Last fall, I was sitting at the kitchen table of two friends who have been together since 1972. They tell me a story about how they got together. She couldn't decide between two suitors, so she left N...
If you freak out over trivial everyday grievances, how are you going to handle *real* problems?
I was helpless in trying to return people's kindness, but also helpless to resist it. Kindness is a scarier force than cruelty, that's for sure. Cruelty isn't that hard to understand. I had no trouble...
I knew I would have to relearn how to listen to music, and that some of the music we'd loved together I'd never be able to hear again.
Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don’t live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous.
The Stones suggested that if you dabble in decadence, you could turn into a devil-worshipping junkie. Paul McCartney suggested that if you mess around with girl worship, you could turn into a husband....
She also told me about the night one of her astrophysics friends went to a bar trivia contest where the final question was What does Kelvin measure? The winning answer was heat, but her friend explain...
Nothing connects to the moment like music.
My ancestors spent centuries in the hills of County Kerry, waist-deep in sheep shit, getting shot at by English soldiers, and my grandparents crossed the ocean in coffin ships to come to America, just...
It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you,...
It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing.
If the girls keep dancing, everybody's happy. If the girls don't dance, nobody's happy.
But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies.
Movies for adults sucked in the 1980s, and music for adults sucked even worse whether we're talking about Kathleen Turner flicks or Sting albums, the decade's non-teen culture has no staying power at...
Put the freak in frequently drunk and belligerent.
You lose a certain type of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose your right to be a jaded cynic. You can no longer go back through the looking glass and pretend not to know wha...
The songs were all either fast or sad. Because all songs should be either fast or sad.
Tacos will grow on Christmas trees before I learn to carry a tune. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. In karaoke, talent means nada; enthusiasm is everything. What I lack in talent, I make up for in pass...
So you get less shy about how hard you have to try. And you don't bother hiding your Kotter tapes. Sure, they expose some of my appalling deficiencies. But my appalling deficiencies are all I have to...
I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I’m always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The tim...