The first time I heard the Doors was in the back of a station wagon facing backwards
watching Minnesota Northwoods stream by
I was in 8th grade.
Adam once asked me while sitting in his room late at night-
“have you heard U2?”
“no.”
and he sang a cappella “I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields” to me with a soul older than his
nine years would seem to allow
Jon gave me many gifts-it was in his car driving through a ridiculously hot
Duluth summer night that we heard Weezer’s Undone and in his room
I met The Flaming Lips and in a parking lot Smooth Criminal
and in a drive through Beck’s Loser
in high school on a Minnesota Public TV show I saw Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans and I
was astounded
in Bob’s basement I heard Bjork clicking, cooing, screaming
in my brother’s college era bedroom that was a Minnesota plains furnace in some
attic, I listened to Neil Young’s unplugged while college girls downstairs drank and cackled
on a rooftop overlooking San Francisco I heard my friend Masato finger pick on my guitar in
such a way that I felt like I couldn’t play on it again
in Morgan’s room we went to sleep while he played The White Album and I was haunted
and wanted to die right there and then before any other sound
because it was peaceful in the dark with Long Long Long and Morgan
writing songs
on the futon

 

Ryan McGivern