I have been sitting and thinking about what my next entry was going to be. I have nearly made it through April at this point and feel like I am on the cusp of a refreshing Spring. Over the past few weeks, we have had several visitors at our house. One thing that’s been consistent with many of the people that have stopped by is their ‘evaluation’ of our music selection. You can always learn a lot about people, their beliefs, and what they do on Saturday nights by peaking into their music selection.

I have read some great articles and blogs discussing interests similar to mine and became inspired to write my own entry on music. Specifically, how it fills in the cracks of our existence like sand between rocks. I am by no means an expert on anything, including music, its creation, or its distribution. But I do know what I like so that makes me an expert on me. So I have decided to write a three-part entry to talk music. (1) Our music catalog, (2) How we amassed our interests, and (3) Where to go to find more. If you hadn’t heard, music is a big deal around this house.

(1) Our Music Catalog:
I pride myself in the quantity and quality of the music in our house. We have literally TONS of CD’s and albums at our house. Our visitors are generally astonished by the shear volume of our catalog. Over the years, I have dumped many albums, tapes, and CD’s to make for new entries. I have always considered that the natural selection of music; an auditory Darwinism. I suppose that this is a great way to keep your inventory under control. Otherwise, instead of bedroom furniture, we would be sleeping on records covered with comforters. That wouldn’t be so bad if your kids didn’t pee the bed. These last few weeks, I have been thinking back and it seems that a lot of the stuff I got rid in the past was a little part of me. And while I was ridding the house of an old Montell Jordan CD, I couldn’t help but be a little saddened that I was erasing myself ever so slightly.

I got over it. I just don’t have the room to keep everything I have ever owned regardless of how emotionally insightful or bubblegum pop disposable it was. But our catalog is still large and difficult to navigate despite the thinning of the herd over the years. And while I go through it and tell myself over and over, “I need to get rid of that Nick Lachey album,” I can’t part with the guy who put up with Jessica Simpson and didn’t strangle her after she prompted that whole ‘chicken or tuna’ incident. That, my friends, is heart. I will say this; we don’t have any Jessica Simpson records. I have standards even if they are so low they can be tripped over.

Let’s talk physicality of our music catalog. In open view, we have this IKEA bookshelf handcrafted-by-the-poor-indigenous-people-of-somewhere-I’ve-never-heard-of in our great room which is literally chocked full of CD’s. The damn thing weighs a ton. I would bet it has more than its weight in music stored in its enclave. Because of its inertness, it would probably be the only thing still standing after the big one hits. It is made up of three large shelves and two large drawers and stands about four and a half feet tall, four feet wide, and a foot and a half deep. It is the physical recorded media capital of our home. The top three shelves and the lower of the two drawers are full of CD’s. The only other drawer available has DVD’s in it. But their days are numbered as the additions look for new resting spots and soon these DVD’s may be out on the street or in the unemployment line.

The three shelves are the home to multiple rows of CD’s. The CD’s are sitting on their ends, like books, so the spines can be easily read. Initially, these three rows were organized in alphabetical order from top left to bottom right. However, some cannot follow our challenging 26 letter alphabet and were confused why John Denver would be before Incubus. Here’s a quick lesson for those just learning the Latin alphabet. Artists’ names, such as John Denver, are filed by last name, ‘Denver’ in this case. Bands are filed by the first letter of their name unless it is something like The John Butler Trio. Then it is filed by the letter ‘J.’ Things are getting more complicated though. Because of the increasing volume of music in our home, we have added a second row behind each front row. Now the shelves currently are two rows deep. This makes it pretty challenging to locate exactly what you are looking for if you don’t have more than an afternoon to browse behind everything. Because we are running out of physical space and the shelves are deep, this is our best case scenario for housing our audio interests. You just have to then remember that the newer CD’s are in the front and older ones are in the back.

As I mentioned earlier, only one of the drawers is used for CD’s. The other has DVD’s in it. I keep thinking to myself that I could put these DVD’s in cold storage somewhere in the Arctic due to the frequency to which one graces our DVD player. I think the only DVD in the player right now is Twilight for some god-awful gay-vampire reason. I digress. The drawer with the CD’s is no different than the shelves. All of the CD’s are stacked in rows on end so the titles can be read on the spine. My alphabetization rules for the shelves also apply here. Briefly as I can be, Keith Sweat is filed under ‘S’ for his last name. But Tha Dogg Pound is filed under ‘D’ for ‘Dogg’ and not the word ‘Tha.’ The drawer is deep enough for a double stack. The problem is that there are two layers creating a problem with accessibility similar to the shelves. Everything on the bottom layer is appropriately but tightly filed. I think it goes from the letter ‘A’ to the letter ‘S’ on the lower layer of CD’s. The top layer continues on with ‘T’ through compilation albums but is grossly more chaotic in filing. Things are just sitting there and they get tossed around when you are searching for something below.

I have also been accused of musical segregation, if there is such a thing. How can I be considered guilty of this when record stores have been categorizing by genre for years. To dumb it down completely, ‘Rock’ is on the top three shelves and ‘Soul’ is in the drawer. It is not my fault that certain ethnicities may be disproportionally represented in one category when compared to another. The ‘Rock’ section is more than just rock music. It is some jazz, some alternative, some punk, some ska, some surf rock, some metal, some folk, and some electronica. The ‘Soul’ section is predominantly hip-hop, some rap, some soul, some R&B, and some compilation CD’s. For your ethnic score keeping, Third Bass, Beastie Boys, and Remy Shand are in the lower ‘Soul’ section while Danko Jones, Miles Davis, and John Lee Hooker are a few examples in the ‘Rock’ section. Where is the ‘Country?’ There is none. There is only room for one ‘Country’ album in our collection and that is Aces Up.

So I guess maybe I am a little pretentious when it comes to music. In all seriousness, any piece of music that scratches the creative itch is welcome in our library. The albums that have survived my auditory cleansing are those which have stood the test of time to our emotions. Every album we have, or have had, is important to us. Those that are no longer with us have served their purpose. Our catalog is large yet maintainable. For the most part, I know where every album is and the level of difficulty in pulling it out of the bottom layer of the drawer or back row of the lowest shelf. While some of the albums in our catalog I would deem less than desirable, they do have a spot in our catalog. Sure, I hate the Mamma Mia soundtrack but it makes my wife happy. I can respect that.

Next up: (2) How we amassed our musical interests

I think on any given day, a person can find themselves existing somewhere in between the envelope of emotion described by the title of this post. It usually goes without saying that depending on which side of the bed you wake, it will define the distance which is spread between these two end points of emotion. Today is a day where no matter what side of the bed I woke up on I would still be extremely close to both endpoints depending on the time of the day as I oscillate back and forth like a pendulum of explosive emotion.

It was five years ago that I lost my brother in a uniquely unfair and strangely surreal manner. While I would like to provide the painful rehash of the tragic story for people reading here that don’t know the details, it is difficult at this time to describe in the painstakingly intricate details which I am known for writing. So instead, I’ll focus on brevity when retelling the story. My little brother was driving home from work in Tacoma, Washington on Monday April 5th, 2004 when he unexpectedly passed away at the wheel of his metallic blue Subaru WRX. Quickly and cruelly, an aneurysm in his brain caused the unanticipated loss of life. The car drifted across the lane of oncoming traffic, into a ditch, flipped, rolled over, struck a fence post and rested completely totaled in a horse pasture. He lay there in that moist Washington spring field until aid vehicles took him to the hospital. He was gone before the car even left the road.

I heard the news after a long day of work in Los Angeles. I was pissed he hadn’t called me over the weekend. The phone rings and that was not the call I expected to get. It never is. You can’t prepare for news like that. Five years ago. A lot has changed over the years with the addition of Son #1 and Son #2. But it never fails that I can, in an instant, think about just giving up and burying my truck into a guardrail. I have seen enough doctors to know that this is not the answer. Plus I have responsibilities now.


It’s kind of funny that going through life, you always feel like you have things figured out. Especially if you have a sibling, you expect them to ALWAYS be there for you to assist in life changing decisions, talk through dramatic issues, be there for the birth of his two nephews, and take care of family as they grow older. I took for granted that he would always be there. I spent years leaning on him for support and counseling him when he needed self confidence in set backs he was experiencing. I always knew life was full of surprises but always felt I could handle the speed bumps along the way because I would always have my brother to lean on. He had the objectivity that I lacked and I had the emotion that he wanted. I couldn’t have been more wrong with the script of my life.

Every smile has led to a cry these last few years. The first few months are definitely the hardest as you try to figure out where to go next. But with time, as cliché as it sounds, you learn to acclimate to the new landscape of your life and you begin to reflect in a healthy manner and focus on all of the great memories rather than the dark future of the unknown. My little brother was months short of his 25th birthday when he passed away. It just seems like it was far too soon for this to even be fathomable. He had just graduated college in 2002 and was just launching into his career in an economy not much different than what we are seeing now. It was a post-9/11 era. I really felt like he had the potential to do great things. He had so much more focus and effort than I did at that age. I had the passion and the never-say-die and never-be-defeated attitude. He was smarter, he was more strategic, and he chose his battles better. He was v2.0.

When you see potential like that AND it is your only brother, you can’t help question ‘What the f*ck?’ Is there some sort of strange lesson to learn here? And you know what? I have been finding out that there is. It is tough to quantify at times but rarely do I go through some sort of ordeal or deliberation and not think about him and his advice. I have learned to reflect on the past and respect it. With that I have learned acceptance. So it has been five painfully long years.


But instead of despair and depression, I want to celebrate the bitter-sweet short life of my little brother. While his existence here in physical form seems unreasonably short, the heaviness of the relationship and the memories left behind are the sweet nectar of his life that we hold onto now. I now realize that I am lucky enough to have had a sibling relationship this deep and this important. I worry at times that I don’t do him respect in his absence. However, I’ve realized that in my constant internal struggle to wonder why I don’t feel as shitty as I used to, I’ve learned to accept that this is the path and the memories of my brother have become the code which my life is steered by. And now we work with the boys to know their uncle in more than just stories and pictures, but in a way of life and in a way of compassion. Life with out my brother has been difficult to adjust to, but a life with out the memories of my brother would be a much worse existence. I am grateful for the time I had.