Letter and a Mixtape

To J. Henderson, my feedback-loving friend, I’m relieved to hear that you’re doing well. You’ve definitely paid for your recent successes with grief-wrought pain, fortitude and a stadium-full of pondering. Pretty Kathryn Calder-looking girlfriend with cool glasses, taxi cab-yellow moped, job at Ruth’s new ballpark and, best of all, a brownstone in Park Slope that your grandkids will still be refinancing far in the future, after you’re buried in that threadbare Ramones shirt. And the fight was all worth it, right? Tell me that it is. It warms me to think of you tucking in at night – hopefully with headphones on – knowing that you love the life you knew you had to have.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our record store daze – the glory period of my young life, and I’d bet yours. Do you remember? We had no clue, not about Park Slope, not about anything. We would work what felt like 12-hour days – swearing we reviled our clearly awesome jobs – then jump in your old baby blue Volvo wagon (the brownstone of your youth) and drive to Borders to, what else, shop for the music we talked about all day at the insufficiently stocked store we worked at. (Amazing that we were always shopping for music; I can only hope you still carry that flame.) Then we’d drive around until all hours of the night, not even considering a stop at a bar, just driving to talk about our naive frustrations and to tell inside jokes and listen to our new music. Import singles, usually, and jokes about customers looking for Lynyrd Skynyrd albums in the “S” section. No greatest hits packages were ever bought, not on our lives – not after long days of selling such filth. Blasphemy. You’d grow a half-baked beard like Jeff Tweedy’s, shave it, then shave your head and grab the first Rollins-related album you could find. I’d buy some retro running shoes that would fall apart in two months, then buy another pair (maroon whenever possible, just like that guitar Liz Phair was “playing” for awhile). And, of course, we’d buy even more music, despite both hardly being able to pay the rent on what was then our first apartments. Little downtown studios covered in promotional posters and crowded with CD racks and thrift shop LPs. Twin apartments. We were so lost, but not when we were in the twins.

And the girls. The dancing girls. Those people walking around who move better, smile bigger and talk sweeter than we knew how. Do you remember the “dates with the night” and the “dancing girls and dancing men?” There had to be at least 10,000 of ‘em, the best ones pale and carrying novels or a Walkman. That’s how I remember it – the sweet smell of cloves and spiked coffee drinks. A few of those gals even went out with us (usually you) romantically, while the rest we just talked about, often while clocked in at that damn record store – the place we thought we’d meet endless post-emo girls in vintage Sebadoh ringers. I can’t help but speculate as to what your record store trips are like in Brooklyn. Earwax on Bedford, right? Are the clerks young? Old? Smarmy? Do they play Can, Mats Gustafsson and The Ex really quietly while alphabetizing the “avant garde” section, just as we joked they would, or do they find fleeting irony in whatever the current hip-hop trend is like all these websites I’ve sworn off? Do they snarl at you with frustration when they realize that you’re in fact not a girl in a ringer? Oh, and do you have to cross the bridge to find all those weird Canadian pop records you like? The Rheostatics, right? Please don’t even tell me if you’ve worn out your Canadian pop phase. I don’t know that I can take both that and our distancing lives right now.

Speaking of our distance, did you see that Old Joy film from a couple of years ago? The one with Will Oldham about the two very different friends who obviously shared twin lifestyles at one point? That one hit home. I hope you saw it or will consider doing so. Better see The Guatemalan Handshake too – also featuring your boy Bonnie.

And speaking of that store we worked at, I walked by it last week. Well, I walked past the retail lot it was in before it changed its named, merged with that other company, changed its name again and then finally closed its doors overnight. Those 2,000 square feet we spent those three or four years together at (me for at least another five after you left) are now used to sell expensive kitchen utensils, blenders and fancy pineapple salsa. I had a free sip of ornamental green tea, left quickly, then came home and started this letter, which I put aside until now. It’s hard to think about. I remember a Saturday during Christmastime where our store sold over $50,000 worth of product, most of which was even music. Unthinkable today. Those days are gone, and we saw them fade with bloodshot eyes. I remember first feeling our friendly bond when our friends – and coworkers – started downloading any and everything they wanted and you and I starting buying more than ever, thinking we were going to save what we called “The Sound World.” We talked about how there were surely two other idiots in Iowa or Kansas doing the same thing, fighting the good fight, again, with headphones on and B-side collections.

I gotta tell you, J, I can’t even listen to Raw Power anymore. Do you remember that time we together heard “Search and Destroy” for the first time ever? I think we both secretly wanted a sixpack and a pair of silver lace-up pants after that. Then we hit the Bowie charge. Those were good sounding times. But enough about the store.

Getting back to Old Joy and how friends change, I still can’t apologize enough for trying to make you second guess your quick relationship with Amanda. I was so used to you doing things the hard way on purpose, just like me, that I thought your quick certitude was the beginning of a series of beauty-clouded decisions. I see now that you hit the lottery, and knew it when no one else did. She’s no Marianne Faithful “candy bar babe” type (not sure if I ever said that out loud to you or not). That Mandy is definitely the Kim Gordon/hair-dyed-pink kind; I only met her once, but I could see it all in her drunken air guitar moves and the way she didn’t care to wipe up the perspiration rings her beers left on your LP sleeves. Yin to your yang. When I’m down, and by that I mean dumped again or squatting in Nostalgiaville, I think of you two eating Thai food on a Friday in New York, playing each other Kinks songs and falling asleep on your 14th Street rooftop vista, just like the time you told me about when you first moved. “The veritable non-musician’s rock n’ roll dream,” you called it. I think you guys wrote that book. “Black Messiah” is unbeatable, by the way.

Back here, in the place you were born and I still fumble through, things are pretty good. Not bad. I can’t complain. I’m living the veritable guy-who-mostly-does-what-he-loves dream. Can’t complain too much. I do this and that and pay my bills and buy records at whatever store is still open. I have some friends and go to shows, but have not even an ounce of that youthful boil that led you, Jake and I to hit the road, sans even a drop of planning, to go see Cat Power at that “secret” house show in Nashville. Remember how much Jake loved Moon Pix? He really thought the Cat was going to fall for him, you know, as a “deep, artistic” person of emotional depth. Standout tall guys always think things will be easier than they should be. Jake’s doing fine, by the way; he’s tending bar and playing bass for a mediocre power-pop covers band. Good gigs for the standout.

You and I, no matter where we are or what we’re doing, have something in common: we live life through songs. We do the things everyone else does, our soundtracks just figure a whole lot more into the walking and growing and dishwashing processes. I know that now, and know that I’ll never find another friend whose mix tapes I’ll actually have conversations with. I’ll write again by year’s end.

Best of love and days with sound,

John E. Sox-Smith

PS – Best to first play track six, Damien Jurado’s “Omaha,” on the accompanying mixtape. I botched the order. I always do. “This country will know us by name.”

Written by G. William Locke (aka John E. Sox-Smith)