The other virus

I have a lot of things I want to say right now but it's been hard to find the right words to say them and even harder to figure out how to organize those words. What's going on in this country is absolutely infuriating and heartbreaking. At times I'm feeling like I'm losing my mind. We have passed 70,000 deaths from a deadly pandemic and there's no sign that things will be getting better any time soon and it's such a massive failure because there are things we could do to make it get better and there are a lot of people, including a lot of people in positions of power, who are doing nothing but stand in the way of doing those things that we should be doing. Which leads me to say that although COVID-19 is a deadly virus, there's an even deadlier virus that has been spreading in our society for the last few decades. A virus of insidious propaganda infecting the minds of a significant chunk of our country's population.

But let's first look at where we are with COVID-19 right now. Let's look at the current situation in my home state of Ohio, which is not so different from the current situation in a lot of other states. We are fortunate that we got advance warning and that we took preemptive action to stop a massive surge of cases from happening. Our Republican governor Mike DeWine listened to the Department of Health head he appointed, Amy Acton, a medical doctor who also has a Master's in Public Health, and took the lead nationally in shutting down large events like conventions and sports games before infections and deaths started to mount in the state. On March 23 a stay at home order was issued. So let's see what has happened since then. This is a graph I made using the daily COVID-19 hospitalization numbers reported by the state (obtained from covidtracking.com which aggregates all the states' data). There's a lot of variability in day to day numbers; for example, reported numbers on weekends tend to be lower and then there's a backlog that's made up for with higher numbers during the next week, so the black line is a moving average to better illustrate the underlying trend.

Numbers were steadily climbing. The stay at home order was put in place. Two weeks later the numbers fairly abruptly stopped rising. That time delay is pretty much exactly what we'd expect given what we know about this disease!

When I first looked at this graph early last week, it looked to me like we were on a gradual downward trend, but what it looks like now is that after an initial decline from the peak we've had almost three weeks in which the numbers have been basically flat. Suggesting that the measures we have collectively been taking over the course of the month of April to slow the spread of the disease have been enough to stop the number of infections from further growing - but not enough to make the number of infections decline toward zero.

Now there's a big push from some quarters to reopen society and we in Ohio are already going forward with the beginning stages of a plan to open things up. It's a careful and cautious plan. Some other states such as Georgia are going forward with much rasher reopening plans. But does it make sense to be reopening at all?

I'm not an expert in infectious diseases or public health. I don't know the specific details of how different interventions might affect transmission rate, and even people who do have expertise in these fields are still working furiously to try to better understand these details. But at a broad level there is a pretty simple concept here. The infectious model of disease spread has been known for a long time. If the number of infections is currently stable, and we make interventions that will, in aggregate, increase opportunities for the disease to spread, the number of infections is probably going to go up. We are currently still at a higher case load than we were when the stay at home order was enacted. If we went back to normal life right now, numbers would go up just as surely as they were in March. Even if we went back to something in between the way things are now and the way things were in normal life, numbers would go up, just at a slower rate. And then without further interventions to slow the spread they'd keep going up. And up and up and up. Because that's the way infectious diseases work. They'd keep going up until enough people had been infected to achieve herd immunity, but to get there we would first need an absolutely catastrophic death toll.

(I don't expect the numbers to actually go up and up and up. If they go up enough people will probably back off from reopening. We might have an extended period of alternating gradual inclines and declines. A sort of coronavirus limbo.)

The people of this country have made great sacrifices during this pandemic. Sacrifices to lives and health and economic well-being. We should, as a country, have been using the time bought by those sacrifices to come up with a plan, an evidence-based plan formulated by people with subject matter expertise in relevant fields, to get things under control long term. That basically hasn't happened at all.

Why? How did we get into this situation? What the fuck is going on?

On February 26, Donald Trump infamously said, "Again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done."

Even after weeks upon weeks of horrifically rising death tolls, he has persisted in this way of thinking. "I think what happens is it’s going to go away. This is going to go away," he claimed on April 28. Apparently others in the administration have also been putting forward this idea that the virus is just going to go away on its own in the coming months. It's essentially a form of magical thinking. It's ignoring all evidence and ignoring all the advice from experts in epidemiology and public health. I'd say it's even dismissing the idea that there is even such thing as subject matter expertise. Like they really seem to think that their predictions based on no evidence carry just as much weight as the predictions of people who have spent years studying these issues.

Look, it's not like everything scientists say is correct. All sorts of mistakes have been made using science. There's a famous Winston Churcill quote: "Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" I'd say a similar thing about science: it's the worst method of understanding how the world works, except for all those other methods that been tried from time to time. It's impossible to ever get a perfect understanding of how anything works, but through proper application of the scientific method we can get increasingly less imperfect understandings, and we can do amazing things with those increasingly less imperfect understandings. The advances in human health, in identifying, stopping the spread of, and treating and curing various medical conditions, that science has given us over the last couple of centuries are truly astounding. And there are many other equally astounding achievements. We, as a country, put a man on the moon! Now we're letting this virus bring us to our knees?

Here in Ohio, the Republican governor had the wisdom to listen to Dr. Acton, a subject matter expert, to formulate a strategy to fight this pandemic. The Republican administration in Washington DC is utterly lacking that same wisdom. And even in Ohio, numerous Republican members of the state legislature are now trying to stop Dr. Acton from doing her job, some even going so far as to draw comparisons between Acton (who is Jewish) and Nazi Germany. At the same time, largely right-wing protesters are gathering at state houses and at public officials' residences, and resistance is growing, again largely among those on the right, to evidence-based approaches to containing the pandemic such as social distancing and mask wearing.

A recent Ipsos/Axios poll asked Americans whether they believed the actual number of deaths from COVID-19 was greater than, less than, or about the same as the officially reported number. These were the results:

(source)

This is not a question where the answer is a matter of opinion. It's a question where solid evidence exists in support of a correct, factual answer. The following image shows the number of deaths over the course of this year for three states with large COVID-19 outbreaks compared to the number of deaths in an average year, along with the number of officially recorded COVID-19 deaths:

(source)

It's impossible to ever know the exact numbers, but the gaps between the orange COVID-19 deaths and the dotted lines on each plot are reasonable approximations of the uncounted COVID-19 deaths. Therefore, the correct answer to the question in the above survey is very likely "more" and is definitely not "less." Notice that a majority of Democrats and a plurality of independents answered "more," whereas a plurality of Republicans gave the objectively wrong answer "less."

Why have questions of objective reality become such partisan issues? Why?

I won't get into the lengthy list of reasons why Trump's response to this crisis has been one of the worst failures of a president in American history, and yet surveys continue to show that a solid 40% of Americans approve of Trump's job performance. Most people I know, even many of those who have voted Republican for much of their lives, are all too aware at this point of how poor Trump's job performance is. Who are these 40% of Americans? What world are they inhabiting?

Sadly, this all goes back to the other virus I alluded to at the beginning of this post. In the 1990s, Fox News and other right-wing media sources began a concerted effort to convince their audiences that all other sources of news were "the liberal media" and could not be trusted. It was a great strategy to improve their profits, and also a great strategy for the very wealthy to get working and middle class voters to continue to vote against their own economic interests. This misinformation virus began to take hold in the '90s but has since grown into something even more insidious. I'm sure many of us have seen someone we know and care about fall under control of this virus over the years. The George W. Bush administration took great advantage of the right wing media machine, but there was a key difference - back then, I think that those in power were taking advantage of their propagandized voters but didn't actually believe themselves in a good deal of the propaganda; today, those in power have themselves become just as propagandized.

Many of today's GOP politicians are people who have spent so much time under the virus's influence that they're no more able to see reality than are their most devoted Fox News viewing voters. Trump himself is a Fox News junkie. Furthermore, many GOP politicians have become so cultish in their belief that it's not the government's job to help disadvantaged people that even if they can see the reality of the situation, they seem to be pathologically incapable of wanting to do the right things: providing sufficient economic relief so that people don't have to choose between their livelihoods and trying to stop the spread of a deadly virus, and mobilizing this country's vast resources in science, medicine, and industry to come up with plans to stop this pandemic in its tracks. As I said before, we went to the moon. We could certainly tackle this challenge if we had the will to do so.

How could a political party that has become so fundamentally opposed to doing things that would benefit any but the wealthiest of their constituents continue to maintain power? There are a lot of factors, but a very big one that can't be ignored is, again, that virus of misinformation. Propaganda is effective.

Let me be clear that there are certainly also moderates and liberals who are living in distorted realities. There are certainly also numerous problems with the Democratic party and with its response to the pandemic. And I think there's a tendency among people in general to not take something like this seriously enough if it hasn't affected them personally. But to try to claim that this problem is not an asymmetric one that is much larger on the right is to deny reality just as much as trying to claim that COVID-19 deaths are being over-reported.

We've been building to a moment like this for a long time. The disinformation virus has infected the minds of enough voters to keep an increasingly plutocratic and amoral GOP in power. The virus has strengthened its hold over those voters' minds to the point where they are increasingly living in a different reality made up of "alternative facts" (to quote Kellyanne Conway's January 2017 defense of the Trump administration's lies about inauguration crowd sizes - a preview, it now seems, of everything that has come since). The virus has infected not only the voters, but the politicians who represent them. With a president now under control of the misinformation virus, whose world view is warped by media sources who are themselves intentionally presenting a warped world view to be more favorable to that president, there is now a vicious feedback cycle at play. Those who are fully under control of this virus are spiraling farther and farther away from reality. And now with all this having been set up over the course of the last three decades, a perfect storm of a crisis hits. For us to tackle this crisis in an ideal manner, it would require that our public servants and the public at large would all buy into evidence-based, expertise-guided solutions. It would not be a simple task. A pandemic like this one is a very rare event. It would take a great commitment of effort and resources. But it could certainly be done.

It's pretty simple if you think about it. With the level of social distancing and other measures we've taken so far, we've gotten the cases to be pretty flat. And we all know that there are plenty of people, both in positions of power and in everyday life, who aren't taking this as seriously as they should. If all those people could just be doing a little better job, cases wouldn't be flat, they'd be declining. And then with the extra time bought by cases declining, we could devote the great resources of our country to building up a massive testing program so that everyone can get tested. And then we could mostly reopen society and keep things under control with a fraction of the current death toll until a vaccine becomes available. This is all very plausible. Other countries are accomplishing it much more successfully than we are. But it looks like the other deadly virus of propaganda and misinformation is preventing us as a country from stopping the deadly virus that causes COVID-19.

One of the worst parts is that, whereas COVID-19 is a crisis that has solutions that are, at least in theory, fairly clear, the crisis of the misinformation virus is one that I don't really have a clue how we're going to solve. Studies have shown that when people strongly believe in something untrue, if you present them with evidence that contradicts their erroneous belief, it tends to just make them believe it more strongly.

Why am I even writing all this? It's not going to change the mind of anyone who disagrees. I guess I hope that it might encourage people who don't disagree but haven't thought about these issues as much to think about them more, to think about what we can all do to overcome this problem. Think about whether there are people in your lives who might have a low-level infection from this misinformation virus and could still be cured. Think also, if you've ever been a Republican voter in the past, about what the party has become, how infected it has become with this horrible disease, and how this isn't just a Trump problem, it's a much bigger problem that we're going to continue to have to deal with long after Trump is gone.

And I'm also writing it because all these thoughts are swirling around in my mind and causing me distress and writing them down and putting them out in the world helps me process and helps me going forward to not have as much of my mental capacity taken up by these distressing thoughts.

Just a little over five years ago now I sat in a hospital room and watched as my wife, at 36 years old, died because her lungs stopped working. I will vividly remember that horrible night for the rest of my life. I don't want other people to suffer that same fate if it can be avoided. There are a lot of people unnecessarily suffering that same fate right now, and the whole experience is made that much worse by the limits on hospital visitations that are required to help contain a deadly pandemic. I work in scientific research because I want to try to discover things that could save people's lives and improve their health and well-being. My motivations for speaking out on and combating misinformation about COVID-19 are the same. It's infuriating and depressing beyond words that so many people all the way up to the president of this country have had their minds so warped that they would brush off all that death and ignore experts' guidance on how to stop it. I don't know what we can do about it but we have to do better.

The cost

Having been married to a really amazing person who was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at the age of 34 and tragically succumbed to the disease at the age of 36 has, I think, given me a perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic that most people my age don't have.

For a related example, during my early adult years, I didn't bother getting an annual flu shot. I'll be fine even if I do get the flu, so what's the point? I thought. I know this is a very common attitude.

After Cara became ill with lung cancer, she passionately advocated for everyone to get their flu shots. Obviously, I did get mine, and I've continued to ever since, because now I understand - the reason it's important for young, healthy people to get their flu shots isn't to protect those young, healthy people from the flu; it's to decrease the chances that someone like Cara, who had compromised lung function and at certain points during her various treatments a compromised immune system, would get the flu. Getting a flu shot is such an easy thing to do but something with such enormous benefits if everyone does it. (Yes, flu shots aren't perfect and sometimes there are outbreaks of a strain that the shot didn't cover - that doesn't mean that flu season wouldn't have been much worse without the flu shots.) But before it was made personal, the importance of getting those shots never got through to me. So now I try to remind all the people out there who are lucky enough to not yet have had it made personal.

Now we're facing a historic outbreak of a viral respiratory infection that is far more deadly than the flu, and there's no shot we can get to protect ourselves and our vulnerable loved ones. So we have to do other things to protect all the vulnerable people out there - be diligent about washing our hands, don't touch our faces (these are things that would help against flu outbreaks too, and hopefully that's a lesson that society will learn going forward), and most important right now, social distancing.

It's simple math and biology. When an infectious disease is spreading in a population and we don't know who all has it, the more contacts there are between people, the more likely it is that the disease will spread. And with this particular disease, unless strong containment measures are taken, exponential, uncontrollable growth is inevitable, and it will result in our health care system being overwhelmed. There's a tendency for people to think "it can't happen here" but it can and it will. Look at places like Italy and Spain where the body counts are piling up and doctors are having to triage patients like during wartime. People who have severe symptoms and are too old are simply not given life-saving treatment because the resources just don't exist. It's already starting to be like that in New York City, and without serious intervention it will eventually be like that Everywhere. In. The. Country.

I've been thinking a lot about that twenty month period of time between Cara's diagnosis with lung cancer and her death, and what that time would have been like if it had happened against the backdrop of the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

Three months after Cara's initial hospitalization, her first treatment failed, her condition dramatically worsened, and we spent Thanksgiving in the ICU leading up to a surgery to create a window in Cara's pericardium and drain the fluid that was accumulating in the space around her heart. Imagine if that had happened while ICUs were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and there were no available beds. Stage 4 lung cancer is incurable; although some people now live a long time with the disease thanks to new treatments, the expected prognosis is still, ultimately, death. Someone with a terminal illness would not and could not be a top priority for an ICU bed in such a situation. Chances are Cara would have been dead. It would all have been over just three months after her diagnosis. Those additional seventeen months that have so many memories that I cherish so much (because that Thanksgiving in the ICU my honest assessment of the situation was that she likely did not have a whole lot more time left) would never have happened. And that's what will happen to so many people if the pandemic spreads unchecked. So many people will die premature deaths of COVID-19 and of so many other things, deaths that could have been prevented if the health care system wasn't so overwhelmed.

After the Thanksgiving in the ICU, Cara started a new treatment and her condition improved greatly. She never again returned to the ICU until the week before her death. But imagine also how different those seventeen precious extra months would have been if COVID-19 had cropped up during them. Cara would have had to live in constant fear of contracting the illness. She couldn't have continued working. She wouldn't have been able to hang out with her friends. The two of us couldn't have done so many great things that we did together. We couldn't have gone out and done pretty much anything other than go for walks. And walks are wonderful and I'm sure a lot of us are gaining newfound appreciation for them right now, but there are so many other things, so many wonderful social activities - for humans are social creatures, after all - that we and especially Cara would have had to miss. She would have been essentially trapped in our home for most of every day to reduce her risk of getting the infection and knowing Cara, I know how awful that would have been for her. And if I happened to find myself in any situation where there was a fear I might have contracted the virus, I'd have had to physically separate myself from Cara, and it's hard to imagine how hard that would have been for both of us, the whole time knowing that she had a life-threatening disease and every moment we had together was precious.

The spring after Cara's diagnosis, I successfully defended my dissertation after many long years of graduate school. Cara was so proud of me and so excited that she got to walk across the stage with me as I received my diploma.

Imagine if that had happened against the backdrop of COVID-19. The dissertation defense would have been virtual. There'd have been no going out to celebrate with family. The graduation ceremony wouldn't have happened. Cara wouldn't have gotten to walk across the stage with me. So many happy memories would never have been created.

In early March of 2015, Cara and I took a trip to Miami Beach together.

Obviously, that trip would not have happened during a COVID-19 pandemic. It was really great that we got to take that trip because it had been a very cold winter and that was really hard for Cara. We had no idea at the time she only had a month and a half to live. Because of that the memories are extra special to me.

When Cara did go, in a room on the Cleveland Clinic's palliative care floor, her mother and I were with her, and one or the other or both of us had spent a great deal of the time with her during those last few days. Right now at the Clinic there are no visitors to hospital patients with certain very limited exceptions. So for most of that time, at least until it became clear that the end was imminent, Cara would have been scared and alone in her hospital room. Or if the hospital system had become overwhelmed, maybe she wouldn't have even been able to receive proper end of life care.

And of course after Cara died, there was a funeral. When someone we love dies, it's such an important part of the grieving process to be able to get together with others who loved that person and to share memories and hugs and tears. Right now, that couldn't happen. There would probably be a video chat memorial service. There are probably going to be a whole lot of those in the weeks and months to come. And we would be thankful for having the technology to allow us to do that, but we would also be missing out on an essential part of the human experience by not being able to get together in person to say our goodbyes, to grieve, and to celebrate the lives of our lost loved ones.

Because being physically together with people we care about is such an important part of the human experience, it's hard right now to remove so much of that contact from our lives. But understand - the hypothetical scenarios I envisioned in this post, of what Cara's life with and death from cancer might have been like under the specter of COVID-19, those are reality right now for so many people. That's part of the cost of all this. And although we cannot control the fact that this virus exists and has spread to our country, we, collectively, have a great deal of power to control how bad it gets. If we let it get really bad, if a large percentage of the population ignores social distancing, the scenarios I imagined in this post multiplied by millions could be the ultimate cost. That is a really horrible thing to imagine. But it's not imaginary. It's already real in places like Italy. It's already starting to become real here.

Every time someone ignores social distancing, they potentially add to that cost. Every time someone decides to get together with a group of friends because they think this can't hurt them. Every time people go and play basketball at the park (playing basketball is something I really miss right now, but I understand why I can't do it!). Every time a business owner decides their business is essential when it isn't really essential and keeps their employees coming into contact with each other and with other people. Most especially every time someone in a position of government authority makes a decision to not enact strict social distancing measures when all the evidence and all the experts say it's imperative we do that right now. Every time someone does one of those things, it's potentially adding another name to what will be a very long list of people who had to suffer alone in a hospital without their loved ones visiting them, to die not because there was nothing that could be done to save them but because there weren't enough resources to do it, and then to not have a funeral to give their loved ones some comfort at such a horrible time.

That's the cost. Please do everything you can to minimize that cost. Please. I know most of my friends are already taking this seriously, but if you aren't, please, please do. And if you know other people who aren't taking it seriously, please, please pass along this message to them. It could be one of the most important things you'll ever do in your life.

Sing that song you sang long ago

March 2006 was a very eventful month in my life.

The first weekend of the month found me in Chicago for the conference championship indoor track meet, the last time in my life that I'd represent my school in a race (this was my first year of grad school and during that year I had one season of indoor track eligibility to use but had used up my four years of cross country and outdoor track during undergrad). A week after being in Chicago, I took a trip to LA (for the first time) to see two concerts by my favorite band Ozma (for the first time) in Hollywood. Those were my favorite concerts I'd ever been to and that trip ranked among the best experiences of my life. The trip to LA was followed by a stay with my family in Columbus during my spring break.

Later that month, I saw Andrew Bird for the first time in a concert at my school. It didn't occur to me until recently that seeing Andrew Bird for the first time was also among the exciting things I did in March 2006 and that there was a strange significance to this.

Circumstances conspired in a weird and wonderful way such that December 2019 found me almost reliving that momentous month of March 2006. To recap, in March 2006 I went to Chicago, a week later I went on an amazing trip to LA to see two Ozma concerts that were my favorite shows I'd ever attended, after LA I went to Columbus to visit my family, and I saw an Andrew Bird concert. And in December 2019? I went to Chicago to see an Andrew Bird concert, a week later I went on an amazing trip to LA to see two Ozma concerts that are now my favorite shows I've ever attended, and after LA I went to Columbus to see my family.

Another very important thing happened in March 2006, which is that during that visit to Columbus, I met Cara in person. Quite a month, and not a bad one to sort of relive.

The Andrew Bird concert I attended in Chicago on the 12th of last month was one that was just steeped with emotion and meaning for me. I've seen Andrew Bird a lot of times over the years, more than any other non-local artist except for Okkervil River, but this one was extra special. Bird has created a tradition of playing "Gezelligheid" concerts each December at the 4th Presbyterian Church in his hometown of Chicago. Gezelligheid (says Wikipedia) "is a Dutch word which, depending on context, can be translated as 'conviviality', 'coziness', 'fun'. It is often used to describe a social and relaxed situation. It can also indicate belonging, time spent with loved ones, catching up with an old friend or just the general togetherness that gives people a warm feeling." Going to one of the Chicago shows this year was something I decided I had to do as soon as the shows were announced. There were two times in the past when I had tickets for one of Bird's Gezelligheid shows and ended up not going. The first time was in 2013. Cara had been diagnosed with lung cancer in August. Andrew Bird was her favorite musician, and I wanted her to be able to have this really great experience so I bought tickets for us to see the show. She was really excited about it. Then her health took a serious downturn in late November and she ended up being in no condition to make the trip so we had to cancel our plans. Unfortunately Bird did not do Gezelligheid shows in 2014; Cara's health was good enough that year in December that we could have gone and I'm sure we would have.

Bird has also, in addition to the Chicago shows, done Gezelligheid shows in certain other cities in certain years. In 2017 there were shows in Nashville and I bought a pair of tickets. Then my would-have-been date for the concert abruptly broke up with me, so again I ended up not going. It's funny, that was so painful at the time, but now I can look back on it and laugh. Yeah, I still have scars from the experience, and yeah, I still miss her daughter although with nothing like the intensity I once did, but recent events in my life have really driven home to me how we were not actually such an ideal match for each other as it seemed at the time.

Cara, of course, was very much on my mind during the Chicago trip and especially during the concert.

I had been to Chicago many times before for various reasons but never for a solo trip. It was actually really fun exploring the city by myself, visiting familiar spots from previous trips and checking out a number of new ones including some really cool restaurants and bars. And the Andrew Bird concert? It was just breathtaking.

The morning of the show I headed out on foot into the city from my hotel, which by a happy coincidence (as I booked it via Hotwire and only knew the approximate location until after booking) was right next door to the 4th Presbyterian Church. I noticed the church was open to the public during the day and I wandered inside and was immediately awestruck.

It's a beautiful building, and I thrilled at seeing the setup for Bird's show including the familiar spinning horn speakers. I also took advantage of the opportunity to scope out the seating and realized that in the balcony section for which I had a ticket, some of the seats would have obstructed views, so as the seating was first come first served within the section for which one had a ticket, I decided I'd better arrive at the venue early that evening.

It was a beautiful day and I had a great time wandering the city, highlighted especially be my going ice skating for the first time in probably around fifteen years, and by a visit to the Chicago Cultural Center (originally the first Chicago Public Library building), which I decided to enter on a whim thinking that it looked interesting and then discovered was one of the most spectacular buildings in terms of interior architecture and decor that I've ever visited, including two stained glass rotundas.

After an early dinner, I arrived outside the church at 6 pm, an hour before doors opened and two hours before show time, to find I was about tenth in line. Arriving early was a wise choice. The line became quite long over the course of the next hour. I was able to secure first choice of seats in the balcony section, and found myself with a perfect view of the stage.

(There were signs prohibiting picture taking so no pictures from during the show. The guy next to me blatantly disregarded the signs. Come on, dude.)

Madison Cunningham, a young SoCal-based singer-songwriter, opened the night with a very nice solo set. Andrew Bird came next. And his performance was magical.

In some ways I was transported back to that very first time I had seen him play, in 2006. I specifically remember at that show being in awe of Bird's wizardry with looping pedals to overlay violin and other melodies. Over the years since, Bird's shows have transitioned more into full band performances and the looping wizardry has taken a backseat. And I do love those full band shows as well. But there's something even more magical about Andrew Bird performing solo.

And the church setting, of course, added to the magic. Much better than a small room crowded with college students, many of them talking.

I also remember that in the early years of me seeing Bird live, he would play a xylophone on some of the songs, and I always found it charming how there seemed to be this sharp contrast between the methodical and intently focused way he would strike the bars of the xylophone to produce simple melodies and the seemingly effortless way he would play stunningly beautiful and far more complex violin parts. Recent Bird shows I've seen have not included the xylophone. Here it was back, and just like I remembered from before, and I smiled as I recalled those memories.

It was just a delightful show. A very intimate atmosphere, and indeed, a cozy one. Different from any concert I've attended before, and in a wonderful way. The set included five songs from Bird's brilliant latest release My Finest Work Yet, which I saw performed in its entirety at a great concert in September, but all the songs as well as a number of other great selections spanning most of Bird's career were presented as new (to me) arrangements that took full advantage of the intimate setting and stripped down instrumentation. Madison Cunningham joined Bird to play guitar and sing on most of the songs he played, but there was still plenty of looping wizardry, and her voice was a wonderful counterpart - especially on a beautiful rendition of "Left Handed Kisses," the album version of which features Fiona Apple in a duet with Bird.

Song after song I was just in awe at the beautiful performance I was witnessing. I also found myself thinking, over and over, Cara would love this so much. She really, really would have. And it's very sad that she never got to go to one of these Gezelligheid shows, but I'm so glad I finally got to go myself, and I'm also so glad that Andrew Bird's music continues to help me stay connected with Cara.

The next day I took full advantage of my remaining time in Chicago. Among other things, I (for the first time) rode the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, partly inspired by its mention in Sufjan Stevens' song "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!"

I also, for my last stop before heading home, went for another trip down memory lane in Chinatown and ate at Lao Sze Chuan restaurant, which I was introduced to by a Chinese colleague when in town for a conference in 2009, and which I also went to with Cara and our friends Jordan and Ruth in 2013.

Chicago was great. Andrew Bird was amazing. In a typical month for me, the Chicago trip definitely would have been the highlight.

But then the next week I went to Los Angeles. And let me tell you, the trip to Los Angeles... it was just something else. It was an astonishingly sublime experience, one of the best of my entire life. I seriously get emotional just thinking about it. It may have been the best trip I've taken since my honeymoon, and I really mean that.

As I had done in March 2006, I flew out to Los Angeles by myself with tickets for two Ozma concerts on consecutive nights. That trip in 2006 was the first time I had ever done something like that by myself. It was an amazing experience. Life-changing, even. I had become obsessed with Ozma the previous year and was very sad that they had broken up and I would apparently never get to see them live, so when they announced they were getting back together I decided I had to go to the reunion shows despite them being on the other side of the country. It was oh so worth the trip. And at the time, Cara and I had started to become online friends, we'd started to connect over music, and she had gotten into Ozma because of me. So I was also looking forward to meeting her in person and telling her about seeing Ozma live.

After we met in person, in an already planned get together just days after my return from LA, it wasn't long before we were IMing for hours almost every day. The final race of my collegiate running career having happened a week before that LA trip, and my meeting Cara in person happening in the week after... it could perhaps be said that that marked the point in time when the most primary focus of my life switched from running to Cara.

In August of that year, still "just friends," the two of us took our first trip together, to Washington DC, to see Ozma (opening for the Rentals, another band we liked, but Ozma were our reason for making the trip). So Ozma's music is inextricably tied to my friendship and relationship with Cara and to that period of time in my life when she and I met and became the closest of friends with each other.

When Ozma announced last year that they would be playing a twentieth anniversary show for their first and most iconic album Rock and Roll Part Three, the album that I have undoubtedly listened to more than any other album in my life, it was a very easy decision - once more, I had to make that trip to LA.

In 2006, I took a very minimalist approach to my trip. I flew into LA on the day of the first show, took the Metro to Hollywood, checked into my very basic hotel for a two-night stay, and got around entirely on foot (walking as well as running) before taking the Metro back to the airport the morning after the second show. This time around I decided to make the most of the vacation and stayed for four nights. I also rented a car, although I do admire my past self's sole reliance on public transit and my own legs for transportation. (And I did, to my credit, do even more walking on this more recent trip!) I got to do a lot more in the LA area this time, including some amazing waffles...

a fun mountain bike ride near Santa Monica and walk out to the pier...

and a great time hanging out with my cousin Chelsea and seeing her wonderful bluegrass band the Salty Suites the day after that of the second Ozma show.

I also enjoyed revisiting familiar sights in the Hollywood area from my previous trip there on the last day of this visit, including spectacular views at Runyon Canyon.

Really, just about everything on the trip was wonderful, but the main focus of the trip was the Ozma concerts (they added the Thursday 12/19 show after the Friday 12/20 show quickly sold out), and the Ozma concerts.... Oh. My. God. The Ozma concerts!

The Andrew Bird concert really hit me emotionally but I was fully expecting it to and its emotional impact was about what I predicted. The Ozma concerts, I knew they'd be a big deal for me, but I didn't really realize ahead of time just how big a deal. You know how when you're a kid you get so, so excited the day before Christmas? Well, it was fitting that these shows were so close to Christmas, because I started to feel that same way in the day leading up to the first show.

I saw Ozma three times in 2006 - the two in Hollywood in March, and the one in DC with Cara in August. Then Cara and I saw them once more, in July 2007 in Columbus (we were actually supposed to see them on back-to-back nights in Cleveland and Columbus but the Cleveland show was cancelled when their van broke down). That was the last time I'd seen them. It had been more than twelve years. A band that was so integral to that very impactful time in my life, and then, although never ceasing to be one of my favorite bands, over the years kind of faded out of my day-to-day existence. So much has happened to me in between 2007 and now. Cara moved to Cleveland, we moved in together, we got engaged, we got married, she got diagnosed with lung cancer, we had numerous amazing adventures through it all, and then she died, and all sorts of interesting things have happened since then, and through it all, Ozma's music remained at the foundation of my and Cara's relationship, even if in a way that I no longer thought about nearly as often. Somewhere along the way Okkervil River surpassed Ozma as my favorite band. And Okkervil River are probably the most important band in my life overall. But Ozma will always be the most important band to my meeting, getting to know, becoming best friends with, and falling in love with Cara. And whereas I've seen Okkervil River numerous times throughout all those years, all of the things that have happened in that long, long time since I'd last seen Ozma meant that the emotional impact of seeing Ozma in concert was an order of magnitude greater than the already great emotional impact of my long ago previous Ozma concert experiences.

As these concerts were for the twentieth anniversary of Rock and Roll Part Three, they featured performances of that entire album, along with a second set featuring a sort of greatest hits selection from other albums. So I'm going to take a minute or a few to just gush over what a great album Rock and Roll Part Three is.

There are certain albums - most notably Ozma's R&RP3, Okkervil River's Down the River of Golden Dreams, and Typhoon's White Lighter - that I have such a strong emotional connection to that there's no way I could ever attempt an even remotely objective evaluation of them (not that there's any such thing as an objective evaluation of a work of art, but I think you get what I mean), and there's probably no way anyone who didn't have a strong emotional tie to those albums could love them as much as I do, but I still think that Ozma accomplished an undeniably remarkable thing with R&RP3. The members of the band were teenagers when they made the album. Teenagers! How many classic albums were made by teenagers? And when I listen to the album I marvel at how well it works as an album, not just a collection of songs. How well sequenced it is, how well the songs flow from one to the next, the way that certain themes pop up at multiple points in the album in an almost symphonic way.

The album kicks off with "Domino Effect" and a catchy melody first played on keyboard which is then joined by electric guitar on the same melody, a signature Ozma sound, followed by a breakdown section, and then the lyrics "Chances last a finite time/in the warm July night time/Every care that keeps you from your feet/is a care that carries your defeat." Those simple words spoke to me back in 2006 and still speak to me today. Life is finite. We only get so many chances to make the most of it. So if you have the opportunity, go to California to see a concert by one of your favorite bands. You'll be glad you did. And take a chance on asking out that girl/guy you like.

Every care that keeps you from your feet is a care that carries your defeat.

"Domino Effect" ends with repeating bass notes seguing directly into second track "Apple Trees." I wrote this in 2006:

When I heard the lyrics "An apple pie, the number pi, I studied you in math class, and did all my work but never got your digits" in "Apple Trees" I was pretty much hooked.

Ozma, especially on their first album, very much made "geek rock," a term also applied to Weezer, who heavily influenced Ozma and helped them break out by taking them on tour. Listening to this album at times you could almost think you were listening to Weezer. I love Weezer's first two albums but I think Ozma took what Weezer were doing and made it even better. (Ozma, unlike Weezer, also had the good sense to not keep releasing album after album after album after having run out of good songs.) I'm very much a geek, so this aspect of their music very much appealed to me. I also have a thing for puns and wordplay, so, yeah.

The next two tracks "Shootingstars" and "Natalie Portman" dial up the emotional intensity. And "Natalie Portman" is the best example of how, while it is remarkable that an album this good was made by teenagers, it's also an album that requires having been made by teenagers to be this good. The very heartfelt song about having a crush on Natalie Portman (pretty relatable to me when I first heard it) would be intensely creepy if it had been written by a fully adult man (looking your way, Rivers Cuomo, for some of the songs you've written over the years...) but is endearing and funny and moving all at once having been written by a high schooler. (I do wonder whether Daniel Brummel of Ozma feels funny singing the song now that he's in his late thirties.)

"The Ups and Downs" and "If I Only Had a Heart," a pair of fun, catchy rockers, provide a respite from the emotional intensity before we get to the heart of the album: "Baseball" into "Rocks" into "Battlescars." "Baseball" is just, as far as I'm concerned, a masterpiece. It's so poignant and the way it taps into nostalgic feelings to tie memories of baseball to memories of young love is so good and the vocals just soar. I really have a thing for songs that evoke feelings of nostalgia. For some reason, I always have, but I do even more so now than I did prior to everything that happened with Cara. This is one of the best such songs that I know. And it's actually a theme that runs through a number of songs on the album, which is so fascinating to me because how were teenagers, still so young, able to evoke those feelings of yearning for the past so powerfully? And I guess that even when we are teenagers, we already have great nostalgia for our still younger days, even though it's easy to forget this as adults.

"Rocks" is a perfect break between the twin emotional climaxes of "Baseball" and "Battlescars" - two minutes of super fast, super fun, super danceable rock music. And then "Battlescars" is another soaring and emotionally intense number, starting out quiet with an evocative keyboard intro from Star Wick and eventually building toward crashing guitar chords and co-frontmen Brummel and Ryen Slegr repeatedly trading off vocals and competing to rip your heart out with the raw emotions in their voices. And in this track the quasi-symphonic elements of the album really come in - the lyrics mention "shooting stars" ("Of all the shooting stars I knew/I never felt at ease with anyone but you" was a lyric I once told Cara made me think of her), a callback to track three on the album, and then after the song "Battlescars" ends, an acoustic (instrumental only) reprise of the melody from opening track "Domino Effect" provides a lovely little chance to catch your breath. Before the last acoustic guitar notes finish fading out, the driving "In Search of 1988" kicks in, and it's another one of those great nostalgic songs, with lyrics like "Turn on Mario and Luigi/Let's sit down, put our hands on the Ouija." And then just as track one of the album smoothly segued into track two via bass guitar, track ten smoothly segues into eleventh and final track "Last Dance," which dials down the tempo and is a perfect album closer. Lyrics "After the last dance/you lose your last chance" call back to the album's opening lyrics about chances lasting a finite time, to boot.

I don't know. I mean none of this is incredibly complicated. Maybe my gushing seems excessive if you aren't a passionate Ozma fan yourself. But it all just works so well! And all of the songs are so catchy! And they all just fit together perfectly! And teenagers did this!

I remember thinking many years ago that the five-song stretch from "Baseball" to "Last Dance" was easily my favorite part of any album ever. Thinking about it now, I think that I still feel that way. The album in its entirety was my all time favorite album for many years and then eventually I decided I no longer had a favorite album, I had several, with R&RP3 being one of them, but you know what? After these concerts, if I had to pick just one album as my favorite, I'm probably going back to Rock and Roll Part Three.

The concerts. I haven't even described the concerts yet! And they were so marvelous. I had never been to show venue the Troubadour before.

It's a legendary venue in West Hollywood that a number of famous musicians have played at over the years. (Incidentally, the venue for the 2006 shows, the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, no longer exists.) I was excited about the Troubadour based on what I'd heard, and I really loved it; it's definitely one of my favorite venues. It's very intimate and wherever you are inside, you'll be close to the stage and with a good view. On both nights I got there before doors opened and joined a lineup of excited fans outside, many of whom had also traveled from far away for this special event.

My excitement continued to build and build after I entered the venue. I was finally getting to see Ozma again! After all those years! Two other bands preceded Ozma on both nights. My favorite opener was Pushstart Wagon, the second opener on night one, another band who had been around the LA music scene for a long time and had not played in a while and who talked about having played with Ozma long, long ago.

After Pushstart Wagon left the stage, the time had almost arrived. And I really did feel like a little kid on Christmas morning. Enthusiastic cheers filled the venue as the members of Ozma descended a stairway and took the stage. And what came next was one of the most blissful almost two hour periods of my life.

When Ozma started in with the opening notes of the first song of their performance, I did not immediately recognize those notes, which surprised me. But before long I realized what they were doing, and I'm sure that a big goofy grin appeared on my face, because I loved it, and really, I thought, what other way would there be to begin a performance of Rock and Roll Part Three in its entirety?

They were playing a (modified and slowed down) version of their classic song "Iceland," which predates R&RP3 and appeared on the long out-of-print Audible Sounds of Trucks and Cars. It's a fantastic song. I'd never seen it performed live before. The reason it was a perfect show opener was that it contains the lyrics "We loved to listen to our Rock and Roll Part Three." (I don't know the story behind this - that is, were they already working on an album of that title when they wrote "Iceland," or did they make up the phrase (obviously a riff on Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2") for the song and then decide to use it as an album title? My guess, though, would be the former.) After the second and last time those words were sung (with me and many others in the audience enthusiastically shouting out the album title), Ozma abruptly transitioned out of "Iceland" and into the oh so familiar opening notes of "Domino Effect."

I already described the whole album so I won't go into a detailed recap of its live performance. But it was so, so good, everything I hoped for and more. I didn't realize just how deeply every note of that album was etched into my brain until I saw the whole thing performed live. The band's performances were stellar and they brought so much passion to the stage. I especially enjoyed Daniel Brummel's vocals - his voice has matured a lot since the album was originally recorded (it's funny, on the album a casual listener would likely have great difficulty telling apart the Brummel from the Slegr vocals, but their voices are much more distinct from each other now), and it's deeper and more powerful now, but he still hit the old high notes on songs like "Natalie Portman" and "Baseball" and it was a thrill to hear and see. In my prior Ozma concert experiences taken together I believe I had only gotten to see six of the eleven tracks on the album performed, so getting to see all the rest was amazing in and of itself, and the whole album straight through just had me in heaven. It was so utterly exhilarating. I sang along to every line of every song and I danced and jumped up and down and it felt like 2006 again but in a way that was deeper and rawer and even more meaningful. By the time we got to "Last Dance" it felt like the whole thing had just flown by.

One thing to note about the album performance: I had wondered how they'd handle the acoustic "Domino Effect" reprise that bridges "Battlescars" to "In Search of 1988." A friend of the band came out to join them with an acoustic guitar for that part, and he played it flawlessly. It was a really nice touch. And it was lovely when an impromptu audience sing-along started up partway through the instrumental acoustic interlude with those familiar words from "Domino Effect": "Sing that song you sang long ago..."

How perfectly fitting for this anniversary concert, almost twenty years after the initial release of the album (January 1, 2000), and how fitting for me, so many years after the last time I'd seen Ozma and so many years after the pivotal period of time in my life that their music soundtracked.

Ozma left the stage to thunderous applause, saying they'd be "back in 5," which turned out to be an overestimate. I didn't know what songs would make up their second set, but there were certainly some songs I'd guessed would probably show up, and most of my guesses were right. There were also some songs that weren't so expected and I was especially thrilled during their night one set with the inclusion of the beautiful "Continental Drift" with keyboardist Star Wick playing the flute. Some selections were very obvious - no Ozma concert would be complete without "Gameover" or "Korobeiniki" (a.k.a. the Tetris theme), and for good reason. Another song I knew would be coming was "Eponine" but I. Was. Not. Prepared. For how emotional that song would make me. Here's the thing about "Eponine." The last time I'd seen Ozma was in July 2007, in Columbus with Cara. Just over a month earlier I had adopted a little black kitten, the first pet I had ever had in my life. I had named her Eponine after the Ozma song (yes, the Ozma song title is a reference to the Les Miserables character). How could I ever have imagined back then that the next time I'd be seeing Ozma live would be over twelve years later and that Cara would be gone by then - but that adorable little kitten would have become my friend and companion through all those tumultuous years? I had no idea in 2007 that I could ever come to love a cat as much as I love Eponine.

Eponine, then and now

After the concert ended it hit me - that was probably the best concert I'd ever attended in my life. That was something I'd considered the Ozma reunion concerts after seeing them in 2006; then it changed to A Northern Chorus's farewell show in 2008 and that had been at the top of my list ever since so I think I was honestly expecting that it might always stay there. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I really did have a new best concert ever, and that was a very monumental thing. And I was very glad I got to do it all over again the next night!

Night one was the more emotionally impactful of the two because it was first. Night two ended up winning out for the amount of pure fun. I managed to get even closer to the stage, for one thing.

Also, the crowd was more into it on night two, I think both because it was a Friday night and because it was the show that had been announced first and quickly sold out so the audience had a higher percentage of truly die hard fans. The sing-alongs were more boisterous, there was more energy all around, and there was some great moshing action on songs that called for it such as "Rocks" and "Korobeiniki." It's hilarious to me that seeing Ozma in Hollywood at age 22 I had hightailed my way out of the area of the crowd where moshing was going on because I had never experienced anything like it and it was too rough, and now at age 36 I love having my body bounce around and collide with other people's to energetic rock music. I mean it makes me feel really alive! The night two non-R&RP3 portion of the set was also a somewhat better selection of songs than night one's in my opinion, although both were excellent. There was a lot of overlap between the two with the more obvious hits, which I didn't mind, but I was really pleased to hear "Immigration Song" (one of the only Ozma songs with Jose Galvez on lead vocals) and "You Know the Story"/"Landing of Yuri Gagarin" on night two, and most especially thrilled as well as very pleasantly surprised to get a rare performance of "Light Years Will Burn," which was super heavy and intense.

On both nights partway through the second Ozma set there was also a guest appearance by Matt Sharp, frontman of the Rentals and bassist for Weezer on their first two albums. As Cara and I saw the Rentals with Ozma in DC in 2006, this added to the throwback nature of the show for me. Sharp sang and Ozma played new Rentals song "Breaking and Breaking and Breaking" (fun but definitely my least favorite song from Ozma's sets) and old Rentals hit "Friends of P," the latter a rousing crowd sing-along. It made my day the other day when the Rentals released a video of the night two "Breaking and Breaking and Breaking" performance and I discovered that I appear in it numerous times, including a closeup of my screaming face that was captured by a camera held by Matt Sharp himself!

I think one of the reasons I loved seeing this so much was that it was a reminder that yes, that concert was a real thing that really happened and I was really there!

It was just all so amazing that it almost does feel like a dream, but it was very real, one of the realest things I've ever experienced, and I marvel at the fact that I did get to experience it. March 2006 was quite a month, one of the most eventful and important and memorable in my life, and now I'd have to say the same thing about December 2019.

P.S. The day after the second show I was very hoarse from all the singing along and screaming and cheering. It was very, very worth it.

In memory of Spot Night

My first year of grad school, which I started in the fall of 2005, may have been the year in which my life changed the most pivotally. That fall I got really into going to concerts, something I'd never really done before, and then during the spring semester I met and became friends with Cara. Obviously those were two things that would have enormous effects on the rest of my life. But Cara was actually not the first person I met that year of school who would have a big influence on my life.

As a first year graduate student, that fall I was assigned to be a teaching assistant for the first time. I was in charge of a lab section for one of the large undergrad biology lecture courses. I was terribly nervous about this, which to anyone who has known me for most of my life should not come as a surprise. Most of my duties were checking in with the students as they worked on the labs and then grading their lab reports, but I did have to give a brief talk about each lab in front of the assembled group of two dozen or so undergrads. When I was younger I got incredibly anxious about public speaking. (I'm glad to say that's no longer true.) So that TA assignment, looking back, was a pretty important life experience.

One of the most important parts of the experience, though, had nothing to do with my TA duties, but rather involved meeting and getting to know the undergraduate (a senior, I think) woman who was the assistant TA (yes, I notice the redundancy in that phrase) for my lab section, who I'll refer to as D. It's important to note that I was incredibly shy, especially about girls, and had never dated anyone. When I had crushes on girls the result was that I found them too intimidating to talk to. The biggest crush I'd had on a girl I actually knew somewhat well as a person, rather than as a pretty girl who I'd steal glances at from afar and never try to have a conversation with, was on someone who I knew online via a Star Wars message board and chatted with on ICQ in high school and never met in person.

Now, with D, I was put in a position where I had no choice but to talk, in person, to a cute girl. Of course, we had to go over our TA assignments with each other, but we also talked about other things. It turned out that she, like me, was very into indie music, and liked a lot of bands that I liked. A cute girl, who seemed to find me semi-interesting as a person, and who had a similar interest in music???

I quickly developed a very intense crush on D. Now, although I was not actually in any sort of position of authority over her, I realized that with her being my assistant TA, trying to date her would not have been a good idea. Also, as I was disappointed to learn at some point during our conversations, she had a boyfriend. I remember thinking about whether, if she hadn't had a boyfriend, I'd have tried to ask her out after the semester was over, which would have been extremely anxiety inducing, no doubt. But she did have a boyfriend so the point was moot. Nevertheless, I had a very intense crush.

And this brings me to where the title of this post comes from: Spot Night. Almost every week during the school year, on Wednesday night, the Spot, a student bar beneath the north side dining hall at Case, played host to a free concert. This had been a thing during my undergrad years as well, but during my undergrad years I wasn't much for going out and doing things, other than running cross country and track. I had been to two Spot Nights as an undergrad. One was a band called Roshambeaux, one member of which had been one of my high school cross country teammates. The other was Andrew WK, a show I went to because I thought it was freaking hilarious that Andrew WK was playing a show at the Spot, and yeah, it was a lot of fun. But those shows didn't spur in me an interest in going to more concerts in general.

During our conversations about music, D mentioned to me that she was one of the people on the undergraduate student-run University Program Board who were responsible for booking bands to play at Spot Night, and she told me that I should come check out some shows there. Naturally, I did, and naturally, at first my primary motivation for doing so was getting to see D. But it turned out that Spot Night was a totally awesome thing that would become a significant part of my life for many years to come.

I'm sure that with my growing interest in indie music and concert going, I'd eventually have gotten clued in to the awesomeness of Spot Night and started going even without the suggestion from D, but I don't know how long it would have been before that happened. (Also, one significant show that I definitely would not have gone to if not for an invite from D was the National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at the Beachland that September; getting to see the National "before they got big" is a memory I'm glad to have.) I saw so many great shows at the Spot over the years but as it turned out, the two most significant both took place during the spring of 2006, as they were my introductions to two artists whose music would come to play huge roles in my and Cara's lives. Andrew Bird was already becoming a well known indie musician, although not nearly at the levels of fame he's since reached, and I remember his show at the Spot being perhaps the most crowded I've ever seen the place. He performed solo that night, and I was in awe at his looping, whistling, violin playing wizardry. I went away from that show a definite fan. A year later came Cara's introduction to Andrew Bird at a show we attended together in Columbus, and he became her most favorite musician of all. Would she and I still have gotten into Andrew Bird some other way if he hadn't played that show at the Spot? There's a good chance of it, but I'll never know for sure. A Northern Chorus, on the other hand, I very likely never would have heard of if they hadn't played a show at the Spot that spring. That show wasn't nearly as crowded as the Andrew Bird show, but to me it was even better. I remember standing in the middle of the floor in front of the stage and just basking in these waves of aural beauty that were washing over me - the swelling strings, the intricate guitar parts, the stirring vocals... I also remember after the show talking to D and telling her how much I'd liked it and that I kind of wanted to buy a CD but I thought $15 for a CD was a little steep, so I didn't buy one that night, which is very funny to me in retrospect because I now have a constant desire to shovel huge amounts of my disposable income into the pockets of musicians I like. A Northern Chorus became one of my very favorite bands, their album Bitter Hands Resign is in my all time top five, and their farewell show in June 2008 that Cara and I attended together remains my favorite show that I've ever seen.

I didn't see D much after the fall semester ended and not at all after that school year (and have no idea where she is now). I got over the very intense crush I'd had on her. In March I met Cara in person and rapidly became close friends with her although it wasn't until November that we started dating. In a way, looking back, it almost seems like my very intense crush on D, someone else I became friends with and made a connection with over a similar interest in music, was a sort of preview of the feelings I developed toward Cara.

Going to Spot Night on Wednesday nights was something I'd do most weeks during the school year for years to come. I lived in an apartment that was a short walk away so it became my little weekly ritual to head over to the Spot, grab some of their very cheap wings for dinner, and settle in to enjoy some music. I continued to attend Spot Nights all the way through my last year of grad school, which I finally completed in 2014. By the end, there, going to shows with audiences mostly made up of undergrads definitely made me feel my age, but hey, that didn't stop me from enjoying the music! It really is amazing looking back on all the bands that I got to see for free. Here's a list, just going off of memory, of bands that I saw at the Spot during grad school, ranging from local bands to some touring artists who would later go on to achieve massive fame, and including some artists I was already fans of as well as many who I got into as a result of their playing at the Spot (feel free to skip past if you don't feel like reading a long list of band names):

Andrew Bird, A Northern Chorus, Dreamend, Infinite Number of Sounds, The Never, The Acorn, Jupiter One, Ra Ra Riot, Goodmorning Valentine, To Be A High Powered Executive, Afternoon Naps, The Dreadful Yawns, The Commonwealth, The Morning Benders, MGMT, Passion Pit, St. Lucia, Lucius, Magic Man, The Colourist, Ben Kweller, The Watson Twins, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Tokyo Police Club, Head of Femur, Picastro, Cloud Nothings (a memorable show because a fire alarm went off in the middle of it), Tristen, Plushgun, Woods, Real Estate, Dr. Dog, Like Bells, Ha Ha Tonka... and I'm sure there are a lot I'm leaving out.

(MGMT and Passion Pit deserve special mention because, although not among my very most favorite Spot Nights, they are two bands who would go on to achieve huge levels of success, but when they played the Spot they were both very little known and didn't even have unusually large crowds for a Spot Night - the students on UPB who booked those shows were way ahead of the curve! Years later in 2013 Passion Pit returned to Case for the annual fall concert and played to a huge crowd at the Veale Convocation Center.)

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Spot Night was one of my very most favorite parts of being a Case student. In the years since I finished school I've learned that the weekly Spot Night shows have ceased to be a thing, which makes me sad. But I'm very grateful to have had those shows as part of my life for so many years and kudos to the students on UPB who did such a great job picking out and booking artists and helping create so many great memories!

I always cry at endings

It's a common saying that "there's a first time for everything."

If there's a first time for everything, there's also a last time for everything. And sometimes they happen together.

On Saturday I attended the final show of my friend Amy's indie pop band Heavenly Creatures, at the Grog Shop. Farewell shows are always special. I've been to some really memorable ones over the years, most especially A Northern Chorus and Ohbijou. And Saturday's show was another emotional and memorable occasion.

As this was the last Heavenly Creatures show, my thoughts of course turned to the first Heavenly Creatures show, which I also attended. That show took place in October 2014 at the Euclid Tavern. And that show, as it turned out, was an important "last time" for me.

I had no idea at the time, but it was the last concert that Cara would ever attend with me.

Because going to concerts together was such an important part of our relationship, the last time it ever happened is naturally something that holds special significance to me, even if it was just a little local show. Liz Kelly of The Village Bicycle opened the night with a really nice solo set, and the duo of sisters ShiSho - who I remember Cara particularly enjoying - followed. Heavenly Creatures played last and Cara was getting tired - fatigue brought on by her illness and treatments was a major reason she rarely went to concerts anymore - so she ended up leaving early with our friend Troy driving her home - but she did catch part of Amy's band's debut and we had a good time together.

It's good to be able to cherish the memories of those last times.

Almost a month ago now, I visited Cara's mother Joyce for the last time. I brought with me a box I have full of Cara's artwork, mostly drawings that she made in the last few years of her life, and we looked through it together. We hugged tightly before I left. This too was a last time that I did not expect would be a last time, although perhaps in this case a small part of me wondered if it might.

I recall also my mom telling me about the last time that she saw her father, and how that's a memory she cherishes.

The first Heavenly Creatures show (was it really almost five years ago now?) was an especially big deal for Amy, Heavenly Creatures' frontwoman, lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, because it was the first time she had ever done anything like that. I remember how nervous she seemed on stage. It was really cool to see her grow increasingly comfortable and confident in that role as I caught her shows over the years.

She also created some darn good songs, most notably the very clever and equally catchy "Your Record Collection," a song that's very relatable for a music fan like me.

For the band's final show, Amy did what she called "VH1 Storytelling" in between the songs, talking about the music and about the life events related to that music, which helped make the night extra meaningful. Some of her storytelling touched on the troubled and troubling times in which we live.

Amy had to disband Heavenly Creatures because she has to move because she was laid off from her job at American Greetings. She explained that she wrote the song "The Cheerleaders' Table" in response to a round of layoffs at the company in 2018 - and then she herself fell victim to the same thing a year later. American Greetings, the world's second largest greeting card company behind Hallmark, was founded in the Cleveland area in 1906 and has been part of the local economy for over a century. Last year an investment firm took over majority control, leading to the layoffs. "It's not a Cleveland company anymore," Amy explained. A sad and all too common story of 21st century life.

"Comforting Pain" was another song inspired by current events, in its case the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland in July 2016. The song begins:

The city might kill me
The summer might just kill us all
The temperature is rising
We might not live to see the fall

The Cleveland-hosted RNC was, of course, the infamous event at which Donald Trump received the nomination to be the Republican presidential candidate. "We were afraid the city was going to burn," Amy said while discussing the song's inception, before sardonically adding, "Now the whole country is burning." More like the world? I thought to myself, stories about the Amazon forest fires flashing through my mind.

Amy also mentioned a concert held during the week of the RNC at which her band covered the R.E.M. song "World Leader Pretend," thinking it fitting (in addition to the title, the lyrics mention raising a wall).

I remember that concert well. It took place at the Happy Dog on the west side. I remember driving across town and seeing the big jet plane with the letters TRUMP emblazoned across its side sitting on the tarmac at the lakefront airport. I remember shuddering at the sight. I remember Amy introducing and playing "World Leader Pretend." I remember Liz Kelly of The Village Bicycle exclaiming, "Fuck you, Republicans! Keep your fucking hands off my fucking uterus!" during between-song banter. I remember a business-casual-dressed middle-aged white guy and a boy I assumed was his son entering the venue some time later to grab a late dinner, looking rather out of place, and me thinking they'd probably come from the RNC and wishing they'd arrived in time to hear that profane outburst. I remember the singer from UK band Jesus and His Judgemental Father talking about how this was their first time in the States and how there were unsettling political events happening on both sides of the Atlantic, but also about how much they'd enjoyed their time over here and (quite charmingly) how they'd enjoyed seeing both fireflies and chipmunks for the first time ever.

It occurred to me while I was thinking about this that there's something interesting about the way I remember concerts. As I look back over all the days of my life, even of my adult life, for a large majority of the days I have no concrete memories of that specific day. Most of the days on which nothing really exceptional happened just run together. I'm sure this is true for most people. If you picked out a random day from my past, chances are I'd have no concrete memories from that day. But concerts... for most concerts I've attended, I do have some concrete memory of the event. I can picture myself at that specific concert. Perhaps I can recall something about a particular song or something that someone in the band said. And so concerts are in some sense anchor points in my recollection of the history of my life. (I think an interesting sci-fi thriller novel I just read called Recursion by Blake Crouch probably helped spark these ponderings.)

I wonder if other people have noticed this sort of thing. Of course, important life events such as a first date, a wedding, the death of a loved one, etc. are more prominent anchor points that are sure to have very concrete memories attached, and there are all sorts of other occurrences that could result in clear memories, but for me, I think concerts are the most common anchor points. Especially in the years since I had to give up distance running, as races in particular as well as certain particularly memorable training runs were another common form of anchor point in my memories. What sorts of commonly occurring anchor points do other people have?

Returning to the events of this past Saturday night...

The Heavenly Creatures song "Who Knows (Goodbye)" concludes with my friend Leia, formerly of the delightfully twee band Afternoon Naps, chiming in to sing the word, "Goodbye." Leia and her husband Martin were original members of Heavenly Creatures and were part of the lineup at that very first show in 2014 but did not stay in the band very long. At the farewell show, during the performance of "Who Knows," Leia was sitting next to the stage. As the song neared its conclusion, she edged her way onto the stage and in front of a microphone to add her part to the song - which was very cute, I must say. That "Goodbye," of course, took on extra significance this time. Leia and Martin then joined the band for the rest of the set.

The last few songs were cover songs chosen specifically for the occasion. Amy said that she had had an idea for years to form an all-female Radiohead cover band called Ladiohead. A similar idea, she added, was an R.E.M. cover band called R.E.Femme. (As an enjoyer of really cheesy puns and wordplay, I greatly appreciated these.) Although the performers were not all female, Amy and her band delivered an impassioned cover of Radiohead hit "Creep."

The next song was introduced by Amy as having been the first song she ever performed on stage, and she said that at the time, she'd had no idea the meaning it would one day have. The song? "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying," a classic Belle and Sebastian tune. With lyrics "At the final moment, I cried/I always cry at endings," it's very fitting for a farewell show.

For me the song is strongly tied to another memory. Me seeing Belle and Sebastian at Red Rocks in June 2015, a show Cara had been supposed to go to with me, and witnessing a live performance of that song, and being struck by how the title lyrics "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" were so similar to Cara's last words, which as I recall them were along the lines of: "I'm dying. I'm dying. Get me out of here."

And I know that sounds like it must be a really horrible thing to remember. I think what the last moments of a life are actually like is something a lot of people don't like to talk about. But it was something that really happened, something really significant in my life, a moment I shared with Cara - and with her mother - and I wouldn't want to forget it.

The last song of the last Heavenly Creatures show was another one very fitting for the moment, "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by R.E.M. As the audience belted out the familiar chorus, it was simultaneously poignant and exhilarating. It was a night to remember for sure.

So thank you, Amy and Heavenly Creatures, for the music and the memories. I think everyone who creates music and bravely puts a piece of themselves out there into the world is doing a little something to help us all make it through this strange and often distressing reality, and for that I'm very grateful.

Thirty-six

Thirty-six is an interesting number.

One thing that makes thirty-six interesting is that it's both a square number and a triangular number - a square triangular number. Square numbers include (of course) 1*1 = 1, 2*2 = 4, 3*3 = 9, etc. Triangular numbers include 1, 1 + 2 = 3, 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, etc. Thirty-six is equal to 6*6 and it's also equal to 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8. Square triangular number.

image source

I learned that bit of trivia as a child and for whatever reason it popped into my head shortly after midnight on my 36th birthday last week (although to be honest I had to use Google for help because I had forgotten the term "triangular number," even though the concept was in my head).

There are infinitely many square triangular numbers, so 36 isn't unique in that sense, but it occurred to me that because the previous number in the sequence is 1, and the next is 1225, 36 is the only square triangular number that can be the age in years of a person who is capable of comprehending and appreciating the fact that their age in years is a square triangular number. Interesting? Well, to me, anyway!

Of course, that's not the main reason 36 is an interesting number for me.

I'm sure a lot of people can relate to feeling a certain way when their age reaches that at which someone close to them died. A parent, perhaps, or perhaps a sibling or a close friend. And for me, it is undoubtedly surreal that my age in years is now the same as the age at which my wife died.

I'm currently reading a sci-fi short story anthology edited by Isaac Asimov called Where Do We Go From Here? Published in 1971, the book includes stories from the previous few decades, and each story is accompanied by a short discussion by Asimov of the scientific concepts in the story as well as some suggested thought exercises and study topics for intellectually curious readers. A very interesting book.

The first story, "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum, was published in 1934 and is about the first manned mission to Mars, which the story envisions taking place in the 21st century (but amusingly only ten years after the first man reached the Moon, in the story's timeline). In the story, intelligent alien creatures are encountered on Mars, along with an alien artifact, a "little crystal" that gave off light that "destroyed diseased tissue and left healthy tissue unharmed."

The story closes as follows:

"I should like to see," he murmured.

"Yeah," said Harrison. "And the wart cure. Too bad you missed that; it might be the cancer cure they've been hunting for a century and a half."

"Oh, that!" muttered Jarvis gloomily. "That's what started the fight!" He drew a glistening object from his pocket.

"Here it is."

And so our protagonist has absconded with a potential cure for cancer.

I chuckled to myself at this ending.

I was stunned when I read Asimov's words on the next page:

It was the first published science fiction story of Stanley G. Weinbaum who, at one bound, became the most popular author in the field. It was not just the realism of his alien other-world creatures, but it was also his light and easy style, a far cry from the creakiness of the writing of most of the s.f. authors of the early thirties. For two years, he retained his popularity and then, as suddenly as he came, he vanished, for in 1936, at the age of thirty-six, he died of cancer.

This was a few days before my birthday. I was already thinking of the deeply personal significance of my turning thirty-six. The age at which my wife died, of cancer. So to read those words, after reading that story? Very surreal indeed.

This might seem like a mopey post. It's not meant to be. All in all, I feel pretty good about where my life is right now. And I don't mind being thirty-six. I just find it interesting to think about and make note of things like this. They help give life flavor.

Incidentally, in Asimov's discussion of another story in the book, he discusses some odd coincidences, including a story featuring an ichthyologist named Vernon Brock that was read by a real ichthyologist named Vernon Brock who "promptly wrote to" the story's author. Asimov concludes:

Such coincidences abound everywhere. What do you think of them? Suppose I said, "No matter how weird such coincidences may seem, it would be far more weird to have no such coincidences." Would you agree? There is a branch of mathematics called probability that deals with such things among others, if you are interested.