The Living Music List #21: On Longing
How it felt to practice parenting while taking care of my younger sister.
Currently listening to: Finding Your Rhythm by Melted Form
This is an unreleased track I originally created to accompany a guided meditation. However, the meditation never came to fruition. At least, not in the way I anticipated. I reconnected with my Uncle Alan last week and we talked of many things, including his endeavor into painting labyrinths that people can walk through as a form of meditation and centering themselves. He needed a space to paint his large first piece, so he used the driveway at my parent’s house. During this process, he mentioned that it would be cool to use an ambient piece of mine for the video he was going to make to demonstrate it. I revived this piece and sent it to him, and it ended up fitting very well, we thought. You can watch the video of my uncle walking through his labyrinth here or listen to the track above. It’s called Finding Your Rhythm, and that title echoes what I was attempting to do over the last two weeks as a substitute single parent. More on that in today’s reflection.
Reflection
Hello, friend.
How do you feel about kids?
Want ‘em? Have ‘em? Couldn’t imagine life without ‘em?
Or are you like me? Mid to late twenties (is 27 mid or late?) Childless. Playfully contemplating a future as a parent but balking any time the headspinning reality waves through the rose-tinted window at you. Maybe you’re one of many who have already happily committed to a course down the long lazy river of permanent adult swim.
And who could blame you? Raising kids is a positively biblical undertaking (so declares this childless 20-something). One need not bear children to understand the sheer scale and heft of the duty one bears forever after as a result.
All of us have been the burdens triggering that call to duty—some of us larger burdens than others. If you have spent but a single day attempting to wrangle the chaotic energy of a 12-year-old, ADHD-addled preteen like my kid-sister Vivian, you’ve known the ominous horror of indefinitely keeping a child alive.
Aside: Is there a term more simultanously offensive and endearing than “kid-sister” or “kid-brother”? It feels utterly classic, like something only the teenage characters in a movie made in the ‘80s but set in the ‘50s should say (looking at you, STAND BY ME). “Offensive and Endearing” would probably be the title of my memoir if it were to only recount the last two weeks I’ve spent taking care of Vivian while my parents were away.
I kid, of course—I love my sister. She’s intelligent, vibrant, inquisitive, and above all, deeply loving. The 15-year age gap between us has created a unique relationship that makes me feel an even greater level of “big brother protectiveness” akin to what I imagine a father feels for his daughter.
This set the tone for our two intense weeks together, during which I received what was essentially a single parenting boot camp. Here’s how a day in my life looked as a substitute father:
Up at 6. Attempt to wake Viv. Brush my teeth. Attempt to wake Viv again. Go downstairs and pack her lunch. Go back upstairs to force Viv out of bed by turning lights on and standing there until she starts moving. Remind her to brush her teeth and hair. Remind her to put deodorant on. Ask her when her last shower was. Look back on my own preteen years in nostalgic disgust. Fifteen minutes to the bus (if it’s a good day). Make sure she has packed her backpack. Implore her to consider eating breakfast. Nope, her stomach doesn’t handle breakfast well. Get her out to the bus just in time.
Walk the dog in the nearby field. He’s a well trained pup, able to walk off his leash, obeying when commanded. He gets to play with his friends accompanied by their middle aged or early retiree parents who ask for my name repeatedly for the first several days. Go back home and feed the dog breakfast and, oh yeah, feed myself too.
Work. 9 to 5 (or more like 8:30 to 6, depending on the day’s workload). Viv gets back at 3. At 4:15, I mute myself in a meeting to ask her what homework she has due tomorrow. She doesn’t respond the first time I ask, staring at a YouTube video on her phone of someone playing pranks. I ask again. “Just math,” she assures me. “Oh, and spelling. And studying for a history quiz. And reading.” “All of that’s due tomorrow?” I ask. “Mmhmm,” she’s still watching YouTube. “Did that all get assigned today?” “Just the math,” she waves me off. “Okay… well let’s take a break from the phone starting at 4:30 and start on homework because you have karate at 7:30 tonight and—” (Vivian’s ADHD means I pretty much have to sit with her for a few hours while she finishes her homework, because she otherwise wouldn’t do it on her own and gets distracted every few seconds). “Anddd, I need you to help me make my Halloween costume. I’m going to be Edward Scissorhands.” “Anddd, you need to take a shower tonight after karate—” “Seriously?” “Yes, seriously. Didn’t you run the mile at school today too?” “Yeah, so?”
Did this stress you out at all? It reads pretty rough, but honestly, I was suprised at my ability to handle these kinds of days (and I know it could’ve been much worse). I’m a child who grew up with a single mom for the first half of my childhood, so maybe I channeled some of her example. It was exhausting at times, certainly, but I have a motto that will probably be tattooed on my body one day: “If it has to get done, it will get done.”
And it did all get done. We got her homework done on time. I got her fed (though I resorted to Uncrustables for lunch and takeout for dinner more often than I want to admit). We stayed up late ordering accessories on Etsy and safety pinning the hell out of fake belts on a leather jacket so she could realize her perfect vision of an authentic Edward Scissorhands costume.
I did the dishes when they piled up, sometimes even before the piles got higher than the depth of the sink. I did her laundry. I picked up the trash she carelessly left behind from snacking after school.
I also listened as she practiced the piano and the violin, displaying heaps more self-trained musical talent than I’ve got. I sat for an hour at karate practice and watched her proudly earn her stripes toward the next color belt. I took her bowling, and I bought her popcorn and candy at the movies, and I introduced her to The Simpsons.
My entire waking life was dedicated to my sister for the last two weeks, and though we argued here and there, though I spent virtually no time on my own hobbies, and though I occasionally questioned my ability to raise children of my own down the line… during those two weeks, there were a good many nights when I laid in my parents’ bed, stared up at the ceiling, and mourned the fact that I had not put my own burgeoning life on hold to spend more time with my now not-so-baby sister.
***
Halfway through my time with Viv, I went for a run. 10K. That distance takes me a little over an hour, which makes it the perfect time for a podcast. I stumbled across one called Modern Love from The New York Times, and it was an episode featuring Andrew Garfield chatting about his new romantic drama film WE LIVE IN TIME (also starring Florence Pugh) and reading an essay called Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss by Chris Huntington. You can read or listen to the episode here (free access for the next 30 days using this gift link, I highly recommend listening to it).
During the reading of Huntington’s essay, Garfield broke down. His voice failed and tears began to flow gently from his eyes as he apologized to Anna Martin, the host of the podcast. Martin noted that this had never happened before to any other guest and asked what it was in the essay that was striking him so deeply. Garfield responded:
Oh dear. I don’t know. It’s mysterious. This is why art is so important because it can get us to places that we can’t get to any other way. It’s the preciousness. And it’s the longing for more. It’s like, we all live—we all pass with so much more to know, with so much more longing.
Garfield tied this to the concept of “onism,” which is the feeling of frustration that we are stuck inside our own bodies, confined to one place in the world and unable to experience everything else we know is in it. This is where the longing lies.
As I cared for my younger sister in Pennsylvania, while also deeply missing my fiancee and two cats back at home in New Jersey, and imagining my aging parents (not old, but aging—it was my mom’s 50th birthday while she was away) on their own romantic getaway, and thinking of my other sister who is only a few years younger than me and navigating an early career and relationship of her own—I was struck with this deep sense of longing.
There were so many people in my life I suddenly realized how much I cared for, and how much they cared for me. And there was so much time already passed that I didn’t spend getting to enjoy their presence and learn about their individual lives and hopes and dreams. There would never be enough time in the future to do this either. When we love so deeply, there is never enough time to feel and express that love.
It is a cliche, but one worth remembering: our lives are long, but they are also dreadfully short. Every moment matters, even the messy, stressful ones.
On the last day I was with Vivian, I would be leaving for home right after getting her off to school. It was 6:50 and still dark outside as we walked outside to the waiting schoolbus. I noticed my legs suddenly walking with less urgency. I looked not ahead, but at her instead. She was tall and beautiful and almost a teenager. She was wearing our mom’s orange jacket. She longed for our parents in a way that I had not realized we both did. As the bus pulled up to our driveway, she gave me her usual quick hug, but I held her to me a little longer this time. She boarded and I could just see her silhouette through the tinted windows move back to a middle seat and wave at me. I blew her a kiss, walked back toward my car, and started to cry.
Music Recommendations
Hello again, friend.
Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you enjoyed the reflection—and I hope you have time today to be with your loved ones. Maybe these new releases will echo the longing we feel and give us something to cling to as the unrelenting waves of time and space rush past us.
Happy listening.
The Living Music List—Ambient
Note: All of the below ambient projects are available on Bandcamp.
Decrepitude by Buried Marie (album / dark ambient, ambient piano) [Neotantra / Bandcamp]
Unmapping The Distance Keeps Getting Closer by Ezekiel Honig (album / electroacoustic, field recordings) [12k / Bandcamp]
A Distant Blur by Broken Chip (album / field recordings, drone) [Home Normal / Bandcamp]
La Gran Corriente by OKRAA (album / drone, electronica {note: this one has a variety of sounds happening, including some less ambient, more electronic cuts with beats, but there are plenty of tracks that feature gorgeous wall of sound-style ambient}) [A Strangely Isolated Place / Bandcamp]
Pitch Dark and Trembling by Alma Laprida (EP / electroacoustic, experimental {note: super weird, dark tracks resulting from Laprida’s experimentations with a medieval stringed instrument called a tromba marina}) [Outside Time / Bandcamp]
Ghost by Black Swan (album / drone, dark ambient) [Past Inside the Present / Bandcamp]
Electio by Tom Smith (album / ambient guitar, field recordings) [whitelabrecs / Bandcamp]
Kuma Cove by Luke Wyland (album / ambient piano, experimental) [Balmat / Bandcamp]
Heavy Early & The Creation of Venus by Windy & Carl (album / ambient guitar, drone) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Roots by 58918012 (album / drone, dark ambient) [Syntes Records / Bandcamp]
The Magic of Pure Being by Ingrid N (album / drone, field recordings) [Independent / Bandcamp]
The first machine by Infinity Frequencies (album / drone, computer gaze {note: if you’re wondering what the hell that means, basically think of this as old computers making weird, washed out ambient electronic music}) [Independent / Bandcamp]
The Living Music List—All Genres
Note: All of the below projects are available on major streaming services.
Blitz (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Hans Zimmer (album / film score)
Heretic (Original Soundtrack) by Chris Bacon (album / film score)
CHROMAKOPIA by Tyler, The Creator (album / hip-hop/rap)
Songs Of A Lost World by The Cure (album / alternative)
Spirit Box by Flying Lotus (album / electronic)
The Floor is Lava by Michael Mayer (album / electronic)
You Only Die 1nce by Freddie Gibbs (album / hip-hop/rap)
liminal space by mxmtoon (album / indie pop)
BRAVADO + INTiMO by IDK (album / hip-hop/rap)
Dream Trio by Sam Gendel, Benny Bock & Hans P. Kjorstad (album / jazz)
Music for William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton by J Spaceman, John Coxon & Spiritualized (album / psychedelic)
Eternal Atake 2 by Lil Uzi Vert (album / hip-hop/rap)
SHAME by OMBIIGIZI (album / alternative)
brent III by Jeremy Zucker & Chelsea Cutler (album / folk pop)
Winter Stories by Jacob Karlzon (album / classical crossover)
That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.
Your friend,
Melted Form
Remember to listen to the hum, buzz, & hiss of the world around you—there is music to be heard there.
Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:
Afterword—Let’s Get In Touch
Are you an artist, a label owner, or a member of the press? Want to share an in-depth feature of your upcoming release, an advertisement, or a guest post for a future Hum, Buzz, & Hiss issue? Get in touch with me at meltedform@gmail.com. As always, I would love to hear and recommend your music, especially if it’s new and ambient/electronic/experimental.
Also, you can keep up with me and hear more of the music I’m listening to by following me on Substack Notes. Join our community of music-loving writers and readers discussing the latest releases, old gems, and everything in between.
A tender, empathic narrative. Thank you for sharing.
Beautiful, Spence