“The airport is already beginning to get to me…I can even smell the seeping odor of the word search books…the extended feel of transition in every item.” – Francie, ‘The Butterfly Lampshade’
How long does it take to get to a mountain? One of the underrated aspects of these so-tall-it’s-frankly-a-little-pretentious landmasses is that if you’re approaching one, it is probably not as close as it looks. Granted, I grew up in the rolling hills of middle Tennessee and made the majestic prairie metropolis of Chicago my adult home. Maybe all mountains have a huge awe factor to me.
I thought I semi-understood mountains, though. My parents took me hiking frequently, my church growing up had yearly ski trips (French Lick, Indiana was “when Youth Group shared a hotel with a Harley convention” before it was “the birthplace of Larry Joe Bird” to me)—I thought I at least sort of had a handle on mountains. Then I had to drive from Salt Lake City to rural Idaho one time and learned I had no idea what mountains’ whole vibe was.
The western United States came up in conversation with some friends—I strangely have a bunch of Idaho connections in my social circle now—and I got to reminiscing about that SLC—>ID drive with the homie Tommy Beanbags (real name). Tom and I only made that drive because we happened to be flying into SLC at the same time. We were going to the same wedding, sure, but Beans and I at that point were best described as acquaintances. Tom’s a quiet dude and I have social anxiety, so what we had to converse off of for four hours was this: 1) Tom’s iPod and 2) how nuts mountains are.
I’m old enough to remember the rollout of the iPod. My 16th birthday was in 2003 and I was PROUD of my CD collection, amassed in a big ol’ case that sat at the feet of the passenger side in my 30-miles-to-the-gallon 1998 Honda Accord. CDs tucked behind album covers, crucially. Don’t wanna scratch the CDs, obviously, plus you need to see the album cover.
When the iPod came out, it made sense. All your music in one place, very easy to carry around, no one had cell phones then anyway. “But but but,” I whined to the uncaring Tech Gods, “what about album covers?” I needed my album covers. Much like book covers, they are absolutely essential to my understanding of the album as an artistic artifact. A cover is an artistic statement in and of itself, and it serves as introduction to the rest of the album/book. Covers don’t make or break (or really have any affect on) quality, obviously. Songs are songs, a novel is a novel. But some degree of care should be put into the first impression.
This need to see things maybe shouldn’t be as important as it is to me. Mountains are big, I know this. And if poems made of “music IMAGE metaphor,” what does the cover art really matter? Logically, nothing. I know this. It sets the vibe, though. When I finished The Butterfly Lampshade, I closed the book and thought, “that is an appropriate blue color for that novel.” It wasn’t my first thought, I’m not totally superficial. But it was a thought.
Substack Reads directed me to this post from Rachel Cabitt, , on how album art fits into the lineage of fine art. If you wanna get me to click something, point to something previously thought of as ‘low’ art and say it’s actually ‘high’ art. We should be thinking about how normal objects around us are Art, Actually more. That’s one of the big takeaways from The Butterfly Lampshade, in fact.
There’s something about becoming a parent that’s turned my “noticing things” dial up to 11. Maybe it’s having less time alone with my own experiences—when you are doing anything with a preschooler, your focus is primarily the preschooler—and it’s made me treasure my own sensory experience more. Or maybe it’s naming the world for my little dude: “look, there’s a blue house! There’s a black cat! There’s a…hey, when’d they put a mural there?” I crave the full experience of things, I crave the feeling of being fully present immersed.
I didn’t have full context for mountains until I was driving towards one. It made me appreciate them more, like obviously mountains are photogenic, but there’s an extra layer of understanding, summoning in my memory the ominous looming of a summit in the distance. There’s an extra layer of understanding listening to, say, “Once You Get Started” by Rufus & Chaka Khan and picturing Chaka’s beaming joy on the album cover as she belts those first high notes.
Tommy Beanbags and I went from “acquaintances” to “good friends” on that drive. This was in 2016. The iPod had already become an anachronism, but they’d figured out how to put album covers on it by then. We probably talked about that, I don’t remember, but I’m uninteresting enough to have probably said something about album covers. We definitely talked about that mountain, and how we figured we’d be there like half an hour ago, would’ve thought anyway, but guess they’re bigger when you experience them.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris