Intro, Music

September 16th, 2009

A few years ago my friend Emilie mentioned the book Birds of America by Lorrie Moore and was sort of incredulous that I hadn’t already read it (and everything else by Lorrie Moore) and so I went out and bought a copy of Birds in America and proceeded to DEVOUR it and upon finishing, ran to my local wee little independent bookstore (Sniff, I miss you BookCourt!) and bought – literally – every other book Lorrie Moore had ever written and while paying for them, attracted the attention of the sales associate who looked at me and was all, OH MY GOD I LOVE LORRIE MOORE I AM WRITING MY MASTER’S THESIS ON HER SHE IS AMAZING and then he and I started talking and he invited me to join him to hear her speak at The New Yorker festival that fall. I declined, but dove into the works of Ms. Moore and emerged as the biggest, geekiest Lorrie Moore fangirl possible, which is saying a lot because her fan base is rabid with adoration, as far as I can tell. It’s been eleven years since her last book (the dreamy, perfect Birds of America) and the aforementioned rabid fangirl base has been collectively adjusting their chunky frame glasses in anticipation of her latest novel, A Gate at The Stairs.

A few years before THAT, D. was living in Washington D.C., working as a journalist, and (in his words), ‘getting after it.’ A lot. “Getting after it” seems to involve primarily pot, booze and concerts (and one unfortunate and not completely corroborated lightning strike), which I suppose is par for the course of a twenty-something guy in the mid-nineties. Playing a large role in that era was the music of Sleater-Kinney.

Flash forward a decade(ish) to 2008 and witness our first date: the two of us perched on barstools and fiddling with our drink glasses – D. with vodka on the rocks, me with overpriced Italian wine – as we got our footing and our conversation gained momentum. I’ve not been on a lot of first dates (D: I’ve been on A LOT of first dates.) but during my brief singlehood I quickly learned the importance of having an arsenal of Miscellaneous Questions to discuss with the relative strangers one encounters in the dating world. We didn’t necessarily struggle for conversation (and were aided by a curiously familiar and intrusive barfly next to D.) but still managed to hit on some of those First Date Questions, things like, “Who would play you in a movie,” and “What song would play over the end credits in the movie of your life?” (The second one was mine; I love that game.) D. didn’t have an answer for the End Credits song question (Mine, at the time: Carry Me Ohio by Sun Kil Moon) but the topic morphed, eventually, to what our entry music would be, assuming there was always entry music played when one entered a room (Mine, circa 1995: American Girl by Tom Petty, memories of Silence of the Lambs notwithstanding) which morphed into what our At Bat music would be (because D. has the baseball disease and therefore many conversations eventually come back to baseball).

Which gets us to last week, when I saw a blurb online about Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and Lorrie Moore (the dots, they are about to be connected): in her new book, Lorrie Moore has a reference to Sleater-Kinney, and Carrie Brownstein – being of the rabid fanbase I mentioned above – had eagerly bought the book as soon as it was released and discovered the SK reference on page 27. She then blogged about it on her blog, and when I got home from work last Thursday I felt compelled to tell D., seeing as how two of our most significant pop/lit/whatever influences had collided out on the internets.

He started clicking back through her archives and came upon an entry in which she and her sister attended a sporting event and had the discussion, What would your entry music be, assuming there was always entry music played when one entered a room. Which became, What would your At Bat music be, assuming you were a professional baseball player. (You see where I’m going with this, right?) She opened the question up to her readers, in comments.

And that brings us to now, in which D. and I revisit that question which stemmed from our first date as re-imagined by Carrie Brownstein, with help from Lorrie Moore.

Ahem.

It was an irresistible topic, and D. wanted in on the conversation.
It continues on our newest vanity project; come visit.

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