CHAPTER 3: ON SONIC RESONANCE, AND MOBILE PHONE ETIQUETTE


“In memory, everything seems to happen to music.”

-Tennessee Williams


Never answer the phone if it’s a woman calling. Ever.

The following information/advice is explicitly not to be followed until after a non-embarassing number of dates and outings. Don't show up on the second date toting a 5-disc set of your heart poured all over the place with your favorite songs, you fucking geek.

Also, please note that the proceeding applies only to non-audiophiles. If she’s got two turntables and a microphone, and you’ve got no tastes of your own, you’re up shit creek. If you’ve got no taste in music, bloody well fix yourself. Get to the local used audio guru’s corner shack, study those orange crates full of vinyl, and don’t hesitate to ask questions.

So then, mix tapes are god. Yes, I know, this was already reviewed extensively in that Nick Hornby book. I would like to reiterate. Especially with the advent of CD burning and mp3 players, mix tapes command even more nostalgia, even more mystique. Now, your ladyfriend will have to listen to it at home, ‘cause who the hell has a tape deck in their car, or carries around a Walkman from 1989? Hell, she might even have to go buy an old-school boombox or something, if she’s interested enough.

This conspires to make your maneuver exceptionally intimate, because she’ll almost assuredly listen with interest, ‘cause she had to work a little harder to get there. Hopefully she’ll play it paired with a cocktail, or while reading some Rumi. This enhances the mix tape experience, according to numerous subjects.

You have to have kept tabs well enough to remember who some of her favorite musicians are. Check all the stations on her car radio when she’s using the ATM. Try to ferret out whatever painful pop crap will probably be on her lips. (An intelligent woman who also likes good music is a hole-in-one. Consider carefully what you do with her.) Obviously, raid the CD tower/binder if there is one. Or, you may have to intuit some things, if she isn’t entirely aurally inclined. Which means you have to think about her personality, which means you have to know something about her personality. Achtung! I can’t stress it enough.

Tim, I know you have a decent collection, but still eclectic, and not that big. The easiest solution is busting out some massive illegal downloading – stuff that’s generally wonderful, meaningful, romantic, popular, rare, etc, and keep yourself a library readily available. If you know what she likes, track down acoustic and remixed versions of her favorite artists’ songs – a sure win, and that internet’s full of them. Using digital files, you can burn a disc, and then record from that, or get a line-out hookup direct from computer to tape recorder. Either way, it’s quick and painless: with a pre-made playlist, you don’t have to sit around switching CDs to make the damn tape. Seems like you went to all this work, but took no time at all.

Make sure to include just a little of your own music, that you might later play in the car. This encourages her to enjoy your music, making the radio even moreso yours when it counts, and it’s the personal touch that seals the deal. That, and a handwritten label. Never type anything out. Give everything to her in your own scrawl, even if it is only half-legible.

Music is unsuspect and perfect in every way as a tool. If you can, at all, learn where her tastes lie. You can set mood after mood with your choices. Have some bitter songs onhand, just in case you’d prefer the radio to say your piece instead of having to talk. She’ll listen. Gather some of her stuff to prove to her that you’re learning to love the things that she does. Music can make, break, completely define a relationship, unquestionably.

Create a playlist or ten for ‘intimate moments’. Play it. Regularly. Cheap way to teach the pelvis some rhythm. I swear, one day, I’ll be able to bust a mean Hokey Pokey.

Besides allowing all white boys to get funky, the Pavlovian response is unbelievable, and damn near indispensable. Just think, a song you’ve fucked to night after night suddenly comes on the radio during a road trip. Instant Road Head. I’m exaggerating, but the concept applies in multiple scenarios. All you need to know is that it increases your chances of public and private indecency exponentially.

Concerts are also memorable, life-impacting moments. I’ve been to more concerts than I’ve thought to count. But I remember each one I’ve attended, rather distinctly. And that’s despite how fucked up I was, which was generally balls to the wall teeth-grinding gnarly. I do concerts the right way. If you can work them into your budget and repertoire, do so.

Tested and Approved: Years later, if that band is coming through the town she’s living in, and you want some free digs that come with pre-equipped with ass, arrive with two tickets. Single or not, she may very well give it up. If you’re not getting the vibe, ditch that noise immediately and troll the local bars.

Alternately, if you’re still really into her, there is something to be said for fucking in a hotel room, as opposed to her room. It lends this surreal, near-movieish quality to it. It’s more anonymous, more degrading even. The room itself is transient, and the act easily loses any tendencies toward grace, suddenly more recognizable for its baseness. The rawness of chemical indulgence screams to be unleashed in these nameless, faceless units. Shell out the scrilla for a hotel room, when Buck needs a night on the town. Mr. Wild will thank you gladly.

If ever there’s one a little too demure otherwise, she will allow you to debase her in a hotel room. That is, if she’s to be debased. But don’t hesitate to exercise the illusion of authority, once under those circumstances. It’s the great unspeakable fantasy. The one religion forbad long ago, and the one that the cult of Hallmark Love shuns: The removal of personality, of restraint, and informed action… surrender to the hypnotic draw of flesh in a place captured outside accountability with the single swipe of a credit card. Copulation for sheer sensation.

But always mind yourself. The only authority you have is what she gives you. All of this is nothing without consent. In fact, it cannot exist without consent, and nor should you, if you act without it.

Music…we were talking about music.

A moth ate songs – wolfed words!
That seemed a weird dish – that a worm
Should swallow, dumb thief in the dark,
The songs of a man, his chants of glory,
Their place of strength. That thief-guest
Was no wiser for having swallowed words.

Riddle me that, Batman. The problem, I’m encountering, of course, is the inevitable spiral into bullshit rumination. Anything I write is sodden with pilfering. The steam runs out because the engine of my generation lies only in experience; there is no creative spark, no divine pneuma. The paragraphs inevitably become my life played out in pseudo-significant dramatics, only to lag into the shittiness I see when I review anything I’ve done. I have not been extraordinary. I’ve not said anything extraordinary. And I swear Timmy, I’m trying to make something special for you here. Trying to keep you entertained, all the way out there in Hell.

Despite the intensity and detail of all these sensations, I am a shallow well of memory. The attempt to lend shape and form simply becomes a thincheap shell under which there is no embryo, no egg salad sandwich, no nothing. Experience for experience alone is not living. You know more about what I’m trying to talk about than I ever will.

Shit mon ami…I’m trying here. The cogs and pinwheels are out of concordance. I’m sure you guessed that by now. I’ll serve it up as a warning. Don’t fall too far down this hole. Find one you can compromise on, or learn to live as a shadow. One or the other.

I recommend techno if it’s up her alley. Can’t really go wrong. Good beat, no distracting lyrics. You have to throw other music in, ‘cause that’s what’s on the radio, and you want that random sexual memory initiator working its magic whenever possible. But techno generates some of the best bounce.

Turn the radio down for her if she wants to talk in the car. Maybe not all the time. Maybe not when The Who are on. But otherwise.

Learn to play music. Guaranteed sex appeal. But if you do, fuck you, ‘cause you’ll land more women than I ever did.

Let’s keep moving. This chapter worked conceptually...it was a brilliantly devised Plan of Action, containing considerable amounts of Pertinent Information. But I’ve evidently lost track of what is, and isn’t, music.

Remember what I said about the phone. They’ll learn to leave voice mail.