My Goodness, What Big Ears You Have

Lop-eared, like a rabbit, I've decided. I mean, one could have donkey ears, basset hound ears, elephant ears, even giraffe ears; they'd all be bigger than normal human ears. But I'm picking rabbit ears for imagery here because it's spring bunny time and loppies are super cute. And as of today, I am supposed to have bigger ears, so I am leaning toward lop stylings in keeping with the season. I mean, I didn't take official before-and-after measurements, but still, I don't doubt that those flappers on the sides of my head, which weren't so small to begin with, have grown a bit, especially since I've been feeding them A LOT of music and poetry these past few days. Turns out that feeding music and poetry to one's ears is the truly avant-garde method of fighting pretty much anything that ails a body, way more experimental than any clinical trial, way more effective, probably, and a lot more fun. Here's my method:

Start by going back to a city where you used to live, a place you learned to love the hard way, over time, long ago. It was a good city for living in when you were always broke and studying and making plans; rent was cheap. You survived on pizza, ramen, and beer, lived in a half-dozen different places over the years there, all of which were varying degrees of tumble-down and shabby, but full of art your friends had made. And lots of books. There were too many romantic entanglements and too many lonely months and years. When you finally left town over a decade later to go be a grown-up, your heart broke a little as you watched the mountains get smaller in the rearview.

When you get back to that city so many years later, go in for the great big genre-defying music festival which has made the place famous these days, and walk everywhere. You always did walk everywhere back in the old days, and you can again. It's the same city, better in some ways, worse in others. One way it is better...the walking. You can walk to so many bougie things you like now, shops and restaurants and galleries, theaters and music halls. The entire downtown, which had once boasted so much empty real estate, is bustling. There are things, and you can walk to all the things. Up and down, up and down the streets and hills. The weather is fine; the cherry trees are blooming; it's spring and perfect, and you walk and walk. And walk. Miles and miles before the long weekend of music is over.

Go inside the churches and theaters and clubs and galleries for all the music and poetry and art all day and all night. Sounds and words you've never heard, jazz and not-jazz, string music and space music, music wrapped around poems, and music bashing into screens and scrims. Screams and saxophones, singing and shouting, harmonium drone and happenstance, ballet and balls-out photography. Try to see and hear everything and fail because there is too much and it is impossible. Stand in line, stand in the venue, listen, walk some more. Go in again. Listen to the people playing, singing, speaking, most of whom you've never even heard of. Listen to the people talking about the people playing; listen in between, listen, listen. Listen to all the weird stuff, almost none of which you know, and if you did, now you hear it in a different way. Be puzzled and curious and surprised. Be glad and listen some more, to all the sounds, the various languages, the idioms, the words and the silences. Deal with the crowds even though you hate crowds. Embrace the too-muchness or let it embrace you. Listen for four fucking days. Be amazed and grateful that you, formerly very, very sick you, can do ALL OF THIS!

And you'll feel better because you'll have gotten avant-garde aesthetic amnesia, in-the-momentness, the real cure for, well, just about anything that needs fixing. You'll go home with a full heart and a mind twisted up like some crazy beautiful sculpture, wrapped around the love of old friends who welcomed you back, took you in, fed you pastries and cheered you on as you fed your ever-growing ears and felt yourself...healing.