Prose: An Introduction By Way Of A Lesson

Hello everybody, I'm Eriq Nelson

For seven years I worked at the Tower Records here in Richmond VA and I loved damn near every minute of it. It paid my bills (kind of) and it introduced me to some incredible people (very true!). More than anything, it broadened my mind to an unspeakable variety of music. For the area I grew up in, the decaying working class suburbs of Richmond, I had a pretty catholic taste in music. Ani Difranco, Rancid and Tool were my favorite bands coming out of high school and I knew jazz. I thought I knew jazz. I thought I had a broad taste in music. Wow, was I wrong.

Well, I wasn't totally wrong. For the time and place I had been, I was a pretty broad minded dude. The fact that I had a woman singer in my CD collection was pretty outlandish. The first weeks at Tower proved to me how narrow my tastes really were. I met people with knowledge and experience in music so far beyond my reckoning that they appeared near inhuman. I met customers and employees who blew my mind clean in half with the depth of their knowledge about jazz, classic rock, zydeco, African funk and a thousand other genres of music. I listened, I learned and I soaked it all in.

In time, I had been brewing in music long enough that I could start really helping our customers out. I could give them advice about new albums, recommend classics to people, find live albums and deep cuts they might not know about and generally keep them happy with what was in their CD decks. It wasn't always easy, there were plenty of rude people that didn't want anything to do with what was outside of their tastes. It bothered me sometimes, I love music more than almost anything else there is. Eventually I realized that there was nothing I could do for these people, and I let them on their way.

There was another disease running through the record store. It infects knowledgeable employees, it breeds on blogs, Facebook and it's spreading into your local vinyl resellers, one stops and bars. Its name is Indie Snobbery. No one wants to talk about it but the silence must be broken. Not to complain about it's existence, bitching about it's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but you'll never get anywhere. No, No there's been enough bitching. Instead, I will give you A Lesson.

Meet Mark. Mark is a typical suburban white guy, works in an office, is 35 or 36 and has a pleasant wife. He shops at Tower about three times a month and comes in to buy a pretty demographically typical spread of pop/rock and light jazz records. No one pays him any mind, no one really talks to him. He is a ghost.

One afternoon I see a new hire giving our buddy Mark the "eyeball roll" as he asks for help. I hate the eyeball roll. I recognize the signs of a customer about to walk out so I stroll over to see if I can help. Turns out, Mark was looking for something like Chris Botti. Now for those who don't know, Chris Botti doesn't play the most despicable form of smooth jazz, but he flirts with it. Right, I'm not a fan at all.

I might not like Chris Botti, or even really want to deal with a guy who counts himself as a fan, but I helped Mark out. I turned him onto Stan Getz, who is a fantastic bossa nova and samba sax player and worked throughout his career with some of the biggest names in jazz. I didn't push him off on whatever top selling crap was there, I listened and I learned, I took the time to meet Mark.

In the three years that he was my customer, he blossomed. By the time I left Tower, he was listening to Herbie Hancock, Lonnie Smith, Michael Brecker and a host of other influential jazz players as well as getting him out to local shows from our jazz scene. I snuck some post-rock in there as well. A touch of Sigur Rós to whet the appetite. So the question here is this: Is it better to turn someone on to good music for the rest of their life or feel smugly superior for your incredible taste for a moment?

No. It is a far better thing that has a lasting effect on the world to open up to people, be patient and understanding and really talk to them about music. If we all really want to support independent musicians, local culture, and editorial independence then it must be a culture of inclusion. There is no way to support yourself as an artist without selling your work to people you might not like. The same is true of those who follow and enjoy these artists. Sometimes they suck, they're narrow minded, they don't know anything. I always remember my first day at Tower, wandering around lost in those huge stacks of music. I am those guys.

Thanks for reading,
Eriq Nelson.

And Assorted Ramblings here: The Temple Of The Forbidden Beat

Prose: Endless Twilight

I remember that day we hid upstairs. Peering down between the floorboards somewhere between loneliness and fear, I tasted the air all around her. Delighting in the smell of monsters lurking behind those eyelids, crowding out this vision of me hunched up in the corner. She never looked my way, just shivered as the world crept up on us with it's cruel sunlight and endless gazing and slunk into my arms shallow from the effort of silence. Our skeletons stacked in the corners of the hallway closet, dusted off and polished for company. Never too old or too young to hang out our problems to see, we used to take pride in propping them up in lifelike poses, dressing them in fancy clothes. I was busy washing her hair with my fingertips and remembering to breathe while she sewed up our latest designs.

When the wan light of this treacherous day had pierced the flowered armor she so skillfully deployed across the windows I left her laying on the bed to see how far the enemy had come. Defenses shattered, I peered down at the encampment cooking fires by the dirt road leading up the hill. The one we'd infiltrate on Saturday nights pretending to be in love so we could screw and drink. Looking at the twisted reflection bouncing off the lead glass I wondered why I lingered here in this endless gloom. The blend of tea, sweat and weed swirled around me in clouds of ecstasy and desolation, daring me to try and walk downstairs. I remember thinking I had been stuck in a loop in that moment, like the shuttle control of my mind had been fucked with by some cruel bastard intent on making whiskey my only water. I found myself back on the altar, tied to her with rope I never brought, staring through the back of her head and trying to untie my hands without making a sound. But I think I was her captive audience, the jewel in her crown of thorns.

I wasn't even needed there, just a warm body and a pliable soul that eased the burden of an emotional hoarder. Those endless stacks of well thumbed through magazines depicting couples on Parisian avenues, dimly lit cafes and wine cellars were the walls she had put my artwork on. Just the topmost layer of a collage of wistful yearning and childish dreams. We'd spend these perpetual twilight hours together painting pictures on each others faces and making love to our favorite masks. Later in that endless night, I found her eyes behind a bookshelf full of empty cigarette packs and used condoms and tried to put them back. Only they didn't fit anymore, the sockets burned cold by peering between fiction and this dim imitation of her fantasy.

We rolled around in the whispers of an endless night for years, reaching further and further into each others throats, as she tried desperately to tie one last knot in a rope of pleasure and guilt. I finally woke one day to find the upstairs room empty, a museum of obsession echoing through my mind. Her clothes were laying on the floor among the stacks of morning skirmishes that turned into afternoon passion and torment. I packed the last of myself into a rusty car and headed down the dirt road past the enemies lines, musing that they never looked so transparent as they did that afternoon.

Prose: The Delicate Dance of Desire

And so I dance.

This dance has steps that resemble nothing else in the world. They are hidden rules and everyone follows them religiously. Like a secret society that everyone else is a member of, whispering the dark secrets of form and ritual in hushed back alleys just outside my earshot. A twist here, two unspoken understandings there all done behind the screen. I've been listening as long as I've been alive and the steps elude me even to this day. Perhaps I lack the subtlety required of its participants. The grace of the common man is beyond my reach despite the dizzying patterns I dance around the hard wood floors and pillars of beer cans.

It is a cruel thing at times, desperate and clinging. The fever pitch of a thousand paper hearts flying through the air smothering the floor and choking the life from anyone caught in the swarm. The band reaching its crescendo and falling face first into the crowd. Everyone is staring around, wondering if this maelstrom can outlast their willpower. The answer is yes, and you won't know your face when it's done.

Then you watch the grace of two seasoned veterans, toying with emotions that rattle like sabers in the hands of a master. Each perfectly poised and perfectly detached from the reality of the steps. Smirking bastards. These are the people who write the rules of engagement for everyone else. It is cool and inhuman, pausing for breath only to suspend your disbelief. I can enjoy the show, watching robots try to fuck if only to give me an uncomfortable laugh. The truth is that the methodical actions of these dressing dolls are as much a mystery to me as the ramblings of the madman whirling in his endless hair. It is perhaps the last mystery we're allowed.

At a certain point the vast majority of people expect that you don't believe monsters are hiding under your bed. I think they go to live in your heart when you banish them from the comfort of dust balls and one left socks. All you're left with is the boring underside of your mattress, a few boxes of random crap and a crumpled up porn magazine. Gone is the myth we carry around as children, the wonder of a spiderweb and the witching hour between this world and the next. We place all of our belief and mystery into smaller buckets, call one Love and the other one God and move on with life. It is all boiled down and bottled up in a dance and we dance it all the time, whether we know it or not. It eats up all of our time and energy and most of the time we're pretty unaware of it.

But I've been watching my feet very closely.
I think they'll betray me soon.