The reason I study writing is because when one studies writing, one is actually studying life. There is no way to become a successful writer (define success in your own way—success is relative) without being analytical, and always learning about subjects that don’t seem to overtly adhere to your path.

“You see a piece of paper on the ground?” he said, his accent boiling his r’s, “pick it up and read it. It does not matter what it’s about. Knowledge is knowledge.” Amid is bald on top with a dent in the back of his skull.

“I bet there’s a story behind that,” I said when he showed it to me.

“Well,” he said, looking at me grimly, “it was an infection.” He said it as if he was disappointed that it wasn’t something greater. “That is why I say ‘gain all your knowledge now.’ When you get older, the gears will not turn so well. Sometimes I cannot find the right…” he trailed off and looked out the window, held his head in his hands, then came back. “I cannot always find the right words, I just see one and grab it, but it is not always right.” I smiled at him. “I am good at bullshitting, no?”

“Very good,” I replied.

He chuckled. “At least you are honest.”

I see Amid often in the coffee shop, but this is the first time we’ve ever really spoken. I sat across from him at a table because the others were taken.

“You’re welcome to sit here,” he said to me, “but do not listen, you do not want my negative energy.”

“We can share,” I told him.

“You do not want to share with me,” he said, smiling, and looking out the window before taking a sip from his steaming cup.

“Okay,” I said to him, “noted.” And of course, he began to speak to me on life, the world, and summarized all the things that he wished he’d done and advised me to do.

“You will never regret reading. Ever.”

Amid often just sits in a chair, he rarely reads the newspaper or a book. Sometimes, very rarely, he speaks to another man in a foreign language I can’t place. Otherwise, he just sits and looks at the table, out the window, or into his coffee cup. He is brimming with regret.

When I forget what matters, I need perspective. Sometimes perspective costs me $10.50 at the movie theatre, sometimes it costs me a couple beers and a few shots of vodka, sometimes it costs me a full night’s rest—I never know what it will cost until I’ve gained it. I only understand a sense of perspective in retrospect.

When you’re lying at the bottom of a hole it’s impossible to see over the top of it, that, unfortunately, is the truth of the matter.

And here’s an instrumental I made a while ago with a guitar, an organ, a ukulele, and a few children’s percussion instruments: Nothing Really Happens When I’m Alone

My father always played 97.3 KBSG on the radio in our green Ford Escort station wagon. “Good times and great oldies, 97.3 KBSG.” Most of the music drove me bonkers and I could only tolerate it when, rarely, I Get Around or California Girls came on. The Beach Boys were the only marginally sane musicians to be heard from the God-forsaken station. I would’ve given nearly anything for Star 101.5 or KISS 106.1, but could not listen to my Backstreet Boys CD because The Wagon didn’t have a CD player. Even then I had no deeply rooted affection for these boys of the beach. But now, all blossoming and full of adulthood, with the winter months coming on fast, I play the Beach Boys at least once a day. I do not listen to them for nostalgic pleasure, nor to warm my Pacific Northwestern skin and think of California. Fuck California. I listen to Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Mike Love, Carl Wilson, and Dennis Wilson because I need these boys to help maintain my sanity. Or at least to come to terms with losing it.

In the Beach Boys I find absolutely no clichéd love song. The Beach Boys were merely onto something before the rest of us. They knew that however many years later these songs would become a sadistic juxtaposition to a life hardly worth living. Pet Sounds, widely considered their most influential album, and one of the most influential albums of all time, contains absolutely no songs about California, beaches, surfing, or cars. Pet Sounds is as incongruent with the rest of the Beach Boys’ discography as its name. Pet Sounds appeals to the boy in me. The one who, when stuck at a red light, throws tantrums inside, beating his fists against the inner walls of my chest. I’m re-teaching myself. That boy missed something big in his upbringing, there’s supposed to be something in there about love and loving others, being loved, having a family; whatever-the-fuck, that this boy missed. I press play and Pet Sounds spins its way through my brain teaching me all the lessons my parents forgot to. Perhaps that’s an overstatement. What exactly would I be learning from the literal translations of these songs? I guess I’d learn that it’d be nice to be older, which, I suppose it is. I’d learn that girls treat you much better than you do them (ha.) I’d learn that sometimes you shouldn’t talk, you should put your head on my shoulder and listen to my heart beat. Just listen.

Pet Sounds is a progression of maturity. It appeals to the boy in me as, I can only guess, a father would to his son. Whereas Celine Dion’s latest album probably has a title track that claims I can both be a completely independent woman and yet I can’t live without you, boy; Pet Sounds only learns. There is no backtracking. There is, I understand, some contradiction. But as any reasonably taught Lopate-ist will tell you, contradiction is absolutely necessary. God Only Knows is one of the most intelligently written love songs ever. Fucking ever. Let us for a moment consider the lyrics: “I may not always love you, but long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it, I’ll make you so sure about it. God only knows what I’d be without you. If you should ever leave me, though life would go on believe me, the world could show nothing to me, so what good would living do me?” Though it took at least 137 plays of this song for me to grasp the true nature of its honesty, I have come to understand it. About a month ago, sitting in my blue Honda Civic LX, Carl Wilson sang me some of the truest words to carry me through countless years.

Confucius, The Beach Boys; Beach Boys, Confucius; teach each other some shit.

Last night, with a half-full flask of seven times distilled vodka, a wool pea coat, and Pet Sounds I danced through the darkened courtyards of Meridian Park Elementary. And I gave no shit whether it made me insane. I realized in that moment, if my sanity is lost, then my insanity is all I’ve got and I will embrace that lack of sanity. God only knows what I’d be without it. And still, while walking through the school, snow falling silently, I thought, Wouldn’t it be nice if I were older? All of the doors were locked, I know because I tried. Like a bandit under the cover of night, I tried to open each and every door; peered inside. Looked for things the little boy Daniel might want to play with. Things that I apparently forgot to learn as a child. A couple of pulls from the cold tin flask and I sprouted wings. I vaulted a fence and climbed on top of an oversized metal container, the kind on the back of semi-trucks. I stood there as I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times lectured my ears. I looked up into the black sky, saw nothing, and back down. I could see over all the buildings at the school. “Sometimes I feel very sad,” Brian Wilson cried to me. Ah-fucking-men, brother. “They say I got brains, but they ain’t doin’ me no good. I wish they could.” Have truer words ever been spoken? I suppose this is beside the point. What might be the point is that up there, upon this metal container, with my breath turning to a ghost before me, all of the lights at the school turned off. All at once. As if cued by this event, Brian sang to me, “Each time things start to happen again I think I got something good goin’ for myself, but what goes wrong?” What the fuck goes wrong, Brian, what goes wrong? What Brian claims is that he “just wasn’t made for these times.” I, for once during the course of this album, disagree. I think I was made for these times. But perhaps you were not made for those times, perhaps you were made for my time, Brian. Your beach was something my boy needed. You, friend, get me through the darkest of times by singing in a brilliant harmony with your brothers that makes ice beautiful again, and makes Daniel a child again.

But even as little boy Daniel dances like a lunatic around empty schools in the middle of the night, the only thing he can think is how nice it would be to be older.

Additionally, Sir Paul McCartney considers Pet Sounds one of his favorite albums of all time, with God Only Knows being his favorite song on the album; perhaps ever. Does this make me a knight by association? Dylan said Wilson should will his ear to the Smithsonian. Elton called it “a timeless and amazing recording of incredible genius and beauty.” That’s two knights and a genius. If I’m not a genius knight at least I have two knights and a genius to back up my sentiments.

Desert Wanderer

and

Death Tangled Breeze

And this illustration to go with them: