Going to California

In the basement of the house I grew up in, we had a guest room that my brother later took over as his bedroom. He was a teenager by then and sleeping in a room between his sister and his mother didn't seem cool. I don't think it had much to do with privacy, as his door was usually open and I was often in there with him. But it was an enormous room, with plenty of space at the foot of the double beds for a sprawling mound of library books to take form, and he would sit on the edge of his mattress or in a chair over that literary hill and play his electric guitar for hours. He liked to turn up the amp so you could hear his Jimi Hendrix-esque wailing down the street. His thick mane of wavy hair would fall around his shoulders, released after school from the ponytail he was required to keep it in while on school grounds, and he'd close his eyes and jam. I'd be sitting on the floor, trying to follow his fingers and understand how they made such melodies out of the sharp strings, or just reading poetry. I'd be sitting there, cozy on the 1970s shag rug, not even realizing how lucky I was to have him. Not realizing it isn't always like this between siblings; not realizing we might ever move apart and lose the chance to spend so much time together.

After he left for college, I moved my easel into his room. He had a walk-in closet full of his own paintings, and I thought they'd keep me good company while I tried to take after my mom and him and prove good at painting. They were a tough pair to rival in the artistic regard, as my mom had an entire pottery studio set up two rooms down, and my brother—who, being older, always learned everything earlier than I did—had thrown pots in his childhood, whereas I had only made small sculptures. So I set up my easel right in the middle of the room, where anyone could see what I was painting, and when I'd go in there after school—when no one else, mind you, was home to witness my progress—I'd pull a tape off his shelf and pop it into his boom box; I'd listen to his music while I painted. I got to know Hendrix that way, and the Rolling Stones, and even Drivin' n Cryin', a high school band from north Atlanta that quickly became one of my favorites.

At some point I started to pull out all the Led Zeppelin tapes that had formerly intimidated me, seeming to me to contain a sort of music you had to learn to listen to. I remember turning over the black tape cases in my hand, noting the sequential numbering of their white-font naming, wondering just how many songs these guys had recorded over time. I knew there was more to their talent than "Stairway to Heaven," and as I listened, I realized I didn't quite get everything they put out. But some songs really compelled me, and one in particular stuck. Many years later, a memory of the sound of it would spark an idea in my head a few paragraphs into writing fiction and I'd eventually type out 120 pages of my personal daydream of an adventure tale. I'd listen to "Going to California" and go west in my head, letting my main character take my journey and take the aching right out of me. A handful of years after that, I'd finally follow Robert Plant's voice all the way to California, and it's in memory of that song that I write tonight, knowing that tomorrow I will hear Plant sing in person, and though the songs will be Americana and bluegrass and nothing like the ones I used to play on that tape deck, his voice will still recall the myth that one tune created in my mind, the tug of it on my heart and—eventually—my life.