Hummingwolf at Home

Do you ever start to feel like your tastes have been too influenced by other people's ideas, that you're not sure if the things you've been taking pleasure in are things that really please you after all? Do you ever feel the need to take a chunk of time to just enjoy something you know for sure you'd enjoy no matter what? It's not something you like because it's cool or something you like because it's uncool. It's not something that was recommended by your mother or your lover or your best friend from sixth grade. It's not something you like because you think it shows off your good taste or your bad taste. It's not something you like because nobody would ever expect you to like it. It's not something you like because it's like everything else you like. It doesn't remind you of a special time, special place, or special person from your past, present, or ideal future. It's something you're sure you like for the simple reason that you like it.

Suzanne Vega's music is in that category of things I'm sure I like because I like them. Before I'd bought any of her recordings, I'd heard most of her first album played on three different radio stations. One station was a kind that let the DJs play around with the playlist, playing mostly cool new New Wave or cool older punk while throwing in weird artists nobody ever heard of, famous singers most of us were sick of, and even bits of stand-up comedy albums (this station later became a standard corporate modern rock station); one station played lots of rock music from the sixties and seventies and newer music that fit right in (this station became all-classic rock); and one station on the AM dial played light rock that none of the other light rock stations played. None of the stations told me anything about what I should think of the music, and nothing made me associate listening to the songs with anything other than listening to the songs. All three of these stations helped me fall in love. I'd go around quoting from "Small Blue Thing," "Undertow," or "Marlene on the Wall," and my friends would nod indulgently or point out that I was, obviously, a weirdo.

Eventually I did find out that someone I knew had heard Suzanne Vega's album, but she would just tell me how much I needed to hear "The Queen and the Soldier," one of the few songs I hadn't already heard. When Suzanne Vega finally came out on CD (I'd been waiting for months!), I promptly paid more than 16 dollars for it, more than my allowance at the time.

After a while, other stations played some of the songs, even though none of them were popular here yet. One of those stations was a weak-signaled college station which mostly played punk, very early industrial, and music by college students who seemed to think that noise was a good substitute for melody (this later became a New Age station). The day that the afternoon student DJ got a copy of Suzanne's second album, Solitude Standing, they said they'd play one song from the album in each set until they'd played the whole record. I spent the day alone in the house, doing mindless things I don't remember, listening to mostly forgettable, noisy music which would suddenly be interrupted by the entirely different sound I was waiting for. The radio station received so many phone calls about the music that they decided to play the second side of the album straight through, no interruptions of any kind. I sat still on the floor in between the speakers and stared up at the ceiling, hanging on to every note.

It finally hit me today: I'm officially sick of those cute little online quizzes with all the multiple-choice questions that somehow fail to include any choices I would ever make. Why can't I finish one of these quizzes without having to answer questions as if I were somebody else entirely? Is it some sort of law nobody bothered to tell me about? Hypothetical-Me has completed more of those things than I ever could and I tell you I'm sick of that wench. Why should I care which member of the Osbournes she is when I've never even watched the show? If some stupid test says she's X% gay, what relevance does it have to my life? And as for mythological creatures, I'm neither the phoenix nor the dragon she's been labeled as: I am the Hummingwolf, and it isn't my fault that Homer and the rest of the poets didn't bother to write about me. (Pervy Ovid was jealous of my relationship with Hermes, but that's an old rivalry I won't go into now.)

Bah. If I take another multiple-choice test within the next 30 days, somebody please shoot me.

So many people work hard to find themselves. Why do you have to find yourself? Aren't you standing right there?

Reincarnation was never a big part of my belief system. When someone had a past-life memory, I tended to think that they were simply fishing something out of the vast psychic sea surrounding us (energy never can be destroyed, after all; and where energy exists, there will eventually be some way to detect it); or, alternatively, that they were delusional or misled by some stronger personality. Yet now I'm slowly becoming convinced that people have indeed lived before: not because I believe that I have lived before, but because I'm fairly certain I haven't.
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