Leitzke: One more listen for kim, one more chance

Over on Murmur Nick Leitzke has written a powerful post remembering his friend Kim, and the music they lived with. An excerpt:

‘Boxer’ may have been the single most overrated album of the Twenty-first century’s first decade, and the National may have been the single most overrated band. I gave up trying to like ‘Boxer’ because it wasn’t going to happen, and I wasn’t going to kid myself. I formed my opinion, and yes it is a negative opinion, but no one can say I didn’t give ‘Boxer’ a chance. I’m fair, but I’m also honest.

The words we say, be they the casual happenstance of every day conversation or the semi-formal declarations we feel entitled to make on the internet, are meaningless. It is impossible to see the future or to even comprehend the paths weaving concurrently to our own that will one day intersect us. Chance encounters in which we reiterate opinions posted elsewhere have nothing to do with what happens a week later. Even if they do, there is no way for us to know. We say what we say because of what unfolds immediately before us. In a future moment you look back and wonder what a past moment, if directed differently, could have yielded. There is no correct answer, just as there is no blame to shoulder and absolutely no dignified fulfillment to ‘what might have been.’ The suddenness of reality bears down once this fact becomes vivid, and when faced with the overwhelming shadow of truth all you can do is cry on the bathroom floor.

I last saw my friend Kim on May 15. I pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop that employs me and saw a green Hyundai. ‘That looks like Kim’s car,’ I mused to myself, and I parked next to it, engaged in my typical prework ritual of listening to music until I’ve unwound enough to face another day. Sunset Rubdown was playing, and I settled into the driver’s seat, closed my eyes, and heard a knock on my passenger side window. ‘Oh, it was Kim’s car.’ I rolled down the window as Kim waved, and after I said hello the first thing out of her mouth was, “Do you know why you don’t like the National? Because their lyrics suck.”

What followed was a lengthy but casual conversation about the new National album, ‘High Violet,’ and how we felt it compared to their earlier work. I repeated my opinion from the review I wrote a few weeks ago, that ‘High Violet’ was a grower, that it wasn’t going to ignite until somewhere in the middle of the album, and that I like that so much more than ‘Boxer.’ Kim’s stance was firm, though. She told me she never liked Matt Berninger’s lyrics, that “I’m going to eat your brains” is one of the lamest phrases she’s ever heard, that she has no time for something so flimsy. All of this seemed odd to me since I remembered her deeply in love with ‘Boxer.’ I kept talking about ‘Boxer,’ and I believe my exact words were, “I stopped kidding myself. You know? It wasn’t going to happen. It was just one of those things. Time to move on.”

We kept talking, and I got Kim thinking about “I came to Ohio on a swarm of bees.” Maybe I made some headway for her to like ‘High Violet.’ We parted ways a little bit later as I went into work and Kim went to meet another friend of ours. I worked my shift that day and five other shifts the following week, and I thought about Kim a lot. I thought about how sporadically I see her, and I thought about how I love seeing her because we have conversations just like that when we do run into each other, be it at a party or out somewhere unexpected. It was just a part of life, that conversation and all the other conversations we have. I lived and I worked as I always do.

A week later, a week to the day and maybe even the hour, I got a call from the friend who Kim went to meet after our parking lot encounter. Kim killed herself on May 21. The days following that phone call were numb. Everyone talks about numbness when facing shock. I had no idea what it felt like until I experienced it. The only word to describe it is numb, and nothing more can be said to further illustrate it. Just know that you don’t want to feel it. Yesterday afternoon I had my first honest to God cry over this mess, and while the ship is starting to right itself I don’t think it will ever be on a perfectly even keel again. Everything I saw and experienced last week has guaranteed that nothing will ever be the same. Wherever Kim is now, no matter how much I want to go after her, I can’t. It’s a bitch, that barrier between the now and the nether, but both halves are equally real and equally intangible. And we all have our place….

Click here to see the complete post.

Image in this post of Kim from his post.