My Spatial Epiphany

I was sitting around the new digs the other day (ok, I admit, i've been bad and haven't updated the blog in months...ok, I've been really bad, like Michael Jackson at summer camp bad - I'M SORRY ALREADY...for those of you who don't know, I moved across town to a neat little apartment in La Jolla, leaving behind the familiar embrace of the Blue House - I'll miss you, Bluey!), contemplating on the fact that after three months of living, eating, and sleeping, after three months of coming home here, this place, this space, still doesn't feel like home.

I don't get a tingle when I enter, that crooked little smile doesn't find its way to my face every time I walk through the door; it feels neither like my power place nor like my resting place. What I mean is, this place is still things, it is still walls and chairs and electronics, food and dishes and appliances; it is still carpet and paint and plaster and photographs. It is things, both my things and its own things, yes - but it is not me, this space, it is not mine to wrap myself up in, to keep me warm, to parry stones.

So I thought about it. And I thought, and hummed, and thought. This went on for some time. And then it hit me; the spaces I've lived in which have become truly mine have shared one thing in common. The fondest and most vivid, the clearest and most singularly comfortable memories that I can recall from each of my past dwellings, from each of my spaces of my life, have revolved around music.

I replay Radiohead's The Bends in my apartment sophomore year, the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletein in the blue house, built to spill and grandaddy everywhere but especially in my freshman dorm - my space has always been a space of sound, a space where I can turn it up, tune it in, lapse into aurality, and forget that a world does, in fact, exist outside of the walls and chairs and electronics, food and dishes and appliances, carpet, paint, plaster and photographs. With music, a space becomes infused with life, space adopts a soul, space inherits a heart.

With music, a space and I become each other's, once and forever.

-tn

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