Easy To Be Around

Productivity this week has been so intense that I’ve been wondering whether someone’s slipped stimulants into my water.

Since (as I’ve recently come to understand) making work is the only thing that ever really makes me happy, spending literally all day by myself in front of my audio editing software was great fun! Then I realized that I was starting to have difficulty interacting with other people and was having minor anxiety attacks about the volume of my speaking voice during normal conversation.

So, it was a welcome break from work when Brian, Derya, Joanna and I went up to Glendale Shoals today. We spent the afternoon sitting in the sun and dipping our feet into the falls that flank the old, burned-out mill.

And I had one of those moments today: Riding back from the grocery store in Brian’s red truck, I heard Diane Cluck’s Oh Vanille/Ova Nil for the first time. Whatever factors were involved - my mood or the weather or whatever I had just been thinking about or the dreams I had last night but could not remember - all seemed to align with the music coming through the stereo speakers. I wait and wait for moments like these, the ones that arrange themselves so beautifully that I can somehow feel devastated and overwhelmingly grateful about it at the same time.