Thanks for the Memories

One of the things that I've discovered about law school is that it takes up prime real estate in the minds of law students, myself included.  Since most of us didn't know each other before school, it's the common experience that we can talk about, since we're going through it together, and it's a topic that comes up in most every conversation.  Even when we don't want to talk about law school, we still wind up talking about it...or talking about how much we hate talking about it, and I'm guilty as charged. 

So, now for something completely different...

These last few weeks, the preaching at church has revolved around the different types of songs in the Bible: songs of longing, love, and joy.  This evening, we went into Psalm 126 and looked at Israel's "Anti-Piracy Initiatives," the ways in which they adapted to exile and kept the Babylonians from stealing their songs.  [Sidebar: I'm focusing this post on how that functions at the personal/individual level; the sermon was loaded with implications for a community, which merit a whole 'nother series of reflections, each accompanied by action.]

Jamie pointed out that one of the ways they did this was remembering what God had done. He likened it to pressing the repeat button after hearing a song that you like, listening again and getting the track into your system, and suggested that specific spiritual practices can do the same thing in our lives.  It's a form of playlist creation, if you will.    That resonated with me on several levels. 

First, it's something I do all the time.  After I've been to a particularly memorable concert, I hit up Setlist.fm and make a playlist based on the show.  While I can't recreate the show, listening to the tracks in the order I heard them triggers memories, and music I listen to this way stays with me for quite some time.  Did it with Springsteen, Jonsi, Fleet Foxes, and now Flogging Molly, and those songs have taken up residence in my headspace. So the metaphor makes sense to me.

Second, the spiritual disciplines are things I'd like to develop, and I like the idea that they're a means of protecting our songs.  One of my mantras this year has been that law school is not my life.  It's a part of it, but it's nothing close to the full thing.  Fifteen years from now, I want to remember it that way.  Writing things down, from the things that have divine fingerprints all over them to those which simply mark the joys and traumas of life, is one way to do just that. 

While I trust my memory with a lot of things, I usually turn to the written record when I don't have a vivid impression of something.  Having that record helps balance out the scales when some of those vivid impressions are painful ones, which can all too easily repeat themselves and distort my memories of a relationship, community, or phase of life.  Also, there are a lot of things that don't leave vivid impressions in my mind, but that give shape to life.  Having stuff on paper helps to sort through the haze that builds up in my mind over time.  All the more reason to write these things down.

I've never really been consistent with journaling, and I'd like to be.  So here's my first effort at chronicling life through a top-ten list. In mostly-chronological order, here's this weekend's top ten. Some of the things on here were special events, while others were the stuff of life, the things that you and I could do on any given day.  Each of them is something that I'd like to remember.

1. Kicking it off with a long run down Lake Shore Drive.  If you'd told me back in November that the Chicago weather would pull me away from the treadmill and onto the streets in mid-February, I'd have been mildly skeptical, to put it mildly.  I'd have been even more skeptical of claims that said run would last for an hour, and that I'd go further south down the path than ever before...and I'd have been wrong.
2. A healthy home-cooked dinner, ready in 30 minutes. Spicy chicken cutlets, along with steamed broccoli and rice, for the win.  I'm with Bittman: Cooking Solves Everything.
3. Friday Night Movie: 50/50. Well-written and well-played, with appropriate doses of levity and comedy.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt kills it as the world's most unlikely 20-something cancer patient, while Anna Kendrick has my actress crush list on lockdown.
4. Saturday morning breakfast.
   My first attempt at making banana pancakes was a great success.  That's going to happen again. 
5. Lunches on the go: Harold's Fried Chicken on Saturday, and Big Star on Sunday.  Have I mentioned that I love my neighborhood?  These are two of the reasons why. 
6. Flogging Molly at the Aragon Ballroom.  Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears joined The Middle East and Daniel Ellsworth & the Great Lakes on my personal Mount Rushmore of "Great Opening Acts I'd Never Heard of Before Seeing Them Live."  Flogging Molly was great; they played with the polish of a band that's been playing together for years, and the enthusiasm of a band playing for this crowd for the first time.  All my favorites, plus three or four more that I listened to about a half-dozen times each in the 24 hours after the show.   [One frustration from the night: the mosh pits that broke out near me when it was time to dance: you're never too young to be too old for those things!]
7. Caroloke in Lincoln Square.  A friend got a private room at Lincoln Karaoke to celebrate her birthday, and we had a blast.  It was my first time doing Noraebang-style karaoke since Korea, and we had a fun group of people, who weren't shy about using all four mics and doing group singalongs.
8. Sunday Worship at Urban Village Church, Wicker Park. 
   This could be an entire post in itself; needless to say, I love my church, and am feeling more and more connected to this community. Worshiping here every week structures my life around something than the academic calendar, and after a decade or so of following Jesus, I'm grateful for the ever-evolving ways in which I'm affected by music, preaching, and the Eucharist.  All three spoke to me this week.
9. Koyanisqaatsi.  This 1982 documentary, now on Hulu, was mentioned in a story on Joshua Bell's Washington DC subway concert, linked from a friend's blog.  I watched it tonight, and it was unlike any other film I've ever seen.  There's no dialogue, and with no real characters, it's hard to discern a plot, making the film almost entirely dependent on the strength of the atmosphere it creates through time-lapse photography and music.  And it was compelling.  The film gets its title from a Hopi term meaning "chaotic life," "life out of balance," or "a state of life that calls for another way of being." Highly appropriate viewing going into Ash Wednesday.
10. Being on pace going into a Wednesday deadline.
    Between the work my writing partner had already done and the time I spent at coffee shops over the last few days, we've made enough progress on the brief that I feel good about it with two days to go, and never once felt guilty about enjoying items 1-9 on this list.