I’m at work listening to my iPhone shuffle all its songs. On comes Water Colors by Janis Ian. I am immediately transported back to Allen’s bedroom where I heard it the first time.
I’d dependably gotten home late from work. The living room was bright and messy. Allen was upstairs in his bedroom in the dark, high as the sky. He immediately yelled for me to come upstairs. He was sprawled out on his mattress, shirtless, no fitted sheet. The fitted sheet liked to live on the floor.
I’d recently introduced him to Janis Ian singing “Seventeen” in a video. He’d moved directly to obsession and acquired an album or three.
“You have to listen to this song right now. OMG.”
I sat down next to the bed. He pressed the required buttons and out she rolled, there in the dark, all her bitterness and angst, arguing with some re-gendered ex-girlfriend:
…
Go on, be a hero,
Be a photograph
Make your own myths,
Christ, I hope they last
Longer than mine
Wider than the sky
We measure time by
…
Janis, oh Janis. Why you gotta freak it so hard?
