Keep the Car Running

Cruel World (Lana Del Rey) → I sat in the back of the classroom. It was an ice cold classroom and at 8:30am I didn’t appreciate the school’s air conditioning. My stomach twisted uncomfortably from drinking coffee without eating anything alongside it. In seventh grade I started to notice the board up front and the tv at home were starting to get harder to see—the colors and words were beginning to blur together more than usual. It was now my first semester, Freshman year of high school and I had continued to not tell my parents I was struggling to see and I wouldn’t tell them until April. Nearly on the verge of tears because I couldn’t see the math questions up on the board and was too anxious to admit to my teacher I couldn’t see I sat there awkwardly while everyone else worked. When the ninety-minute class ended and I hadn’t done a single problem my teacher figured out what was wrong and moved me to the front row for the rest of the semester so that I could continue to pretend I didn’t need glasses. 

Blackbird (The Beatles) → I was curled up on my parents’ old and creaky bed. At the time I snuggled with only Cotton and Snoopy—only another year until we adopted Romo and we wouldn’t rescue Artie until I was twelve. Dad sat on the edge of the bed with his black guitar that Mom bought him with her first ever Christmas bonus years before. He plucked an elegant tune and sang gently along with it. When he finished I sat up with my long, then bright blonde hair tangled and matted behind me. “Did you write that one?” I asked. “I wish. That’s a Paul McCartney song.” Now it makes me homesick.  

Snow (Hey oh) (Red Hot Chili Peppers) → We were in the long line at the high school in order to pick up Chy (my big sister) from school. It was later in the evening because she was part of the high school’s dance team and had practice after school. Mom was there early so we waited in the car by the high school doors. “How much do you wanna bet when she gets in the car the first thing she says is, ‘okay, so’?” I asked my mom who turned her music down. “Because that’s always what she says, then she starts ranting about her day.” When Chy got in the car she set her backpack in the floorboard and said, “Okay, so,” and me and Mom couldn’t help but laugh at her for it. As we pulled out into traffic I sunk back down into my Percy Jackson book and we headed to Girl Scouts.

Call It What You Want (Foster the People) → Chy sat at our desk in our shared room with music blaring out of her laptop while she finished up an art project. She would go to UNCA to major in art only to switch majors several times before dropping out, saying the classes made her hate art. I peered over her shoulder at the woman she’d drawn. Chy was—still is—ridiculously talented and would eventually draw a portrait of my Grandad in his Army uniform for my Grandmother and people will ask if it was professionally done. “Why does her shirt say ‘call it what you want’?” I asked. “It’s a song,” she answered. “Stop hovering.” 

Breaking Down (Florence + the Machine) → It was another sleepless night and it was summer. I had Florence’s voice bursting through my earbuds wondering why it wasn’t helping me fall asleep. The street lamp filtered in through my grandma’s curtains. My house at home was in the middle of nowhere and no light other than moonlight entered my windows while I slept. Or in this case didn’t sleep.

20 Years (The Civil Wars) → While panic cleaning my room during Covid I found my 8th grade yearbook. In the two pages that were collaged with photos of all of us I found one that was obviously of me, even though my hair was covering my face. I was sitting under the window reading a House of Night book. My hair was still long and I wore it down at the time. I wore skinny jeans, a flannel and red converse highs. It was all a painful reminder that my sense of style hasn’t changed at all since I was thirteen. Not even my love of books because that’s the year I first read my all time favorite book Norwegian Wood. Though you can’t tell from the picture, I likely had my earbuds in because I was always listening to music while reading. Chy had taught me how to slip one side of my earbuds up my shirt and cover it with my hair so I could listen to music during class. I listened to music this way for the majority of the school day.

Campus (Vampire Weekend) → With my hidden earbud playing music I walked on the track alongside someone who my friends said looked like how they imagined Simon from The Mortal Instruments to look. The thing was, though, I didn’t really like him. That came out wrong, he was very nice and stupid smart—I didn’t really like like him. In fact I didn’t know him very well. But my friends had been so excited about it all that I felt like I was supposed to be excited too. I kept focused on my music because it was possible I’d get to go see them in concert that summer and Chy had said this album was really good. And I really liked this song, maybe even the best. And I was too awkward and nervous and confused to focus on anything else.

National Anthem (Lana Del Rey) → I didn’t pack another pair of jeans because we were only there for one night and were sleeping in a little camper which to me didn’t even feel like camping. (My family went tent camping every summer.) This time around we went wandering up the mountain, and stopped by a shallow pond. Shallow looking pond. I took one step and ended up knee deep in mud. I had to borrow a pair of her pants. We wandered up the rest of the mountain—me barefoot for some reason and singing Lana Del Rey because she was stuck in my head. We stopped at the top because there was a barbed wire fence with a field beyond and we didn’t want to try climbing around the fence. Somewhere on the other side, I was told, was Tennessee. A few months later we’d be in high school and I’d join the GSA and she’d send me a paragraph long text about Jesus and say she couldn’t be seen hanging around someone who supports LGBTQ+ rights so openly. Good fucking riddance. 

Tiny Bubble (Paul McCartney) → Dad came upstairs while I sat at the kitchen counter watching tv and snacking. His office was in the basement and he worked down there a lot. “Tiny buBBLES.” he half shouted. When I gave him a look he said, “what, that’s how the song goes! Tiny bubbLES.” When I told him years later that he ruined the song by doing that so often my mom asked, “which song?” “TINY BUBBLES, obviously,” I answered, causing my dad to laugh loudly and my mom to laugh too, though she kept her eyes on her watercolor.

We’re Going To Be Friends (The White Stripes) → Most of my friends had graduated—my best friend more importantly. And with her all of her other friends too. My first class was ceramics and I was terrible at it. The teacher always had the same playlist going and he sat at his desk and I never knew what I was doing. All of my pieces are wacky and asymmetrical. My stand partner in orchestra told me to just tell everyone they were meant to be abstract. “Most people probably won’t even know what that means,” she said. After school I listened to one of the songs off of his playlist because I’d liked it enough to add it to some of my own. Traffic was bad, the stoplight was at the top of a steep hill and I drove a manual. So I curled up in the backseat of my red beetle named Natasha and slept until four--when traffic was gone and I could start at the top of the hill without fear of rolling into the person behind me. 

Humility (Gorillaz) → My guidance counselor waited until I had two weeks left to tell me I was failing precalc and that if I failed I couldn’t walk at graduation. I feared about having to tell my family they didn’t get to see me walk. I only told my third grade teacher-—who I interned for—of my anxiety. “Well, let me know if you can’t because I’m going for you. It’s not a big deal if you can’t. Besides, you’re going to be a famous writer so precalc isn’t important.” On the last day of class, after the exam, I didn’t even want to know what I got. I just asked the teacher: “did I pass?” I did. I got to walk at graduation. When I checked my grade online, I passed with a sixty-two. The only thing that saved my brain from jumping off the burning building of anxiety was a new song. 

Bones (Alexandra Savior) → It was hot in the dorm and when we opened the window it didn’t have a screen and wasps would fly in so we kept it closed and it was stifling. Whenever I tried to nap in between classes and work — we’d find out this was due to me being “super anemic” — Landscaping Crew would mow the lawn outside or the asshole who lived above me would start playing his drums or electric guitar and my anxiety and intense fear of confrontation kept me from asking him to stop. So when my alarm went off telling me it was time to walk to work I’d sadly and sleepily put in my earbuds and walk down the hill and the Stairs of Death. If I worked extra hours every week I could go home early one week to see Avengers: Endgame with my parents. 

I Love Seattle (Tacocat) → The last concert I saw before the end of the world — I mean the global pandemic — was a Tacocat concert in Asheville. I was right up in the front and when I went after they played and before the third band that played that night to get merch I was startled to find that it was the bass player selling their own stuff. Too awkward to tell her how cool she was, I complimented her turntable tattoo, bought a tshirt and mumbled a likely inaudible ‘thank you.’ I listened to them almost every time I drove me and my roommate to Ingles and because the drive is so short we listened to the same few songs. 

Keep the Car Running (Arcade Fire) → forever and always my all time favorite song. I first adored their song on the Hunger Games soundtrack. It’s the song that plays as President Snow dramatically turns and walks away from the camera and the credits roll up. I bought Funeral on iTunes and listened to it on my broken laptop who’s earbud jack didn’t work anymore until Chy yelled at me to listen to something else so I’d go to “Arcade Fire Radio” on Pandora and skip as many songs as it would allow me to until I came across an Arcade Fire song that Chy wouldn’t yell at me for. Then I bought Neon Bible and fell in love with it too--even the songs I’d already heard on Pandora. It took an hour long school bus ride for me to get home and in that time I would read, regretfully talk to my classmates, hit a few in the face with my book after they thought I’d be easy to pick on (and by a few I mean it only happened twice and they were both very nice to me afterwards) or listen to music and look out the window. This last part typically happened near the end as the bus I rode was a handicapped bus so half of it didn’t have any seats and we weren’t allowed to sit back there and so everyone was cramped together and I always demanded the outside seat because being stuck in the chaos and between a window and people made me anxious and I confused it with claustrophobia. It was looking out the window that I first heard “Keep the Car Running.” My senior year of high school I’d drive home thinking of the concert I’d go to in the summer and remembering those school bus days in middle school. And that summer they played “Keep the Car Running” and I cried like an idiot because it was finally summer and I had finally graduated high school. And I finally got to see my all time favorite band in concert. And they were playing the song that had seen my best and worst days. And who got me through all of them. Click here to add text.