Call The Ball Black But The Doors Open. Be Healthy, Yeah?

Julie and Julia. It was a movie about blogging, I think. I saw it merely to hang out with one of the most lovely persons in the world. It was cute and I hate cute most of the time because my testosterone levels tell me to do so.

Anyways, that is not what I really wanted to write about but clearly I did because I just wrote it.

Last night was maybe one of the best nights of the summer. You know those nights so I won't have to go into great depth, at least I am hoping you do and if you haven't maybe I can spin one for you whoever YOU are.

The Toadstool Bookshop, more specifically, the music store, tucked away in the corner and framed in by the travel section and calendars is where two of the most influential people in my life have existed. One of which is leaving, going to China with his wife to teach English via film and their wits. The other may be there only for a little while longer, who knows.

I met them when I was a Freshman in high school, hair out to space, and all tie-dye. Music was my dad's record collection. It was the Allman Brothers, Phish, The Grateful Dead and nothing more and certainly nothing less. Until I met Ryan. Explosions in the Sky. The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. The earth truly was no longer a cold dead place.

From that point on it became a point of order to visit them whenever I came home. If I didn't get my weekly dose of the Toadstool, of that dynamic duo, of those beardoes my head was most likely hung between my feet.

Last night was a going away party for Ryan and his wife. Some of the most spectacular people were in attendance. It was hosted at Eric's, Ryan's partner in crime. The New England post-colonial home with wooden beams was decorated with immaculate art, immaculate warmth, and music. The community came together, brought food, drank together, laughed together.
At a certain point a few of us were in the adjacent river, near over-flowing from the flash floods we incurred yesterday. We sat back, drinking PBR and dug our feet into the gravelly bottom while Ryan floated up and down the river. It was the Toadstool stripped down. It was the summer coming to an end the way it ought to. It was a friend leaving.

But the night was not over and it was not just antics in the unforgiving river. Since I was unable to drink I smoked a joint which I haven't done in probably 6 months. It was the most mellow high I could ask for. After which I did an interview with one of the most thunderous voices I've ever heard, Atom the Motion and the Void. He was drunk, I was stoned, and we were maybe making sense, maybe. We talked for half an hour about identity, as a car, as a skeleton, as guilt, as a black ball with doors. Then we talked abour Ryan and his wife, Becky, and how I knew them.

The last thing I recall saying in the interview (that may potentially be on NHPR which, I hope for the sake of incoherency is not) was how the Peterborough community became most apparent to me when Ryan and I hugged each other for the first time a few weeks ago. That alone says something so vastly profound about this area and these people. Community, in my professional opinion, starts at your local record store.

I say to YOU, go talk to your record guys/gals, buy one album, share that album, love where you are from, contribute to the music that comes from where you reside, go back to the record store and repeat this process and in five years when these friends leave you, the record store guys/gals, or you are finding that you are settling and living elsewhere proceed to hug (mind you, this is not an endorsement for that Dave Matthews music video where he hugs everyone on this planet. I think that is an ad for pot, though this ramble included in some way my own advocacy for occasional pot use) and keep hugging...[because lord knows healthcare will not be available to you].