Twenty-one Was A Million Years Ago

I remember being 20, in college, and singing this song. It started:
Twenty-one was a million years ago
I saw one hundred angels tonight in the snow

I remember turning to Ettett and saying, "Twenty-one *WAS* a million years ago, Ettett, and I'm not even twenty-one!!!" I admit, I was in a terribly bad place. I had endured an non-breakup with a non-girlfriend who had moved away to a non-driving-distance city to live in a nondescript house, for seemingly nonchalant reasons. I didn't understand. And so, as I was wont to do in those days, I wallowed.

And wallowed.
And wallowed.

I got a phone call, one day, from a friend, a personal superhero of mine, who'd moved to Austin the summer (I think) prior. He didn't ask me how I was. He asked me, "What are you listening to?"

I replied, "Chris Bell."

He countered, "You've got to stop that."

I did, after a time. Now, to be fair, I didn't skip from Chris Bell to the Blow Pops, or any of the other sugar-pop twee bands that I've mentioned here. But I did, somehow, work my way out of that self-pitying pool of despair. This isn't to say that a person shouldn't allow themselves to go there. It can be therapeutic sometimes, even creative. That period of my life, my blue period, has a soundtrack of Chris Bell.

To this day, "Look Up" rends my heart. That man walking down the street, with his head down low, is sometimes me. I never quite understood what Chris was trying to say there, but I picture him, off the cover of that album, transported to some unfriendly town, unhappy and utterly forsaken. All he ever had to do was look up, and see the sky. I do.



P.S. I didn't mean for this to end up being an ode to Chris Bell, as there's so much more to write. There is so much more, more *personal* for me to write about you. For me to write to you. I think of you often. And I hope that when you look down, you see me sometimes.