open

We drove down to Southern California during a four day weekend I had this past week, to some lesser known beach cities north of Los Angeles. On the drive down I brought old CDs of mine from the days when I bought CDs by the dozens. They took me back to a time when music was very important to me, to when I felt like albums were my best friends. Most can relate to certain music framing periods of their lives, and it was so easy to return to former versions of me through listening to these albums. A core love of mine is things that occupy long lengths of time--long drives, long runs, full albums. It takes me awhile to settle, and then I really love settling in. The end of medical school began my drift from music, and residency cemented it. Gone are long stretches of time searching for new music, and the long stretches of time it requires to really savor albums. After our drive, I decided to return--in the same way as this blog, without strict guidelines for frequency, just with the intention to return when the inclination arises.

So today while doing taxes I listened to Rhye's "Woman" and quickly fell for the first song, "Open." I don't tend to be curious about the lives of musicians (M looks up everyone whose art/work/thoughts he enjoys or respects, to get a feel for their development and histories) but I wanted to remember how I came across this album in the first place. In reading about Rhye, I found out that the song "Open" was a debut single. I also found out that the singer is a man, and that I'm not alone in mistaking him for a woman. His voice is gentle and sultry, and classicly feminine. Apparently the duo has also been very secretive about their identities in general. All of this information made me appreciate the music even more. In the way that we sometimes interpret others' art to suit our own perspectives, I saw this song as a sentiment to an openness to each person's spectrum of being.

Something else I think we do as people is create narratives from the little things that happen to us, and I find it suiting that this was the first album and song that I discovered on my return to music. In addition to inspiring me to seek out music, our trip to Southern California made me more open to that place. I feel very open to most places--I love cities, countryside, the coasts and the middle of nowhere, desert and forest. But in the midst of the North versus South debate, I lie closer north--I have more ties here, and am generally weary of the excess, and laxity that comes with it, associated with SoCal. While M loves the Bay Area and appreciates the liberal mindset and diversity here, he's also naturally drawn to the ocean and sun of SoCal. But, as M reminds me, there is depth to most things, including superficiality. Thanks to him I've found a lot of fullness in Southern California. Living in La Jolla is a very happy memory for me, of running beneath trees with the sprawling branches that became Dr. Seuss images and in the scent of jasmine along the coast, of living blocks from the beach and having blue ocean and orange sun and white sand cliffs at our toetips. Driving down to SoCal for a long weekend feels like a real escape. It made me happy to watch him surf along long waves whose discreet beauty has been unveiled to me by him. The expanse of everything there (the blue, the water, the coastal drive) is a natural openness that makes me push for my own.