A Thought
Went to listen to music last night, with friends. Had a couple of beers. Had a random thought. It sounded really good at the time. I connected two dots, and something made sense. Dot number one was a photograph I saw in an art gallery in New Orleans years ago. It was a really detailed picture of the quarter at night. If my memory serves, and its not always faithful in that regard, the loveliness of the picture had something to do with the photographer layering multiple exposures to bring out all the detail.
Dot number two was me listening to my favorite artist, Walt Wilkins, last night and hearing one of his songs for maybe the hundredth time and thinking of all those exposures to the song in question. They were now layered in my brain, like those exposures in that photograph, and that made for a really vibrant, nuanced image for me. The vibrancy was further enhanced when I factored in all the friends there with me last night and thought about all the other times we’d heard the song together.
This is where it gets tricky. Remember the beer? Sometimes it makes you feel smarter than you really are and tricks you into thinking you connected two dots, when you’ve really just misinterpreted a coincidence. It’s best to wait for the cold light of day. That’s when you discover the truth of the matter. Right now, in the early morning as I sit typing in my pajamas, it feels as though I’m onto something, and probably got it right, even if dot number one isn’t precisely the case. I still have all those memories of how the song was sung, and I know that’s true.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale