visceral remembrances

After Ray La Montagne on my iTunes comes Robert Earl Keen Jr., someone I don't listen to all that much. But straightening my room, I was slammed into an immediate memory: sitting on the floor of Ray's Bar in Marfa, staring wide-eyed and awed like a kindergartener at story time. Crosslegged at the feet of Robert Earl Keen and David Byrne, I watched them pound out "Amarillo Highway", singing, laughing and forgetting the lines. It was Terry Allen's wedding anniversary and he flew his friends out to Marfa to jam and reminisce. $5 cover change and it had nothing to do with us. We were just lucky-ass bystanders.

Then I'm transported to a road trip with Edward, this song's on and I'm the girl in barefeet. Our Lonestar's waiting somewhere on the other end of things. We're flying out of Lubbock, headed to New Mexico, or maybe it was Austin, or Big Bend or Dallas, windows down, singing this song with all our might. He'll always be a ghost, that one.

I am hit with these mind-visuals, and I want to write about it but I can't pull out the threads. There's so much in there- emotions and touch, desires and satisfaction. Following one, I get to a tangled knot with another until all I can do is sit down in the middle and breathe it in. Like smell, these songs- visceral remembrances.