Sets Pink
Most days, I find time to stare out the window. I’ve been listening to music again, which is terrifying, because it’s a medium that’s so formless, where my mind slips, losing grip. Schopenhauer said that music is the closest you’ll get to pure emotion. I’ve noticed. I listen to ambient music that warms my heart, as the sun sets and casts a pink glow on the white trims of the houses nearby. I walk outside with my camera, taking shaky vertical videos. Cozy suburban homes blurred through my 1990s lens. I walk inside and the light fades.
My heart is warmed, like I said, but it is also stirred. I get angry. My warmth has no place to go. If only we could place our emotions squarely, use language clearly and exactly, eliminate the blurriness of expression. But instead, we have fuzzy words like ‘love’ and ‘life’ and ‘meaning’ and phrases like “I am grateful to be here,” and “I miss you,” and, meanwhile, let me tell you that one time, a man I made love to encouraged me to listen to Johnny Cash more often, while we stared up at the ceiling in bed quietly listening together, spent. It was a time I remembered last night, as I sat with my family outside the after-dark animal hospital with our 4-month-old sick puppy—swollen throat, wheezing, lethargy, and the vet saying “your pup looks dumpy,” while Johnny Cash’s little guitar noodled out of my little phone on low volume to pass the time until midnight. And we went home, leaving our puppy at the hospital for the night, transferring him to a new place at sunrise. We wait all day and all night through the uncertainty of it; I hope he feels better. But here, now, are all those moments fading to a smudged memory under this sun, striking against the watercolor clouds, set to ambient music, each one fading out the window into a dusk that sets pink.
https://blinkhorn.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-rainy-days