. The riff that bared repeating forty-two times a day when you were eighteen and about to please the female.
By virtue of some copy paste cheat, I was stuck with Collective Soul when steering down Mission street at 3pm. For a moment everything about the present feels unfamiliar, forced. The mind rekindles its previous context, draws you up as the teenage kid with size ten feet and counting, draws you sitting in some row-by-row classroom endeavor. The big boy with the bushy hair turns to your face, flips you the CD and exclaims, “you can buy it from me now, but only if i can buy it back off you when you’re done.”
You comply.
