Multitracking: From the Bed - A February mix by Kathleen

Sunday, March 6, 2011

From the Bed - A February mix by Kathleen

Even though the party was still waging its war against the calm, I had given in to the protest that had found its way to my limbs and retreated to the closest bedroom. Weightless with sleep, I slid into the bed and pulled the covers close around me. It took a moment for them to awaken from their own slumber and shake off the cold that floated in through the slightly open window, resting like a thin layer of snow between the sheets. Before long the covers were returning my warmth to me, welcoming me with their threads worn soft by years of use.

Even before my eyes had adjusted to the new darkness I could picture Colleen’s room. Piles of clothing strung across old wooden furniture that had been found abandoned on street corners. The woven tapestry haphazardly tacked to the wall whose earthy smell battled with the smell of the rain climbing sheepishly into the room. Candles. Books. Photographs affixed with scotch tape. Watercolors made by hands I have never known. Old CD cases, stolen street signs, bracelets made of metal painted gold and silver. The trinkets of a life that wasn’t mine.

It was long past midnight, and the minutes had lost their value. They fell like words on ears that have only ever known silence. And through the walls of her room I could feel my friends filling the living room with their fluid existence and the steady beat pulsing from the speakers. And somehow the world began to dissolve under the weight of their bodies moving and forming into a reality all their own. And I felt myself fleeing to the nerves in my hands, my arms. My chest, down my stomach. I felt the music fill my limbs and hold me in this moment. And somewhere between asleep and awake I started to think that I had found communion. And if I ever believed in the concept of faith, of connecting, of belonging, I believed it then.

The music played on, and the room seemed to swell with their presence, bloating the walls in an effort to hold intact the small universe we had created together. And just when I thought I’d given myself over to the growing haze of dust and the glow off the street lights, someone’s voice found its way out and separated from the rest. Perfectly clear and unique it rose and fell like the crashing of waves before it was swallowed once more by the depths. And the room became the sea, torrid and beautiful, uncontrollable and reckless. Our bodies became a flood, space became a plane. And in the darkness from Colleen’s bed I looked for each of them. Tried to picture each person and to see where they fit within the night. I tried to see them amid the noise and the expelling of air that was once so intimately entwined with their own souls. The atoms creaked and moaned and crashed around them. And if I ever believed that the world could be beautiful, I believed it then.

And I can’t help but feel that the night had been there waiting for me. Forgotten somewhere in time till I came to claim it. And maybe I found faith in the drifting out of consciousness so close to all the things I loved. And yet, unconvinced, untouched by our attempts to still its passing, the night moved. Cars passed by on streets run slick with rain. The cold continued its weak assault on the air. And as my eyelids began to fall, I felt the world begin to turn once more. And still the music played on.

1. As Far As I Can See - Phantogram