The jukebox that occupies some sort of mystical properties ever since I sat it in a field underneath a protective red maple didn’t exactly start out that way. I bought it for $10 from a junk store in the nearby (8 miles away) small town that is considered my “hometown” because our rural postal mailing address utilizes that zip code and is sorted out there. The jukebox occupied various corners of our aging farmhouse abode over the years, but my grand designs to have it fixed and be centerpiece of kitchen table relaxation moments were stymied by lack of availability of the old dude who was able to fix such things (as well, probably, as the fact that such old men stopped existing in any multitude in current American world). So once I finally gave up and put the jukebox in the field, my ol’ lady was pretty happy, because all it had done thus far was accumulate a thousand stubbed toes in the darkness of night.
I didn’t think much of plugging the cord into the dirt by base of red maple, other than “Wouldn’t that be funny if I plugged the jukebox cord into the dirt by the base of this protective red maple?” so when music started playing from the jukebox on nights when I was sitting in the field, that was magic enough for me. When you are culturally trained to believe shit like that doesn’t exist, and then it actually does exist, you don’t automatically jump to the notion of tinkering with the unbelievable. How can you even control the unbelievable? You don’t believe it, or aren’t supposed to. So I just sat in the field and listened to whatever the magic field jukebox played.
A few months back though, I started playing around with actually selecting buttons on the panel of A-J and 0-9. (Actually, my youngest offspring, who is some sort of solar ambassador from spirit peoples, did it, explaining to me, “If you hear me talking, it’s part of my game,” then turning and saying, “How do we dial the proper soundtracks while trapped in these earth pens? These buttons? Okay. Thank you, Ellabell.”) Initially, there was a period of joy behind new discovery, and I’d just click button combinations to see what type of slurred music would begin playing. But eventually the novelty of even magic jukebox music combos wore off, and I started trying to be more methodical, going through each combination, beginning with A1, to see what would happen. Sometimes, I made notes for a couple of evenings, and other times I heard what came out and didn’t care too much, so moved on immediately. I knew nothing about how the letter-number pairing had to do with the music that suddenly appeared in my sensory perception, and still don’t really. (I call it “my sensory perception” because other than my daughter who talks to Ellabell, nobody else has necessarily heard the music. And after a couple of quizzical “Okay, Raven” looks, I stopped asking other people to come listen to the jukebox.)
Thus, when I got to F-9, I didn’t really expect anything like what happened. My sensory perception of music was blasted, but more internally, with echo-heavy sounds that felt like they were happening inside my head, except from my rib cage, if that makes sense? And the music was in a foreign language, seemingly similar to Spanish (which I can cuss in, and ask you “Where is my ladder?” but not much more), but not really anything I recognized, it what I’ve always felt compelled to call Space Espanol, even if that’s a stupid way to label something. But it’s definitely Space Espanol, even if that seems stupid to our learned sensibilities. (It’s not like a jukebox left in a field plugged into a red maple making music that not everybody can hear isn’t outside the realm of learned sensibilities already, though.)
No comments:
Post a Comment