Page Two: A Little Light-Rain Music

Late at night, I'm driving through a very light rain in a rented vehicle that is nothing like my car. It really isn't late, maybe just 10pm, but it seems later; still, the calmness rolls over me like a fragrance, surrounds me, and scents me. It's one of those rare interludes where all the things that haunt my head or hurt my body have all chosen the same time to rest. I'm playing a CD, given to me by a friend earlier in the evening, that I've never heard before. Driving, I'm just there. The music is neither distant nor flat; it is full and present. Lost in the music, the rain, the night, I'm trying to remember where I'm going, but I don't really care.

Ordinarily, having just been at the South by Southwest holiday party, I'd feel just a bit more distorted. The journey from the "who I once was" to the "who I am now" never makes sense or seems coherent when I think about it. So I'm not thinking about it.

Now, some of us at the paper have worked together, on one thing or another, for more than 2 decades. Some of the younger staff weren't even born when others of us first hooked up so long ago. We lean back against railings or walls, talking about music. Sure, sometimes we tell stories of the old days, too many stories – too often you can watch as people's eyes glaze over, even when you feel like you haven't really started in yet. But such talk did not dominate on this night. There was planning, shared excitement, and the kind of communication that happens among folks who have known one another so long they don't even always need to speak.

The CD is late-Sixties, Los Angeles, Brian Wilson-type, wall-of-sound, arty rock; it's densely labored, boasting textured harmonies, with hippie-lite lyrics that ignore the tar and reach for the sky. I'm still rolling the taste of being with so many people I like around in my mouth, and the music is perfect. I just want the drive to be forever, the rain to be steady and light.

The next day, when I'm thinking back, however, the soundtrack does not embrace the joyous celebration of sun, with the ocean stretching out forever, that I had played over and over. Instead, it's Waylon Jennings performing Dee Moeller's "Slow Movin' Outlaw." This is from Jennings' terrific This Time album, which I've never found on CD, unlike every other Jennings vinyl (including a few cases in which it is more likely he walked by rather than actually recorded).

This is one of those songs that just gets stuck in my head, playing over and over. It is more than welcome – unlike when some bubblegum-pop song lodges there, returning every time you think it's finally gone. At those times, I feel like driving a nail into my mouth just so I can concentrate on something not quite so painful.

There are certain moments in songs, or scenes in movies, that become part of an endlessly playing, autobiographical collage. In "Try a Little Tenderness" on the Live in Europe album, for example, there's the moment when Otis Redding – with the deepest, most soulful sigh – near-moans, "And them young girls they do get weary." The way he curves that "weary" is the only description I know of the feeling at certain times when soul-sick and busted up, when all I want to do is rest, and yet I know there isn't even the hope of it anywhere in my future.

"All your ol' stations are being torn down and the high flying trains no longer roar/The floors're all sagging with boards at a suffering from not being used anymore" is how "Slow Movin' Outlaw" begins. It's a closeted, Dorian Gray Polaroid of how I really feel, the chorus hitting it just right: "Where has a slow movin' once quickdraw outlaw got to go."

These are the times when I feel so old that my face bears the ugly deep scars of each and every one of the too many miles I've lived, all too roughly and unwisely. When I look in the mirror at my eyes, they seem deadly flat, yet endlessly deep. But rather than just feeling sadness or loss, I kind of treasure each scar, especially some of the ugliest ones, as markers of a life lived and lessons learned.

Sometimes it may not be 20-years-ago good, but usually it's not that bad, either. Sure, the miles hurt, and hope has been chastened by experience, but desire can trump experience and memory leaven pain.

There is a light rain, and there is music. I hope they both never end, but I'm feeling good enough that I know I won't care when they do.

Happy holidays.