Volcanos, Music, and Run-on Sentences

My husband and I recently went to a concert by our favorite artist, and our friends joked with us that I am still on the “Ed Sheeran high.” They were sort of kidding, but honestly, my “live music” energy is rolling like we just left.

Isn’t it funny how somethings and experiences and moments in time can jolt us? Like a zap to our insides, where some sort of hibernating rumination comes alive for a bit before retreating back to its sleepy state once we’ve ridden it out?

I remember being in this very specific mood in a summer during college one time. People kept recommending great books like The Glass Castle and Lovely Bones and Prodigal Summer and all sorts of stories. It’s a bit nerdy to get a “book high,” but I was feeling all those novels. I read so much in a short period of time that those days simply wrapped me up in their words and worlds and everything in my brain turned into writing, like it couldn’t stop narrating, one giant run-on sentence, looking for small, odd little details that needed to be frozen in time. It’s a very particular feeling, almost a switch in your brain that goes off or a voice within.

This week, my mind has been rolling like water, bubbling with words and thoughts and ideas. It’s been describing and catching details and pondering and thinking and wondering and letting thoughts trail into ellipses and metaphors and questions and memories. The voice is back. A muse perhaps? Creativity? Inspiration? I’m not sure of her name. but I always love to hear her, especially when she’s a surprise.

Often this mode turns me towards odd small memories that have stuck with me for no particular reason. For example, I’ve lived in the same town my whole life, and there’s an intersection that’s recently been made into a traffic circle. When I was a kid, it was on our route to school, every morning when Dad drove us, buckled up in the ole blue Chrysler station wagon. Green lights were a rarity, so we started keeping track of how many we got each year, cheering on the special occasion our morning was timed just right to bounce right through the intersection without stopping. I was the youngest, and annoyed my older brothers fairly often (still do. #family). I remember one specific ride though, when I asked a question about volcanos, and the whole ride, in my little child mind, became awesome and interesting and the best ride to school ever. Dad, as he does, explained exactly what volcanoes are and how they work. He always breaks down information in a way that lets you stack it up, one block at a time. Layers, plates, eruption, lava, dormant, active. My brothers suddenly perked up, pouring out their own knowledge of volcanoes, favorite facts they’d picked up on in their old and more experienced years of elementary school. I asked more, and they answered more, totally enthusiastic and excited to be talking all about volcanoes. It only took about 10 minutes to get to our school, but I loved every minute of that morning. Slamming the door at carpool, I walked into our little cafeteria utterly content.

The next morning, I bucked my seatbelt, and asked about volcanoes again. I wanted the same thing to happen. Instead, my brothers went “UGH! Carly! We JUST talked about this yesterday!” They rolled their eyes, and explained how they had just went over EVERYTHING their little sister could possibly want to know about volcanoes. I remember not being devastated, but curiously bummed…like drats, this didn’t work a second time. I wanted that feeling again.

All the time, I drive through that intersection as an adult with my own kids in the back, remembering talking about volcanoes and what an insignificant moment that was.  I’m reasonably certain my brothers don’t remember this conversation. But it stuck with me. Maybe because it was the first time I learned about organic moments, and wishing I could feel something beautiful the same way twice. Maybe it was just a random morning that just happened to get lodged in my memory. But I kind of love that it sits there in my brain, an arbitrary speck of color in a giant mosaic.

I realized at some point this week that the music spinoff “feels” are reminding me of when I read all those amazing, thought-provoking books in one week and my brain was just overwhelmed with thoughts. The music has stayed in my mind like a language, even if I don’t speak it, the melodies and themes still pulsing through me. Perhaps it’s because some of the songs were about deep grief, and some of them reminded me of when my kids were babies or other waves of nostalgia, and some of them just evoke pure joy of dancing and singing, and some of them have these lyrics that I just want to wrap myself in and hear on repeat. And maybe that combustion of emotion is just too big to dissipate in a few days.

And perhaps music is just one of those things that creates surges of all the feels. At least it is for me.

In a mood like this though, everything feels important.

When we moved from our very first home, which we lived in for 10 years, I went around taking photos before we left of what I would miss. The realtor had gotten gorgeous shots of each of the rooms – cleaner and less cluttered than they had ever been.

But the photos I took were not of the rooms. They were of the nursery windowsill and treeline beyond, which I used to focus on while rocking and nursing our babies. The bubble in the glass cabinet, where an imperfection rounded out the glass made in 1920. Our welcome mat, sprinkled with bits of leaves and sunlight trapsed in every day. The bump of the plaster walls and uneven curve of the old floors. Those were the parts we lived in every day, sometimes without noticing, until you take a moment to step back and just document that piece of your world.

The parts we live in every day.

The conversations about volcanoes on the way to school. The one creaky floorboard, or pulling in a door to get a key to turn. The hilarious invented games we played as children. Fireflies in the trees on July nights, like tiny silent fireworks – how they light up in your hand like magic.

That’s where the heart of it all beats. In the sounds and smells and feels and small ordinary moments of every day.

I keep hearing her voice telling me this,

and I keep writing.

(Painting by my immensely talented mom, AJ Eccles, who can capture an ordinary moment in a paintbrush and make it beautiful)