Apple Music has this feature. I’m a big fan. Never even knew it existed until I was bored one day and messing around on my phone. Decided to say fuck it, I’ve got a good data plan let’s put pedal to the metal and crank this quality up to 11. Which made me wish I had done it sooner because when you can hear Prince softly place his foot on the piano pedal, when you can hear Prince sniff in between notes, when you can actually hear Prince breathing softly in your ear as you walk through the damp and dank humidity that is Florida in August, it changes your world view. It gives you visions.
Lossless hearing. Something which has become my very favorite thing during this time of chaos piled on top of chaos. I wrote a book and birthed it and sent it out into the world and it has given me lossless hearing. Or is it just a new shiny gadget on Apple Music? I saw the term stamped below Prince’s “Beautiful, Loved, and Blessed” song and his notes so tinkly crystal clear like big fat shiny diamonds sank into my ears and I heard it in a lossless way. I heard notes in between the notes, layers in between the layers. It felt like every air molecule was a mote of glitter in sunlight.
Is this technology or because I processed so much pain out in the form of a book which weighs 15.5 ounces and I know this fun fact because the mighty Amazon told me it was so. Fifteen point five ounces containing five decades of processed pain and grief. Stories of joy on the other side of sorrow and sorry for being cliché heavy today but when you realize something monumental sometimes you start talking in bumper sticker.
I wrote a book and now I hear differently. That’s all I know. I hear better. I hear more. I understand things. I’ll find myself in a situation and feel an instinct and go with it and it’s almost always right. I’m grounded. I feel the space between my ears and hardy har har yes, there’s a lot of space there. But I ain’t no dummy. This space feels like a vase out of that horror of horrors, Midsommar – some soft machine version of a container that’s been hollowed out and filled with light. The outside hardening into something grotesque yet beautiful and covered in flowers. Like that.
Writing a book felt like ripping open my insides, like a deer whose been gutted and hung in the light to dry out and strengthen into hide. Replacing what’s left with love and stars. I wrote a book and sent it into the world and each line read by someone out there is a shaft of light connection back to me. A tiny spider-web piece which gets thinner and thinner until it breaks, like a finger through a laserbeam. Words are read and pain is changed to glitter which shines then fades away forever. I ripped open the yellow paper package containing the first printed copy of my first book and it felt like looking into the eyes of my adopted child. The heft, the weight felt right. The shape was perfect, the outlines mine. I fell in love instantly. Forever.
Heavy poetry for a big fat vision of what it means to be lossless. All the ways we remain clear and free and full of big empty space. Which is where the next dream grows.
A few pieces of administrative bullshit:
- Here’s a link to my Prince playlist. Only quiet slow songs about love and sex because Prince.*
- Audiobook slash podcast coming soon. Maybe? Halloween? Definitely by Thanksgiving.
- Thanks to all the new FB likes.
- Feel free to sign up for my weekly dispatches at the hagthebook.com. Or not.
- Maybe watch the new Muhammad Ali documentary on PBS. It’s tremendous.
*This playlist is actually in Spotify because while Apple Music has LOSSLESS technology, it didn’t have some of the live versions of his songs which just bring me to my knees.