I took a gondola for the gondola’s sake. If there’s a gondola, there must be a rider of the gondola. That was me, and two friends, with time to kill in the mountains. The plan was to gondola on up to the top of Loon Mountain, say hello to the peak, and gondola right back down. The gondoliers running the show didn’t sing or wear striped white-and-blue shirts. They didn’t yell at us in Italian. They told us, quite politely, that the glacial caves at the top of the mountain were worth exploring, and to please not disturb the mountaintop worship service, thank you.
Mountaintop worship?
They were not there to worship the mountain. They were there to worship Jesus. There was singing. There was music. There were arms raised in praised. And the music stopped, and the arms fell back to their places.
Humility! The pastor sermonized. We have refrigerator magnets with the only word you need to know: Humility!
We proceeded to crawl through the “caves,” which were less caves than stacks of giant boulders with crawl spaces between them so small you had to shimmy down on your back, dirtying up your clothes. Humility.
Hours later, waiting in an airport security line, Seth and I learned that our flight out of Boston was canceled for the night, and furthermore, that there were no more flights for at least two days. We got in a very long line at the help desk. There is no point in waiting, said the loudspeaker. There will be no flights tonight. We kept waiting in line. Surely they would offer to cover a hotel? Half an hour later, the voice returned. We will not cover any hotels.
F- you! Seth sermonized to the voice from the sky.
Yes, airport delays happen. But I felt a particular outrage on this day of all days, as it was the last straw in a pile of strange occurrences from this one particular airline. Both our flights, in and out, had been canceled and rescheduled without our knowledge. The flight back to DC gave us even more issues. First we couldn’t check in. Then we couldn’t get seats. Then the flight mysteriously disappeared from the flight tracker, hours before any weather became an issue. There was an inexplicable rage at an inexplicable target: the nameless machine, the system breaking down. And everything about trying to fix the situation was a challenge. I could make a call, wait for two hours. Or start a chat, wait for two hours. Or be directed from webpage to webpage, each saying they couldn’t help me. We all wanted to yell at someone. All we had was ourselves.
Standing in line, I said aloud: “Everything bad in the world only ever happens to me!” And then I played a song on Youtube: “Everybody hates me. Guess I’ll go eat worms!” And then we laughed. And then we left.
So we were stuck in Boston but lucky to have a very kind friend with a spare room, where everything was clean and the dog was secretly a cat. This friend was out at a Yellowcard concert, and in fact, had an extra ticket with no one to use it. We said thank you but we couldn’t possibly join, we had to wake up early for our ten-hour bus ride (which became an eleven-hour bus ride) at an ungodly hour the next morning. We were tired, we wanted to be responsible.
We said no.
Three hours later, I was walking through the doors of the MGM music hall at Fenway park as the final opening act played their last songs. This had been an absurd day from start to finish. Why break the streak? Why not end with Yellowcard? I knew two Yellowcard songs and that would have to be enough.
“I can’t believe this,” the lead singer said. “I can’t believe how many people are here.” He often paused to chat between songs. “We’re so humbled,” he’d say again and again. “So grateful that so many people loved these silly little songs.” And then the lights would go off and they would screamsing and everyone would screamsing and their 45-year-old violinist would jump around and I would jump around pretending to know the words while I waited and waited for the one song I cared about. Yes, just one song. The only song. The Only One.
How does a hit song happen? It’s not just the lyrics or the music. It’s about finding a particular wavelength in society that is ready to receive a particular song. This wavelength runs through the spine of teenage girls, and it is life-forming. It is divine. This song, Only One, was in my blood. Maybe it is the apotheosis of its genre. Scream my lungs out and try to get to you. You are my only one. Give me a better thesis of emo-pop-punk. Maybe it is just that I heard the song on a particular day and it will stay with me forever. Maybe it’s both. Either way, I’m a little sad that Yellowcard will never again create a new Only One or Ocean Avenue. I think they know it. They were perfect for the time they were in. Their yellow spiky hair. Their California-from-Florida voices. But the world has moved on to a new wavelength. And nobody wants Yellowcard to move with it. People love Yellowcard because there’s a place on Ocean Avenue, and because we’ll scream our lungs out to get to you.
The concert seemed to end without Only One. Without Ocean Avenue. The band said thank you and walked off and the stage went dark. But of course this was a lie. We needed Ocean Avenue. And they needed us even more than we needed them. They needed us to stay in place and call them back. They had to say no to say yes. They came back. The chords began. Broken this fragile thing now. The spotlights were red. The lights grazed the crowd and lifted up to the ceiling. My arms raised up. Everything raised up. I would not have been surprised if my body raised up. It seemed completely logical for me to float above the crowdsurf, above the froth of spilled beer, into the lights, through the ceiling, into the empty, storm-free night, free of airplanes, free of reason, free of everything but a single wavelength stretching from here, where I am, to you, wherever you are right now. Here I go.
-Denise
PS: I am excited to announce I’ll be teaching an online writing workshop this fall called “generative climate fiction.” This class is the culmination of about 15 years I’ve spent reading, working, and thinking about climate change. Everything that I love and hate about the “climate fiction” genre, and everything I want it to be, is making its way into the lesson plan. The workshop is meant to counteract climate change doomerism. We’ll be talking about slipstream, utopia, romance, thrillers, and hope, with lots of lovely readings and prompts to create new stories together.
I know most of my readers aren’t writers themselves, so this workshop may not be for you, but I’d be overjoyed if you considered sharing this workshop with anyone you think might be interested. I really believe what I’ve been putting together and want it to be out there in the world—so if you know someone who might want to join but the price is an issue, let me know and we’ll see what we can do.
Either way — I hope this is the first workshop of many more to come and I’m excited to give back to the writing community after all these years.
PPS: I am also accepting good vibes and hopeful thoughts about the speculative climate-fiction story collection my agent has recently started sending out to publishing houses. All I can really do is wait, hope for the best, and keep writing this next novel about absurd climate politics… wish me luck.
PPPS: I did not forget about the cats. Here they are, staring at you.
very exciting denise! sending good vibes! also what a throwback, those are the 2 yellowcard songs on my playlist called 'middle school' lol