Second person: You were 23 years old, lonely as only you could be comfortable with. You and that beautiful dog. You had lived a lot, ups, downs, love, sadness, but for some reason the depression at 23 was unbearable. You realized how you controlled nothing, and it hurt. A fucking pandemic is all it took to make you realize how tragic life could actually get. And there was that girl of course. You were happy for the first time. Something in her honest smile made you think she wouldn’t hurt you and that’s exactly what she did. Broke you, at a moment when everything shook. In retrospect the timing couldn’t have been more ironic: February 23rd, exactly two weeks before everything shut down, before the fights in your family began, before the destruction of everything you had built by yourself away from home in 4 years, before “nothing was the same”. You were listening to My Morning Jacket obsessively. You still do, you always will. “Still going back to my childhood days” and the hypnotizing guitar loop, cyclical, Circuital. The guitar strums became happiness that brought your bones back to life in that 9-month period. That December day, with a joint in your mouth the chords sounded stronger, realistic, almost visual. The sun was setting behind the Pacific Ocean and all you could think about were two things: The crazy genius that was Jim James and how every song he wrote encapsulated a unique meaning that maybe only you could understand. Second was still that honest smile. And the memories that honest smile brought. It brought the walks from school to the zoo, the convos in that weird moldy room called the lit lounge, the professors, and obviously the concerts.

Now I’m gonna move to third person. He had gone to over 200 concerts in those four years. He also went to more than 80 Nationals games, 50 Wizards games, three football games, and soccer once for Pirlo. The concerts were the best, he had that clear. The feeling the morning before the concert when he had not bought a ticket but still knew he was gonna go was thrilling. The concerts were magic, some spontaneous like John Mayer, effusive like LCD Soundsystem, Florence was magnificent, and Kamasi had been compelling. He would never describe two concerts with the same adjective because every one was unique. And then 9 months of complete silence, of not even having his records with him. The man was going crazy, the whole world was going crazy in all honesty. He had made more than a hundred playlists since the last Lumineers concert and none felt like live music. He named those playlists by a specific characteristic or feeling that he could find in a song and then he would add songs that shared characteristic. For example, Wilco’s Black Moon was daunting and on that playlist he also played Coney Island Baby. He made this playlists in May, right during graduation. David Bowie’s Heroes inspired the latest one, one looking for an internal revolution and rebellion. Golden was the main track of an imaginary soundtrack for an imaginary movie called “Soundtrack to my Western”. Americana was heavy on that one. Yet now he disliked all of the playlists he had made in those 9 months.

I hate them. Yes, I’m moving to first person because this fucking story is about me. I’m a music fan, specifically rock and rnb. Give me some Bill Withers or Alex Turner, at least some Courtney Barnet. I love them all because I only feel alive when I’m listening to their music. And right now, the songs that are making me feel that way are fewer every day. I’m scared. The War on Drugs still hits the spot. This is where I apologize for going to tangents and not telling you the story straightforward. I’m sorry but this is how the tale pours out of my brain and paints the page. I’ll try to make this an easy read, but emotions are still high, and the most important part for me right now is to write how I feel in this page. I’m in a crisis because both my parents have covid. Yeah this is one of many memoirs that will get written about the pandemic and hopefully one of the few that get published, and if we hit a miracle a best seller that makes me good money each year and brings contracts for other projects.

So back to my parents. My dad is the person that enjoys life the most in this world. He loves sunsets and walks in the beach. He also loves to travel, our dog, our family, and amazingly he loves each and every one of us differently. Thanks to him I appreciate classical music and opera. He took me to shows and events every year, but nature is definitely his favorite. His face in the Grand Canyon when I was 9, at Torres del Payne, and in many other beautiful green places is priceless. He hates the cold, loves the beach and ocean, and this is the first time I’ve ever written about him. I adore him and my only goal is to be as happy as he is. He’s always made good money as a pediatrician until now, when everyone is scared to catch the plague. He went from seeing thirty patients a day to four, and at 77 he is still the Doctor in his office that sees the most patients. Yet he is depressed because his life just changed drastically when he should be able to chill and that pisses me off. My dad gets annoyed when things change, and he can be too stubborn to deal with. The problem is that when someone has been the one that knows everything about medicine and suddenly a weird virus appears he doesn’t know how to react. We’ve had some arguments and I hate to argue with him because that makes him sad and he doesn’t deserve to be sad. He is my role model. I don’t want him to die. Not yet, not ever, but please not now.

Second person: It rains in the Led Zeppelin song and you feel you heart crunch. Is the first time you’ve written about your dad. Now let’s talk about mom. Amelia is an incredible, powerful, gentle, short human. You share her resilience, your desire to be different from the pack, and for constant knowledge. You both are low-key the Marxists of the family. You made her a playlist not so long ago. She has great music taste, Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Cat Stevens, Aretha Franklin, and Tracy Chapman. Many others too. When you were a child she played that Serrat song that became the one that marked your relationship with your family at a young age. When you are you your family is everything, so that song marked your relationship with everything. Now you hear “Caminante no hay camino/ se hace camino al andar/ al andar se hace el camino y al volver la vista atrás/ se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar/ caminante no hay camino/ si no estelas por la mar” and can’t do anything but cry. It reminds you of grandma, and you don’t want to think of her in her state from that fucking dementia. That’s why you don’t listen to it but still can write the lyrics from heart, because that was the first song that meant something. And your mom gave you that. And gives you unconditional love all the time. And you can’t even bear to think what would happen to you if she dies. You would end in an institution, or dead. She can’t die either, not in a long, long time.

Third person: He felt guilty. Not only for not being there for them even though he knew he couldn’t go, but for not being able to even focus all of his energy in them. That girl was still part of his mind, he was still thinking of her even in this moment of crisis. Why had she taken that space? Why was she important? She was the first woman that made him feel euphoric just by having a conversation. She was also brilliant, gorgeous, and somehow fragile. He wanted to make her feel safe and instead made her anxious for some reason that he could still not understand. It was easier to think that she never loved him and that’s why she broke his heart at such an inconvenient moment. It was also how cold she had been, how she had changed the narrative to make him feel guilt. She wanted him to hate her so she wouldn’t think about what could have been with him. At least that’s what he likes to think.