Better Oblivion Part II

I watched Begin Again last night from atop an exercise bike (I don't have the time or patience for exercise or Netflix unless I combine them). I'd never heard of this movie before, but it had Mark Ruffalo in it and the premise sounded right up my alley (lost souls, chance meeting, music-making, New York).

The whole time I was watching it, I couldn't help but think of how it felt like a poppier, Americanized version of Once. This wasn't a bad thing; Once is one of my favorite movies, and whenever I watch it I think about how I either wish I lived in it or had written it or starred in it or something. My heart just wants to be part of that magic. There are very few movies that make me feel that way, but Begin Again struck the same inexplicable chord. 

Well GUESS WHAT? John Carney wrote and directed both movies. Mystery solved, and dear John Carney, please turn my books into movies. 

Anyway. On to the point:

There's a scene in Begin Again in which Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo's characters wander through New York City at night listening to the music of Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder through a headphone splitter. At one point, Ruffalo muses that when you put music to real life, it turns what's banal into pearls. The music is still playing in their ears only as they watch pedestrians pass, skateboarding kids, a man being arrested—and you see how he's right, how the soundtrack gives the scattered things coherence and a sense of meaning and beauty. 

As I was watching this scene unfold, I was struck by the memory of something I'd forgotten: a few years ago (three? four?), Barclay, Sully, and I went to Montreal together for a week. I'd just finished writing Valencia and Valentine and life felt very exciting and full of potential. I'd just sent out my first query letters and didn't yet know or understand how hard it was to land an agent. So I was naive, is what I'm saying, and naive excitement is so lovely; it gets into your head, like you're taking big breaths of helium, like you're newly in love. I was floating. 

We were downtown, and it was rush hour. We were standing on some street corner trying to decide what to do next, and I pulled out my headphones, plugged them in, and put on Rachmaninoff's Etude-Tableau in G-minor—my favorite piano song of all time and one I wrote into my book with maybe a little too much fervor. I gave one of the ear buds to Barclay and put one in my own ear and we just started walking, Sully asleep on my back in the carrier. Just like in the movie, we wandered Montreal, holding hands, watching the people crossing the streets and the traffic lights changing colors and the music made it all just a little surreal, like it had been orchestrated for us.

And I thought of the post I wrote yesterday about how you don't get to choose which memories you get to keep and which ones disappear without your permission. And then I thought, well, maybe this is better. Sure, you don't get to choose which memories disappear, but then sometimes they're given back to you when you least expect them. Like a present.

Better Oblivion

I'm on my trillionth listen through the Better Oblivion Community Center album. It's Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers's collab, and it's amazing—but I can't honestly tell you how much of the magic is the music itself and how much is nostalgic residue from the Bright Eyes days. I can't tell you; I don't know.

Oberst is one of those artists whose voice, all by itself, makes a song good for me. It's jagged and quavery and though he doesn't do anything fancy—what do you want from him? He's not Adele—it matches the lyrical content of his songs perfectly. But also, those songs, that voice, make up a large percentage of the soundtrack for my life circa 2005-2007.

Isn't it weird how you don't know what songs, friends, smells, whatever, are going to become capital "I" Important to you later on until it's later on? The summer I lived in Saskatoon, I borrowed so many CDs from the public library—stacks at a time, as many as I could fit into my backpack. And it wasn't like I didn't listen to all of them; I did. Sitting cross-legged on my air mattress in the closet-sized bedroom I shared with a girl named Patricia. Following along in the liner notes like it was one of those read-along children's book-and-tape situations. Taking it seriously, like I was studying for a test.

And now, though I listened to probably hundreds of albums, it's like I only listened to three: Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Brand New's Deja Entendu, and Bright Eyes's LIFTED or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground.

(I wonder if I would've named a few more albums if I'd written this blog post even five years ago? Is my memory narrowing this list down without my knowledge?)

Okay, so now I'm thinking about how you don't get to choose which memories you keep.

I'm thinking about a memory from a few days ago: I was sitting in the living room reading a book and Sully ran in and gave me a hug and I gave it back and, a little surprised, asked, "What's this for?" and he replied, "It's just because I love you and I want you to know."

Melting, for a mom, right?

But here's another memory: This morning at Shoppers Drug Mart, I was squatting in front of a row of face lotions and Sully was standing on one side of me and Scarlett on the other. An older woman with a black nose stud the size of a marble and these huge, black, plastic glasses—eccentric vibes, definitely—looooooomed over the three of us and said hello, repeatedly, to both kids but not to me. She looked angry. I don't think she was, but she looked it, is what I'm saying. Sully and Scarlett stared at her, awestruck or maybe fearful, and didn't reply, despite her earnest attempts and my also earnest but much more quiet prompting. Finally she gave up and huffed, to me, "Not in a good mood today, I GUESS," and stalked away.

Which memory will I keep? Both? Neither? Just the weird one with the eccentric lady I'll probably never see again? Who knows! Either way I don't get to pick, and that's really too bad. It makes me feel desperate and cranky, like someone is routinely stealing my phone and deleting whatever photos and emails and text messages they feel like.

It's not fair.

But the point is, listen to the Better Oblivion Community Center Album, because it's really good, probably even better if you were already a Bright Eyes fan, and write down every single memory you want to keep because if they disappear before you do, you won't even know they're gone. 

Galleys!

I got my galleys (the almost-complete version of the book that is given to reviewers a few months early so their reviews can coincide with the publication date—basically the book's dress rehearsal) last week.

I was walking through the living room on Wednesday afternoon when I glanced out the window and saw the UPS truck parked across the street. I hadn't ordered anything. I did not consider that maybe one of the neighbors had ordered something. 

I said, "Barclay..." and drifted to the door just as the bell rang. I couldn't feel my fingers. The hair on my head was standing straight up in the air. I have very long hair. Just picture it.

By the time I opened the door, the UPS guy was already walking away, having done his job. I imagined yelling all kinds of bizarre things after him and worried that, in that moment, when I had so little control over my fingers and hair and feet, that I might.

"HEY! THIS BOX CONTAINS AND SIGNIFIES THE CULMINATION OF ALL OF MY DREAMS SINCE AGE SIX I HOPE YOU WERE GENTLE WITH IT."

Instead, I silently picked up the box and brought it into the house. And then I was very calm. Like everything inside me that was crashing waves was now a still pond with not one living thing in it. Like I was sleepwalking.

Sullivan wanted to know what was in the box. Of course he did.

"My books," I said calmly. I've seen many videos on Instagram of authors receiving their first book shipment. There's usually lots of squealing. Tears, often. I wondered vaguely if I should shriek a little. I thought that I should ask Barclay to take a picture of my face when I opened the box, but then I immediately forgot the thought. It just floated out of my head.

"You ordered books?!" Sullivan yelled. He loves when I order books because they usually come in bubble wrap (what's up with that, anyway? Books aren't breakable).

"No," I said, smiling. So calm. "These are my books. I wrote them. It."

I set the box on the floor and waited, as though I thought it might open itself. It failed to do so.

Sully ran to get scissors. (He did not run once he had the scissors. Don't worry.) He helped me open the box and dig through the paper, so it went faster than I wanted it to. I felt surprised, realizing that I wanted it to go slower, that even though I'd been eagerly anticipating this moment for months, I now didn't want it to happen yet.

That was unexpected.

But, I mean, props to my subconscious. After all, the anticipation of something good is almost always better than the actual good thing. The moment right before the fulfillment of a dream or longing is so rare and fleeting and beautiful. I knew, without knowing, that I should savor it.

So I peeled back the layers of paper slowly, taking little breaths, and then Sully pulled the first book up, like pulling a carrot out of the ground. He was so excited, and that was the next surprise: that seeing him holding the book and being so excited about it was better than me holding the book and being excited about it.

To both my amazement and his, he pulled another out, and then another, and another, handing them to me one by one. 

I stared at them in wonderment. "Well, isn't that something," I said. It was a dorky thing to say, but I said it.

Sullivan, still unearthing the last few books one by one, paused. "No, it's not. It's not anything," he said. Then, "Well. It is a book. Can I have this one?"

I told him that, no, I couldn't keep these; these were for giving away.

"You can give this one away to me, then," he said, unconcerned, and he ran off to his bedroom to add it to his bookshelf. (I snuck into his room later and stole it back. He came to me within fifteen minutes, looking very disappointed, and said, "Mo-om. Did you take my book? It's not on my shelf."
We've gone back and forth on this a few times; he is very observant. I am not winning.)

Physical ARCs are exciting for a lot of reasons, but the main ones for me have nothing to do with marketing or exposure or trade reviews: if your book gets ARCs, you get to hold it in your hands a few months earlier than you would've otherwise. You get to put it on your bookcase, see how it gets along with your other books. You get to carry it around in your purse for a few days—not to show people, just to have it there with you. You get to keep it by your computer while you write your next book, to remind you where you're going and how great it feels to get there. 

And then, you get to see how it looks in other people's hands.