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The other day I went on my usual walk/hike with my dog. The unusual thing was that I decided for some reason to listen to music. Since the pandemic began five years ago, my listening on hikes has been entirely comprised of podcasts.
When I lived alone in Hollywood I was within walking distance of Griffith Park. I’d walk up Franklin to Western, tackling that first hill, then turning on Los Feliz Blvd. toward the trees.
I was 28 years old. I’d just returned to LA from living in Olympia, Washington for eight years. I’d recently ended a four year relationship and moved into the apartment from where I would write the drafts of Hollywood Notebook and some of Bruja, without yet realizing I was doing so.
On days when I had to be at work at eleven or noon, I woke up early, dressed to sweat, and headed up toward the sky. I listened to the same songs over and over on this walk for a long time. Too many other songs made me feel the grief that I was trying to contain. This is where Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars by Fatboy Slim came in to save me.
But not all the tracks. After several listens I knew exactly when I wanted to skip until I’d created the exact list I wanted to hear as I huffed my way up the trail.
Sometimes I’d replay certain songs on my way back down. Running, trying not to fall on the uneven ground, kicking up dust. No one could see me crying.
I liked, and still like, the repetition, the way my body seems to involuntarily respond to the beat. The raves in the 1990s I went to, denim overalls with a thin top and ballet shoes, dancing in a dank warehouse with water on the floor. Those years of retox.
After the climb up to the observatory, the sips of water at the fountain, slowing, then turning back around for the downhill.
On the downhill passing by all the random people, some of whom have imprinted on my brain. They didn’t know I was hurting, writing, working, dating. We were just together under the sun doing the thing that made us feel good. I saw it in their faces. They may have seen it in mine. We knew.
The trail back. The return to becoming who I was in the daytime: an underground room in a library, emails to potential lovers, the buses and trains that took me there and home again. Until the next time.
It seems a bit ridiculous to rediscover that listening to music while moving my body is, like, probably much better for me than listening to podcasts? Listening to ass-moving music makes my ass want to move faster. And so I rediscovered. Listening to the exact tracks that once pulled me through depression and hopelessness, today, generates similar feelings that I had back then. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I don’t know how I, we, will get through whatever happens next.
But I love the feel of my body moving, the sun on my skin, the goosebumps crescendoes bring. And I want more, for the rest of my life.
I went to a concert the other night and have started writing something about the pleasure in overwhelmingly loud, heavy music, another gift I’d forgotten.
Here’s hoping you get the chills of rediscovering what your body once loved, what once you pulled you through some of your past, worst days. We’re all gonna need those things again. Don’t forget.
