I heard a siren’s song the other night, she serenaded a room of lost souls who had found solace in a small studio space carved from some old storehouse. With her words flowing sweet against a streetlight backdrop, they nestled themselves within my mind. I was entranced in the melody.
It was music that brought me back from the grave, made my skin flush with color again. Something about that song made me snap out of my fog, it awoke me from a dream where I lay comatose, awaiting revival.
Every feeling in my body was reset, ridden of the numbing apathy that once smothered my nerve endings. I had been defibrillated, I felt the electricity hit me like a hard jab to the sternum, and it was invigorating.
Left gasping for breath, wanting more, and craving sustenance in the form of her immaculate voice, I was hooked. I had seen a pure soul wading amongst the sludge-pool tides of these Chicago streets, unscathed and whole.
It’s funny how a song can make you feel whole again, and how everything rings with such an undeniable clarity afterwards. The tune was still playing through my head, stuck on a loop between my eardrums.
I stood on the corner after the show, chain-smoking and soaking in the bright lights of the city. The streets echoed with the beautiful sound of resistance that rode the cool, late night, spring breeze to downtown.
Downtown to where the alleyways gave shelter to human forms, sleeping away the night warily with one eye open. Down Michigan Avenue and State Street, where marchers rallied against the potent forces of systemic racism and greed.
My mind was in a frenzy, rambling thoughts in the windy city, “The City in Which I Loved You.” I kept my pace, walking along the blood-red, brick streets, losing myself in the commotion of cars and rattling train tracks overhead.
I found where I parked, and paused again on the sidewalk before getting in. I tasted the grimy, city air, but it tasted sweet for some reason. Maybe it was just the pollutants, but I felt it had to be something more, something invisible that clung to the wind like a long-lost lover.
The air carried a light moisture, the remnants of the last rain, or maybe the first drops of the one to come. Either way, I let the misty winds sweep over me for a while before jumping into the car and taking off.
The shaded streets were alive and thriving with activity, and I cruised the short stretch of blocks to the freeway entrance. West I-290 to I-88, the wind pummeling the car as Chicago beamed brightly in the rear-view mirror. The night sky was electric, and the whole city hummed with a vibrant energy that coursed throughout the many streets and alleyways.
With the windows down, I held my hand out and let the roaring gusts of wind carry it away in the breeze. The air reeked of madness as the smoky haze covering the city ascended into the orange glow over downtown, fiery with hints of red, like a hell storm.
I had the radio cranked up so that even the city could have a taste of the music as well. Ramshackle Glory’s “Live the Dream” album was playing, and I remember I was boiling-over with excitement. I pounded on the steering wheel during “More About Alcoholism,” as Pat sang “This car is a war machine, it runs on nicotine and gasoline,” it was all too fitting.
As I made my way out of the city, the blocks of storefronts and apartments that lined the streets above the highway became sparse. Finally, I hit the suburbs in Aurora, and the interstate was lined with large glass office buildings, all uniquely designed and yet still somewhat box-shaped.
Before I could blink, I had passed Orchard road and the lights of the city were dying out, soon becoming only a tiny fixture on the horizon. Almost instantly I was swallowed into the extreme darkness of a cloudy night, and like an unleashed beast, I was set loose into the all-encompassing turmoil of this strange night.
The moon and stars were blocked out, and anything beyond my headlights was lost in the pitch veil of obscurity. The plains were now just a never-ending mass of shadows; a lost plane of existence, a sea of obsidian, or an infinite, space-like void I navigated in a dingy metal box.
It seemed like everything had been polished with a new veneer, one that made the whole world teem with a sense of beauty and mysticism. Maybe I really was sleeping up until then, and when I awoke it was in another world entirely.
There is something very special about music, and sometimes all we need is to just hear the song of a sweet siren. So that when the tune is finally heard, and we’re roused from our walking comas, the world seems like someplace new.
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