I put down my little book about Heidegger after three chapters and found myself still somehow unable to fall asleep. Who knew such was possible? So I pick up my phone, watch a few One Bite pizza reviews — this is literally how I spend my time when I’m not writing or cooking or living the life I don’t talk about — and what do I stumble upon online but the facts that Israel attacked Iran and Taylor Swift’s new double record is suddenly out? WTF, Virginia? So I drop the NYT like the bad penny it is and rush to Spotify and add the damn thing, thinking my 10-year-old daughter’s going to ask for some song off it in the car at some point this weekend, but after ten of the thirty-some songs — cross-referencing between reviews and the tracklist, rushing to understand what this container ship of song-noise thinks it is, I find I’m thinking, “I’m not sure I want my daughter thinking love problems are this important, certainly not love problems about boys” — and that’s when it washes up in my mind —
— NICOLA by Julianna Raye, off her 1993 album, SOMETHING PECULIAR. I can’t link to it because it’s not on Spotify. It’s on Apple Music, though. But let’s see if I can give you the lyrics from memory, the lyrics to this perfect song.
A tribute to my Scottish friend
She left her homeland at fifteen
Uncertain she’d be back again
Following her father’s dream
They came all to America
Strangers on a foreign shore
Frightened was young Nicola
When they moved to Baltimore
They left their friends and relatives
They left the ones that needed them
Some understood, said “Let them live”
Others out of fear condemned
They came all to America
Land of the free and home of the brave
They found their independence
On the billow of a western wave
And now you’re here
The past is like a dream
You’re not free
You’re somewhere in between
Oh Nicola
Perhaps you need a change of scene
Your strength has traveled overseas
You’ve been around for those you love
Your spirit’s like a salty breeze
A sadness you won’t rise above
But don’t hate those whose lives look pure
They can’t begin to realize
For emptiness, there is no cure
Our only hope’s to empathize
And you are true to those who need you most
So don’t be blue
The future’s brighter than it seems
Oh Nicola we all could use a change of scene
We all could use a change of scene
In a way it’s good I can’t link to the song. You have to go look for it. You have to put in at least a little time — less than a minute, probably; in other words, forever — but you’ll be glad you did. The simple peace and grace you’ll hear, the time it took to know someone and love them and make a perfect song to let them know, a song not written for a record but for a person, a song that just so happens to be available to be heard — no, overheard — on a record — it will fill your heart with appreciation for the gift of the day ahead, the day that’s already leaking into this long night, filling its tidepools with light.
When I think about the world ending (and it won’t, Virginia — if the life inside the non-avian dinosaurs survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, then certainly the life inside us will survive whatever we throw at it, even if that life has to move off-planet to thrive), I think about things like this: this song like a perfect piece of sea glass you found on the long, long beach.
You put it on the mantle when you got home with a plan to add it to that bag you have of sea glass, powder blue and white and sweetgrass green, smoother than skin and yet textured in a way that feels cleaner even than ice, that wide bowl you used to keep your sea glass in, right? That your grandmother gave you? But the bowl got lost in the move, Virginia, and now the bag is where?
(The wind blows through the empty house, carrying sand, sinks as it pours in the window and snakes along the floorboards, moving things no one sees.)
When I think about the world ending, I think about things like this, like this song and how they’ll all be lost forever but then I think the LOVE inside them, like the LIFE in us, like that BEING Heidegger said was a Thing-In-Itself, not just a quality or actiion but a Thing-In-Itself, that LOVE/LIFE/BEING — this is what I tell myself — it’s recorded, encoded, engrained in the direction and momentum of everything that came after it, and will be as long as —
— as long as — as long as — as long —
— but we don’t have to think about that now. Because here it is on the sand at our feet, this broken piece of something bigger, once complete, dangerous for a while, now safe and pleasing to hold and carry with you for a while. Maybe give it to a child. They still think things like this can matter tremendously.