Walking Home Under the Canopy Glow

I walked home from school today, which isn't anything unusual lately, except that today I forgot to pack my walking shoes, and walking home in flat-footed two-year-old Payless dress shoes just isn't good for one's arches, especially after standing on them most of the day.

To ease the pain, I borrowed one of my classrooms's iPods before leaving (why haven't I thought of this sooner?!?), loaded Anathallo's new album, and began walking. The battery was dead from sitting in a desk drawer since May, and after keeping it plugged in for a while I had just enough charge to make it through the first 7 tracks for the 30 minute walk.

A favorite memory from our summer in France was listening to good music on Metro rides. Erica and I grew in our love for Andrew Bird, me with the left ear bud and her with the right, making do with only the half of the music that was panned our way. Using the right soundtrack truly does transform the way you look at the world. It forces me to set my mind on the unseen, reminding there's much more going on here than whatever's on the surface.

I had an idea for a short (or long) film today when a visitor was telling us about his travels in South Africa. He described to our students the long walk that some children are forced to take to school in that country. I wanted to film a walk to school. Even my own, really. But just the walk. Nothing more. Just the footsteps and the houses and the landscape and the people and the cracks in sidewalks and the cars and birds on wires and whatever else is passed. I realize it's a terrible idea, and everyone would think it's boring. But if I find so much beauty in a walk to school, especially if the right music is put to it, wouldn't (or shouldn't?) someone else?

And so, after very little grabbed me about Anathallo's new album Canopy Glow through my first listen, using it as a soundtrack to a walk home after a long week put it in a new light. And first of all, I learned it's not background music. It's too cerebral, and if you put it on in hopes of partying or having a conversation over it, it'll probably get on your nerves more than anything. It demands attention.

It's perfect walking music, though, because Anathallo's main thrust is that there's something deeper going on in the seemingly ordinary and mundane.

The song called "Cafetorium" caught my attention immediately because our middle school has a space that goes by that title. It's an awful name, but it suits the aesthetics (and obviously, the function) of the room pretty much perfectly. With the lyrics, I can picture the gathering taking place in the drab room, the poor acoustics and lighting, the awkward fellowship, the somewhat odd baptism using water from a cool whip container. Even though I wholeheartedly believe aesthetics matter, Anathallo reminds me there is beauty in the act, in the meaning, in whatever is going on underneath the surface.

I have yet to read all the frenetic lyrics to the song that has quickly become my favorite, but it's something about an astronaut losing his finger in some sort of accident with a grain truck. Even that somehow turns into a beautiful meditation through complex melodies and rhythms.

I walked home instilled with a sense of joy and peace, feeling the light my kids sang about earlier in the day at their annual Christmas concert. But knowing these melodies were being tunneled into my ear canals only, I was overcome with a feeling that the darkened streets and houses were burdened with sorrow, distress, fear, and confusion. They weren't hearing what I was hearing. They didn't know. Eyes are focused on the seen, the here, the now. We need to be pulled out of it all, step back, be reminded.

It takes some skilled and sensitive musicians and artists to help us do exactly that.

www.anathallo.com