caitlin mccann

february 23, 2022

phone note: february 23, 2022

we were at emma’s just sitting around and every couple songs james would say “is this so-and-so” and robby would say “yes!” and james would be excited to get it right. i said “james you’re 3 for 3 right now” and he laughed and robby laughed and made a joke about this all being a test. and it was funny 'cos robby was pulling out some old stuff. some raccoon some old dr dog. i actually don’t remember anything but raccoon but it blew me away 'cos i haven’t listened to that band since college. and now here i am sitting on a plane listening to raccoon and dr. dog. trying to access some sort of feeling that i don’t know i have access to anymore. i think i do. it’s just taking a while to jimmy it out. that’s what you gotta do with feelings sometimes. you gotta chip away at them. you gotta put a crow bar in it to help grab some of the tension so you can use you’re energy to actually pull it out. they don’t always come rushing right back. especially when it’s a feeling you’re not even sure you’re looking for in the first place. you’re just kind of curious what would come of, let’s say, revisiting an album you used to listen to in high school, in college, with the people who are still your best friends to this day but none of you guys listen to dr. dog that much anymore but you all still respect the shit out of them and you can’t deny how obsessed you all were with them and how they brought you together in the first place. and it’s funny, just the other day, i was thinking of a memory adjacent to the experiences that come to mind when i think about listening to dr. dog in the olsen’s garage the summer after freshman year of college. the way we sat around in beach chairs on the dirty concrete floor. there were always some folks playing ping pong. the adjacent memory i had is not a singular experience but it’s more of how i remember emma from that time. she was just getting into gardening which would literally catapult her into her farming career a few years later. i remember running around barefoot all summer and comparing our feet, how leathery and calloused they had become (oh the suburbs). and i’m remembering how we were sitting in her apartment, probably 2 hours or so before everyone else would come over and sit around with us, before robby would put on songs that james would remember. you know what she said to me? she said, “it’s funny, despite all the stupid shit that happened last summer, it reminds me of the summer after freshman year of college.” nothing stupid and dramatic happened that summer. nothing i can remember at least. but maybe she’s referring to the way we’d all gather at the boiz house and how it was similar to all of us gathering in her loft or at the wagner’s house. even after all these years, we were still sitting around in people’s backyards, drinking beers in hot weather and watching ash trays fill up and over flow and then the joke is who’s gonna throw it out? and no one does and it’s disgusting but it’s also quite a sight and even tho you want the satisfaction of throwing it out and starting fresh, you love watching it grow. your disgusting cig sculpture. it is time passing. an ashtray overflowing w cigs is symbolic the way empty bottles are symbolic on a table. they are the negative space to the conversations that happened at the same time. and it does not matter if it’s a ping pong table or a parents garage or a backyard in philly or a living room. it doesn’t matter if the music is dr. dog ‘cos there’s always going to be something there to mark that time that reminds you of another time of another time of another time…