That Giant, Nostalgia: Graceland

Hello again, friends.

"I am following the river, down the highway, through the cradle of the civil war. I'm going to Graceland."

A few months ago, I was sitting on the couch with my mom, telling her about something that I never thought I would have to say. In the silence, my mom quoted a line from a song on Paul Simon's album Graceland.

I've listened to Graceland countless times, and honestly, I think it's my favorite of his albums. When I was a kid, it was one of the CD's we listened to on long drives, usually on the windy road to Colorado to visit family. I remember singing along with my parents, with my sister and brother, to every song, my dad tapping out the drumline on the steering wheel, my mom harmonizing effortlessly with my warbling child voice. To me, the album sounds like road trips, stopping at gas stations on the way to something exciting and new.

"This is the story of how we begin to remember."

I was very fortunate for my first car, as it was a gift from my parents: a 1997 Toyota Rav4. It was black, with a grey interior. My dad left a ticket stub and a set of keys from his old job in a cubby on the dash. I kept it there until the day I swapped them to my new car (the keys are currently in the center console, the ticket stub tucked into the Mentos container I use to catch errant pennies.)

The summer after I graduated high school, I went to a thrift store in search of cassettes for my car. I bought three. I don't remember what two of them were, only that one didn't work and the other got all wonky in the middle. But the third was a near-mint condition copy of Paul Simon's Graceland.

All my high school friends liked older music, just not my older music. My sister liked the local alternative station, though I had to reach out and hold onto the antennae to get good enough reception. When I had guests driving with me, I had a purple cassette that connected to my iPod, and we listened to a lot of The Black Keys and Linkin Park and pop music. But Graceland... I listened to it on my way to work. I listened to it while driving to get groceries. I sang alone careening down the freeway to university. It was a tape that was exclusively mine, and I'm so glad it never melted in the desert summer sun.

So Graceland again became an intrinsic part of me. Start to finish, every second of my drive, just me and the road and my first taste of freedom and a constant reminder of home.

"Sad as a lonely little wrinkled balloon/He said, 'Well I don't claim to be happy about this, boys."

I lost the cassette, or donated it, or it got towed to the junkyard with my mighty Rav. My new car had a CD player, so Graceland disappeared in 2017 after four years of near-daily playing. Due to time and shifting and honest consignment to oblivion, I hadn't heard it since.

Until my mom quoted it in that devastating, heart-breaking conversation. I don't want to tell you the lyric, because it's very tender and close to my heart. The point I'm trying to make is Graceland is back.

"These are the days of miracles and wonder, and don't cry baby, don't cry, don't cry."

To say that the last eighteen months have been unprecedented is an understatement, and it ignores the inherent nature of micro-tragedy. I cannot tell you what loss feels like globally, because it feels like we're all carrying different calamities. Families stuck on opposite sides of the world. Partners mourning the loss of their true loves. Parents, cousins, grandmas making it in a world that's pocked and scarred and just missing people and managing regret and understanding their trauma. And their struggles are personal. The world, yes, the world as a whole is experiencing something so new. But the small stuff doesn't stop for the big stuff. We just have to manage it at the same time.

Graceland came back to me again after a macroscopic collapse in my life. But that bit of nostalgia, the power of Graceland echoing, simultaneously, the zeal of childhood and the excitement of 18-year-old freedom... I'm moving forward in my life for baby Beatrice, the B on a road trip with her parents, and the B driving home by herself. I'm taking this soundtrack with me. I can't describe where I've been, I can't say with certainty where I'm heading, but Paul Simon's singing with me again as I find the next road to Graceland.