Songs For Your Day

I suppose I could blame it on a good night’s sleep after a long stretch of not-so-good-nights’ sleeping. Or maybe on the coffee and croissant I had at the Monon Coffee Co. with Jeremy. Also, the possibility of it being a perfectly weathered morning, coasting (or not coasting, considering that I ride fixed, but it felt so effortless in the moment, that I felt as though I was coasting) up the Monon Greenway on my way to work yesterday. It was just one of those mornings, and I can’t describe it in any other way than simply “infectious joy.”

Don’t chide me. I ride my bike with headphones sometimes, when I know that it’s safe to ride with headphones. You see, I had The Tallest Man on Earth singing over the wind in my ears. The sun was like confetti through the trees. And, I was dancing as much as a person can dance on a bike, singing loud, at times playing air drums (though there are no drums backing The Tallest Man on Earth, I was playing them), and other times, when necessity necessitated that my hands should be on the handlebars, I strummed along on the bars. For some reason, The Tallest Man on Earth conveys to me an air and countenance of Beirut’s, Zach Condon, but yet dusty with the creaks and groans of say, an ancient wooden trade vessel or a ghost of a cabin deep in the woods of Georgia or Mississippi.

I passed people, and they smiled at me; some laughed. It’s probably hard to see a large, tattooed man riding his bike in this manner, singing and carrying on, and not take part in the joy he is feeling, to be affected by it. I felt as though lilting lines of music and notes were wafting away n my wake. It felt good to believe, to want to believe, that those people who saw me, who smiled and laughed, knew a day better than they would have otherwise, simply because I cared to sing.

christopher earl.