Watch a beautiful person doing something mundane. That is how humans fall in love with somebody, even temporarily. Music is the bridge, making those micro-enamorements stick.
The Tapas place in West Nashville is playing their dinner soundtrack, the Hermanos Gutierrez. They’re a Mexican slide guitar duo; sun drenched, wistful melodies that resolve with a small upturn, then fade like they’re walking down railroad tracks. The moment I heard them was the moment I knew there wouldn’t be any more tapas served without them as the soundtrack. The canvas swishing around wine glasses, noses, ears.
They’re lifting up the olive oil sheen, small candles, the tinkering silverware and hushed conversations. The patio breeze understands the assignment as the guitar melodies slide off the ceramic plates and out into the street.
You notice a beautiful woman eating tapas, listening to the Brothers, your brain circuitry is going to make the leap. It’s going to imprint that dripping cool beauty onto her silhouette from the other side of the dining room. She bites, covers her mouth, smiles at something her friend said.
She has dark hair in a tight bun, a few strands framing her high cheekbones, a little birth mark just above her lip. She is the set and setting, without having any idea how the sound’s mirage is bending around her, distorting reality.
I once watched a cook dragging out a fat bag of trash after a shift, hunched like a criminal, cigarette on his lips. It was also the first time I heard “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground. The heroine-drawled chorus snapped “I smell sex and can…” right as his oversized black feet clomped by me and he exhaled a puff of smoke. I conceded he was the coolest motherfucker on the planet for that millisecond of time. I had no choice.
It’s almost unfair how that works, how we don’t choose it or see it coming. Powerful songs are micro-time capsules into people’s psyches, stacked throughout life. Whatever they rode in on, the traumas, hopes, sex, candy, all come firing back. And if it’s the first time hearing it, it’s that liminal experience of seeing nostalgia form in real time. That woman became a tableau vivant.
The Hermanos Gutierrez were recording in some far-off studio, hands adorned with rings. They adjust the lap steel, pick at calloused fingers, hit record again and transmit directly to upscale dining rooms nationwide. The Marcy Playground found a melody over 3 chords, a perfect analog pool to splash around in. The temporal red carpet rolled out for junkies and cooks and pixie girlfriends to be immortalized in a million different minds for 10 precious seconds.
People’s faces are taking on impossible dimensions as the candle shadows grow taller, the waiters bend around tables without a sound. The wine grows a shade darker as the sun glints off the glass, refracting into my eyes.
Everyone else is locked in their experience, oblivious. I’m grateful.
Wanderthoughts 